Making my studies in linguistic, I have noticed
that linguistics need to be supported by other sciences and disciplines. One of
them is neurology, the science that studies the brain and its functions. Language
is one of these functions, according to the studies there are some areas in
charged to produce and comprehend language. Our role as a teacher of foreign
language is to know how these areas work in order to understand, comprehend,
and produce language, specially a second one. It is important that the teacher
has an idea about how the language is learned and helps the student to overcome
difficulties or guides their families in the process to comprehend that their
children are suffering some of these phenomena. In my experience, this
knowledge has been vital because I have had students with this kind of learning
difficulties and their families do not accept it easily. Having idea is a
wonderful tool to face this kind of situations.
The disciplines like neurolinguistics and
psycholinguistics help us to understand how the language is comprehended,
learned and produced. The neurolinguistics studies the language as a function
and what areas of the brain comprehend and produce it. While the psycholinguistics
helps us to study the psychological process of comprehension and production of
language. Furthermore, these disciplines are useful in order to analyze how
some pathologies like Aphasia, Alexia, Dysgraphia, Acalculia, Hemiagraphia, Apraxia,
Agnosia, Amnesia, which could affect the language comprehension and production.
Paredes y Varo citing Ch. Bouton (1984),
affirm that the neurolinguistics is in charge of which cerebral mechanisms hold
the phonological oppositions, which the logic-grammatical ones or the fact of
reached annunciation. While the
psycholinguistics, according to Paredes and Varo, studies the communicative
process taking into account not only the messages but also the participants in
it. For that reason, psycholinguistic also studies the acquisition and
linguistic procedure trying to give an explanation from different theoretical
models based on observation and comparison of normal individual and individual
who presents verbal dysfunctions´ linguistic behavior.
According to Ardila and Roselli (2007) the
language development is a result of interaction between the neuronal development
and environmental stimulation. In spite of the environmental development, the
language acquisition is a result of neuronal maturation. The control of smooth
movements and symbolic skills development are needed to get a well-developed
language. Following Kolb and Fantie (1997) the language acquisition is related
with the frontal and temporal lobules. The language like the other complex
behaviors is not well-known how occurs but it is the result of multiple
relationships among cells through electrical stimulations. Following to
Bernardez (2004) the language seen as a whole: use and structures, requires the
use of many parts of the brain. The most automatic processes are found in Broca
and Wernicke´s area, although there is nothing which has a specific
localization.
I keep saying that the language is a result of
experience with language. Michael Tomasello and others cited by Bernardez
consider that the child acquires the linguistic experience which is going to
form the neuronal connections making some of them more sensitive than the
others and at the same time making some more specialized than others.
Basically, we can say that the language is a result of interaction with
external factors and the stimulation of neuronal connections from those
experiences with the factors. The language comes from different places as a
result of interaction, and it is localized in many parts of the brain but we
cannot know where specifically.
Dear
colleagues: You can read more about the authors I mentioned in my post: Enrique
Bernardez with his Book; Qué son las lenguas? 2004. And the next link:
http://www.uv.es/perla/1[09]%20Paredes%20y%20Varo.pdf
Where you can find the article; Lenguage y Cerebro:
Conexiones entre Neurolingüistica y Psicolingüistica, de M de Jesus Paredes
Duarte y Carmen Varo Varo. Universidad de Cádiz.
Finally, I want to ask you: What relationship can
you find between the Gestalt Group with its theory about pregnancy and Language
learning?
Hello!! If someone of you need the book of Ardila and Roselli called Neurologia Clinica, I could lend you it. See you soon!!!
ResponderEliminarAbout your question, the relationship is maybe the ability of the brain of creating images out of pieces that seem to make no sense, or at least not having a connection with the real image (basicaly whay I know about Gestalt is the images they used, the ones of the triangles, and the lines). Maybe, in a similar way, that's how the brain makes sense of the sounds we produced.
ResponderEliminar