6. The Human Brain: Cerebral Cortex
• is mostly heavily involved in language
and other cognitive functions,
• covers brain,
• Is divided into two hemispheres that
have different but complimentary
functions.
7. The Human Brain: Cerebral Cortex
•Right hemisphere: controls left side of body
•Left hemisphere: controls right side of body
•Corpus callosum joins the hemispheres and allows the
two to communicate
8.
9. • Left brain thinking is verbal, sequential and analytical. Right brain is non-
verbal, visual and intuitive, using pictures rather than words.
• Your turn: Which one is left or right?
• 1. “From here, go west three blocks and turn north on Vine Street. Go three or
four miles and then turn east onto Broad Street.”
• 2. “Turn right (pointing right), by the church over there (pointing again). Then
you will pass a McDonalds and a Walmart. At the next light, turn right toward
the Esso station.”
10. Localization & Lateralization
•Localization: different human cognitive abilities and
behaviors are localized in specific parts of the brain
•Lateralization: any cognitive function that is localized
primarily in one side of the brain.
- Language is lateralized to the left hemisphere.
-In almost all right-handed individuals, and most left-
handed individuals, language is left lateralized.
11. Language Lateralization
• Split-brain patients: evidence for lateralization
- In the past, some cases of severe epilepsy were treated by cutting the
corpus callosum, severing the connection between the two
hemispheres.
• Messages sent to the hemispheres cause different responses in split-
brain patients.
-Object placed in the left hand (right hemisphere):
object can be used but not named
-Object placed in the right hand (left hemisphere):
object can be named and described immediately Video
12.
13. Aphasia
• Aphasias provide evidence for localization of language
• Means any language disorder due to brain damage caused by disease
of trauma
• Many aphasics are selectively language impaired.
• Aphasics do not (necessarily) have cognitive or intellectual
impairments.
14.
15. Broca’s Aphasia
Paul Broca (French) in 1864
found that damage to the front
part of the left hemisphere
resulted in loss of speech.
16. • – Broca’s area:
left hemisphere, where
the frontal, parietal, and
temporal lobes meet
17. Effects:
• – intelligence not necessarily affected
• – understanding not necessarily affected
• – production severely impaired
• Trouble with function words (e.g. articles, prepositions, pronouns)
•Trouble with inflectional morphology (e.g. -ed, -s)
• Difficulties forming grammatical sentences
• Difficulties understanding complex sentences (e.g. passives)
AGRAMMATIC
18. e.g.
• "Yes ... Monday ... Dad, and Dad ... hospital, and ... Wednesday,
Wednesday, nine o'clock and ... Thursday, ten o'clock ... doctors, two,
two ... doctors and ... teeth, yah. And a doctor ... girl, and gums, and
I."
• "Me ... build-ing ... chairs, no, no cab-in-ets. One, saw ... then, cutting
wood ... working ..."
19. Wernicke’s Aphasia
Karl Wernicke (German) in 1874.
Wernicke’s aphasia:
– Fluent speech
– Good intonation
– Lexical errors
– Nonsense words
– “Word salad”
– Comprehension impaired
23. Language Lateralization
• Is language totally left-lateralized?
Not completely.
Some evidence comes:
– Brain lesions
– Hemispherectomy patients
24. Brain Lesions
• Language usually does not develop normally in children with early
left-hemisphere brain lesions
• – Babbling, vocabulary-learning delayed in children with right-
hemisphere brain lesions.
25. Hemispherectomy: removing one hemisphere
of the brain
• In adult hemispherectomy patients:
left cerebral hemisphere removed
lose most but not all of their linguistic competence
lose the ability to speak and process complex syntactic patterns
retain some language comprehension ability
right cerebral hemisphere removed
difficulty in understanding jokes and metaphors
cannot use loudness and intonation as cues to whether a speaker is angry,
excited, or merely joking.
So, the right hemisphere also has a role in normal language use.
26. Plasticity
• To some extent, the brain may reassign functions to different
areas of the brain. This is due to the plasticity of the brain.
Left hemisphere is predisposed to learn language.
During language development, the right hemisphere can
take over many language functions if necessary.
