Notes on Humans and Language

1. Two phases of human expansion: a)  movement of Homo erectus out of Africa 1 to 2 million years ago; b) spread of Homo sapiens around the globe, beginning 100,000 years ago and reaching every continent 60,000 years ago (The Science Times Book of Language and Linguistics, 2000, p. 46) 

2.. Dr. Cavalli-Sforza's genetic studies using DNA markers have indicated that Europeans are a mixed population that emerged only about 30,000 years ago and appears to have about 65% Asian ancestry and 35% African ancestry (plus or minus 8% error rate). Australian aboriginals, though they appear to look more like Africans, are genetically closer to Chinese. (ibid., p.49)

3. Christopher, 29, cannot draw simple figures, add 2 and 2 or tie his shoes. Yet he speaks 16 languages, half of them fluently, and is also a gifted translator. But his language abilities are independent of his cognitive abilities. He is not able to think about what he translates. 

Carla, 22, grew up speaking Italian and English . When she began training to become a simultaneous translator, her language ability was localized on the left side of her brain. But after the training, English shifted to her right brain while her Italian remained on the left.  

Study of individuals like Christopher and Carla, together with sophisticated new instruments like PET scanners have led neurophysiologists to suspect that there is not a single center for language. Some findings:

-Like the Cray computer,a person's first language is tightly organized in terms of nerve cell circuits. Second languages are more loosely organized in the brain, which is why it often takes longer to find words in them. But a knock in one part of the brain can knock out a native language and leave later- learned languages intact or vice versa. 

-Different aspects of language, like proper nouns, common nouns,  and regular or irregular verbs, are processed in different areas of the brain. But these areas do not send their signals to a common destination for integration. Rather, language and perhaps all cognition are governed by some as yet undiscovered mechanism that binds different brain areas together in time, not place. 

-Each human appears to have a unique pattern of organization for language ability---as unique as facial features or fingerprints. Broca's  and Wernicke's areas are indeed important language-processing regions in most people, but many additional language-areas are found elsewhere in the brain. Two left-brain regions called the temporal and parietal lobes are particularly rich in multiple-language areas. Each essential language area is composed of sharply defined patch of nerve cells, each about the size of a grape. The cells in each patch appear to be connected to many others located in distant parts of the brain. Different patches govern language functions such as reading, identifying the meaning of words, recalling verbs and processing the words and grammars of foreign languages. The essential areas can be thought of as "convergence zones" where the key to the combination of components of words and objects is stored. Thus knowledge of words and concepts is distributed widely throughout the brain but needs a third-party mediator---the convergence zone---to bring the knowledge together, during reactivation. The convergence zone concept explains the odd language disabilities of a stroke patient named Adam. When shown a picture of a dog, Adam can say it is man's 
best friend, has four legs and barks, but he cannot summon the name for dog. Nor can he distinguish one animal from another by its name. But Adam can name man-made tools with ease. The explanation: language convergence zones for natural objects are significantly damaged, but zones for man-made objects are intact. 

-The process of learning a language shapes the formation of the essential areas. From birth to the age of two, the child's brain undergoes a explosive growth of synaptic connections and is primed to learn the sounds and grammar of any language. After the age of two, language synapses that do not receive inputs from early vocalizations begin to be eliminated or suppressed, a process that continues until about age 15. (ibid., pp 134-140) 

-Williams syndrome---an enigmatic birth disorder caused by the loss of one copy of the gene that makes elastin, a protein that is the chief constituent of the body's elastic fibers, and possibly by the loss of another gene or genes of unknown function that lie next to elastin on chromosome 7---characterized by enriched language and sociability skills may help solve the huge debate in cognitive psychology over the nature of language: is language special from the word go, under the control of special genes and located in special parts of the brain or does it piggyback on general mental function and intelligence? Studies involving children having Williams syndrome suggest that language is unique because there is a genetic defect that spares it (ibid., pp. 149-150).

-Brains may have separate units to digest reading and speech (ibid., pp. 155-157)


Comments/Insights/Personal Observations:

My interest in language development and foreign language acquisition has been long and tinged with a mixture of humiliation and pride. As mentioned before, my speech development was slow as a child. I was slow in learning to speak and when I finally did (as told to me by my mother), just before I turned three years of age, I couldn't articulate several speech sounds and I badly stuttered. That of course worried my mother and caused me to suffer from humiliation and anger when I was taunted and laughed at by the neighborhood kids and classmates. (The deep anger was recently rekindled when I  ran into certain ignorant and stupid pontificators of Vietnamese descent, who pathetically tried to prove to me that they were smarter and more informed than me in their sputtering, error-filled, broken English despite having lived  in an English-speaking environment for over 35 years). By the time I reached high school, the stuttering subsided much and the articulation problems largely disappeared. During high school years, I discovered to my delight I had no problem absorbing English and French. Still, I was painfully aware that my articulation of the speech sounds of these two languages was very poor. Nowadays I still have problems with the final /l/ articulation.

When I found myself dreaming in English I knew then I had become bilingual. Although I could navigate in French and Spanish when I have to, I know at best I am still a bilingual speaker. Knowing a language in depth takes a lifetime of dedicated study. And to be bilingual is to understand what Goethe meant when he observed that one must speak two languages to fully understand one. Learning English has helped me be more aware of the intricacies and beauty of my mother tongue.

Wissai
July 29, 2013