EXTRA MODULE

• One of the most interesting areas in the study of language is the relationship between language and the thinking of the human mind (Harris, 2003). Many people believe that language shapes thoughts.
• Linguistic relativity (the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) refers to the assertion that speakers of different languages have differing cognitive systems and that these different cognitive systems influence the ways in which people think about the world. Thus, language would shape thought.
• Bilinguals


  People who can speak two languages.
• Monolinguals


  People who can speak only one language.
• Multilingual


  Speak at leas two and possibly more
• Additive bilingualism


  A second language is acquired in addition to a relatively well-developed first language.
• Subtractive bilingualism


  Elements of a second language replace elements of the first language.
• Simultaneous bilingualism


  This occurs when a child learns two languages at birth.
• Sequential bilingualism


  This occurs when an individual first learns one language and then another. Either form of language learning can contribute to fluency.
• Single-system hypothesis


  This suggests that two languages are represented in just one system or brain region.
• Dual-system hypothesis


  This suggests that two languages are represented somehow in separate systems of the mind.
• Dialect


  A regional variety of a language is distinguished by features such as vocabulary, syntax, and pronunciation.
• The study of dialects provides insights into such diverse phenomena as auditory discrimination and social discrimination. Bilingualism is not a certain outcome of linguistic contact between different language groups.
• Learning a second language increases the gray matter in the left inferior parietal cortex.
• Using language incorrectly is through slips of the tongue — inadvertent linguistic errors in what we say.
• Slips of the tongue may be taken to indicate that the language of thought differs somewhat from the language through which we express our thoughts. In the language of the mind, whatever it may be, the idea is right, although the expression represented by the slip is inadvertently wrong.
• Pragmatics


  The study of how people use language.
• Gestures and vocal inflections, which are forms of nonverbal communication, can help establish common ground.
• Personal space


  The distance between people in a conversation or other interaction that is considered comfortable for members of a given culture.
• Proxemics


  The study of interpersonal distance or its opposite, proximity.
• Proxemics indicate the importance of interpersonal space in all interactions. They also indicate that proxemics is important, even when one or more of the people are not physically present.
• Speech acts address the question of what you can accomplish with speech and fall into five basic categories, based on the purpose of the acts.
• Direct speech act


  Whenever there is direct relationship between a structure and a function. Close relationship between language structure and language function.
• Indirect speech act


  Through which we make a request without doing so straightforwardly. The responses to these requests typically match the requests in terms of politeness.
• Pinker's theory of indirect speech


  A basic assumption is that communication is always a mixture of cooperation and conflict. Indirect speech gives the speaker the chance to voice an ambiguous request that the listener can accept or decline without reacting adversely to it.
• Noam Chomsky (1991) has stated the key question regarding nonhuman language quite eloquently: “If an animal had a capacity as biologically advantageous as language but somehow hadn’t used it until now, it would be an evolutionary miracle, like finding an island of humans who could be taught to fly."
• Posterior of the cortex, is now believed to entail more grim consequences for linguistic function than does damage to Broca’s area, closer to the front of the brain.
• Aphasia


  An impairment of language functioning caused by damage to the brain.
• Wernicke's aphasia


  This is caused by damage to Wernicke's area of the brain. A notable impairment in the understanding of spoken words and sentences.
• Wernicke's aphasia


  Involves the production of sentences that have the basic structure of the language spoken but that make no sense.
• Global aphasia


  The combination of highly impaired comprehension and production of speech. It is caused by lesions to both Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas. Aphasia following a stroke frequently involves damage to both Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas.
• Anomic aphasia


  This involves difficulties in naming objects or in retrieving words. The patient may look at an object and simply be unable to retrieve the word that corresponds to the object. Sometimes, specific categories of things cannot be recalled, such as names of living things.
• The locations of lesions that would be expected to disrupt speech also disrupt signing. Further, the hemispheric pattern of lesions associated with signing deficits is the same pattern shown with speech deficits.
• Right-handers with signing deficits show left-hemisphere lesions, as do most left-handers. But some left-handers with signing deficits show right-hemisphere lesions.
• Robert Rescorla and Allan Wagner showed that classical conditioning depends not just on simple contiguity of an unconditioned and conditioned stimulus, but rather on the contingency involved in the situation.
• 1st Nonhuman animals often are presumed to have somewhat simpler cognitive systems. It is therefore easier to model their behavior. These models can then be bootstrapped to the study of humans, as has happened most notably in the study of learning.
• 2nd Nonhuman animals can be subject to procedures that would not be possible for human ones.
• 3rd Nonhuman animals that are not in the wild can serve as full-time subjects, or at least, regularly available subjects.
• 4th An understanding of the comparative and evolutionary as well as developmental bases of human behavior requires studies of nonhuman animals of various kinds
• Two languages seem to share some, but not all, aspects of mental representation. Learning a second language is often a plus, but it is probably most useful if the individual learning the second language is in an environment in which the learning of the second language adds to rather than subtracts from the learning of the first language.