27. Child hemispherectomy patients are able to reacquire a
linguistic system, albeit delayed.
In adults, the right hemisphere cannot take over linguistic
functions anymore.
Plasticity of the brain decreases with age.
28. The autonomy of language
• Is language faculty already present at birth, or is it derived from
more general intelligence?
Children with SLI (Specific Language Impairment):
have difficulties in acquiring language, but
do not have brain lesions responsible for language difficulties
have no other cognitive deficits
Language ability ≠General Cognition
Grammatical faculty is separate from other cognitive abilities
29. • Christopher IQ = 60-70
• Unable to button his shirt or play tic-tac-toe BUT…
• Remarkable language skills
• – Could read at age 3
• – Knows many languages from different families (Germanic, Slavic,
Turkic)
• polyglot
• – Easily learns new languages
• Language ability ≠General Cognition
30. The Critical Period
•There is a biological period during which
language can be acquired easily, perfectly, and
without an accent; after this time, it is difficult, if
not impossible, to learn language perfectly and
without an accent.
31. Historical Background
• Wilder Penfield & Lamar Roberts (1959)
• The first to introduce the CPH
• The main study is neuroscience of language
• Up to the age of 9 can learn multiple languages
• Eric Lenneberg (1967)
• Children having a certain amount of time to acquire a language
• Until the age of 13, language is present in both hemispheres.
• Noam Chomsky
• Children are born with an inherited ability to learn any human language.
• Every child has a ‘language acquisition device (LAD)’.
32. Critical Period: First Language
1. Victor
• feral child, France, 1799, 12 years old
• no language, receptive to forest sounds
• Dr. Jean Itard, 5 years tutoring; Victor learned “lait” and “O
Dieu!” but never used them communicatively.
• Itard, J. (1932). The wild boy of Aveyron. NY: Century.
• “L’Enfant Sauvage” (“the Wild Child”), Francois Truffaut, 1970
33. Critical Period: First Language
2. Genie
• 1970, California, 13.5 years old, isolated since 20 months
(tied to bed by psychotic father), beaten if she vocalized,
father spoke only in grunts.
• After 5 years of education, she could speak, though slowly,
and with greater-than-normal gaps between hearing and
comprehension, overuse of formulaic language—
recognizably different from native speakers.
• Rymer, R. (1993). Genie: An abused child’s flight from
silence. London: Michael Joseph.
34. Critical Period: First Language
3. Deaf Children
• Born to hearing parents, sometimes “deprived” of exposure to
sign language in infancy.
• group 1: exposure since birth
• group 2: exposure since school (age 4 – 6)
• group 3: exposure after age 12.
• Results showed decreasing grammaticality in ASL among the
three groups.
• Newport, E. (1990). Maturational constraints on language
learning. Cognitive Science ,14, 11–28.
35. Strategies and processes in child L1 and L2
acquisition similar
•similar mistakes in acquisition
•acquisition order (Dulay and Burt, 1974)
•transfer is rare, creative language acquisition
•adults rely more on system of L1
36. Benefits for young learners in instructed FLL
- Accent (esp. with native speaker)
- Acquisition (if rooted in activity and ample
time and + atmosphere available)
- Low inhibition, communicating in L2:
natural
- Natural curiosity
- Little L1 influence
- No preconceptions about language and culture
37. Drawbacks
• No (recognition of) communicative need
• No reliance on reading/writing
• No formal operation
• Difficult to reproduce a rich „here and now”
context in classroom
- Emergence of speech is to be tolerated
- Difficult to demonstrate a sense of progress
- Highly context and person dependent
38. Benefits for adults in instructed FLL
- Formal operation: grammar, vocabulary
- Learn through explanation (no exposure)
- L1
- Previous learning strategies
- Controlled motivation, goal orientation
- Not strongly context dependent
- Experience, beliefs might create + attitude
- Faster development, better use of instructional time
39. Drawbacks
- Too much reliance on the rational mind
- Monitoring
- Low tolerance of ambiguity
- No or little involvement of affect
- Inhibitions, L2 ego
- Previous experience, attitudes
- Accent
- L1, L2, etc.
