Language and the Brain

Language and the Brain 

I. Neurolinguistics:

 The study of relation between language and the brain.

II. Language Areas in the Brain:

*Broca's Area:

 The "anterior speech cortex" or also known as Broca's area. Located on the left hemisphere of the brain. This part was believed to take the responsibility of generating spoken language.

*Wernicke's Area:

 The "posterior speech cortex" or also known as Wernicke's area. Located in the left hemisphere. This part was confirmed to comprehend spoken language.

*The Motor Cortex and the Arcuate Fasciculus:

Mortor cortex

 This part is take control of muscle movements (legs, arms, foots, hands, ...). Additionally a part of Motor cortex that is close to Broca's area controls the articulary muscles (jaw, tongue, laryxn, ...)

Arcuate fasciculus

 It is a bunch of nerve fibers that are connected between Wernicke's area and Broca's area. 

*The Localization View:

 The localization view claimes that abilities of language are related to the functionality of each specific area in the brain. 

 According to the definition. The brain activities involved in hearing a word, understandood it, and speaking it again follow a distinguish pattern. The heard word first is understood in Wernicke's area, then it is transferred through Arcuate Fasciculus nerve fibers to Broca's area where it is generated into spoken language. Finally, the Motor cortex, adjacent to the Broca's zone is sent a signal to generate a spoken version of the heard word.

III. Tongue Tips and Slips:

 By understanding the difficulty in speaking through the study of cooperation between the brain and speech production, we can find some clues about how our linguistic knowledge is organized within the brain.

*The Tip of the Tongue Phenomenon:

 This phenomenon explains that we usually forget the words we are about to say. Despite we exactly know the phonological outline, sound and the number of syllables in that word. This suggests that words stored in our brain are sorted based on some phonological. The common words are easier to retrieve than the uncommon ones. 

 When we encounter a mistake when retrieving a word, the mispronounced word we said often has a strong phonological similarity to the word in retrieval process. This phenomenon is called malapropisms. Some examples:

-(Fire distinguisher) for "extinguisher"

-(Transcendental medication) for "meditation"

*Slips of the Tongue:

 This phenomenon happens when the words we speak have their components swapped with each other. It is called spoonerism after William Spooner. Some examples:

-A long shory stort (instead of "A long story short")

-Use the door to open the key (instead of "Use the key to open the door")

*Slips of the Brain:

 Sometimes the brain might make some mistakes as it organizes and generates linguistic messages. Those mistake include: Perservation is when a sound is carried to the next word, Anticipation is when a sound is used before it is occurrence in the next word and Exchange is when sounds change places.

*Slip of the Ear:

 A phenomenon in which the Wernicke's area failed to comprehend the heard word, leads to the spoken word carrying a totally different meaning compared to the original heard word. This slip is believed to be the cause of malpropism. 

IV. Aphasia:

 Aphasia is a type of language disorder in which the language function is damaged. The cause comes from brain injuries leading to the difficulty in understanding and/or producing linguistic messages.

*Broca's Aphasia:

 Also called "motor aphasia" is charactized by the reduction in speech, distorted articulation and slow, often effortful speech. The spoken words spoken by speakers contain mostly lexical morphemes (noun, verb, adjective), functional morphemes (articles, preposition) and inflectional morphemes (plural-s, past tense-ed)

*Wernicke's Aphasia:

 Sometimes called "sensory aphasia". This disorder makes people able to speak fluently, but the word use is general even when they are trying to answer a specific request.

*Conduction Aphasia:

 This type of disorder targets the Arcuate fasciculus. People who have this type of disorder rarely suffer from mispronounced words, and mostly don't have articulation problems. However, they have a troubled time trying to repeat the words spoken by another person.

V. Dichotic Listening:

 An experimental technique that has demonstrated the domination of left hemisphere for sylable and word processing. It's due to the fact that most of language functionalities of the brain are located on the left side, and because each hemisphere controls the opposite half of the body, leads to a conclusion that the right ear is better at understanding words than left ear because the left hemisphere controls all the right body parts include ear and not the same as right hemisphere which is opposite.

VI. The Critical Period:

 The specialization of the left hemisphere for language is described in terms of lateral dominance or lateralization (one-sidedness). The time when a child's brain is at most ready to input and learn a new language in general is called the critical period. TCP for language acquisition is believed to initiate from birth and disappear at puberty. People who have passed that period will find it really hard to study and understand language.