Human Brain and Acquisition Notes

A)    Human Brain

Human brain has two cerebral hemisphere. Corpus Callosum provides communication between the two hemispheres.  Right hemisphere governs  the movements of the left hand side of the body and left hemisphere governs the right hand side. Such functioning of the brain is called contralateral brain function. Language is laterized.

Brocas’s Area (anterior speech cortex): Front Part of Left Hemisphere.

·         Speech Loss

·         Agrammatic Speech

·         Filled with lots of pauses

·         Absence of function words  such as prepositions and inflectional morphemes

Wernicke’s Area (posterior speech cortex): Back Part of Left Hemisphere.

·         Lexical items are used incorrectly

·         Nonfluent aphasia

·         Can find it difficult to find the word that are being looked for

Jargon Aphasia: Patiens replace words with either nonsense words or use other words that are either semantically or phonologically similar to that they believe they are using.

Conduction Aphesia: is the result of damage to articulate fasciculus, which is the name given to the nerves connecting Broca’s and Wernicke’s Area. It is hard to repeat what they hear.

B)    Language Acquisition

Behaviorism: Imitation + reinforcement, habit formation
Cognitivism: LAD, innate ability, human mind
Constructivism: ZPD, I+1, social environment
Connectionism: Through activation of neurons, we learn the language, there is not any principles or parameters in human brain innately.

As Behaviorism falls short of explaining such patterns in child language, Chomskey’s Universal Grammar (UG), Language Acquisition Device (LAD) and Generative Grammar were sought to be used to explain some patterns.

Universal Grammar

1)      Principles: are the universal, invariant design features of all human languages.

2)      Parameters: constrain the limited possibilities for variation allowed. A parameter can have two or more values, and particular languages make different choices among the values allowed.

 Generative Grammer

 Is a grammar (or set of rules) that indicates the structure and interpretation of sentences which native speakers of a language accept as belonging to the language. A generative grammar is a theory of competence: a model of the psychological system of unconscious knowledge that underlies a speaker's ability to produce and interpret utterances in a language.

C)    Developmental Stages

Babling: ma-ma-ma-ma.
One word: single words consisting of gimme(give me).
Multiple words: At around 18 months, babies can produce multiple words.
Telegraphic Speech: Anne atta parka?

Overextension: Dog refers to  a number of animals.
Underextension: Using the Word “fish” to refer to gold fish only.
Spoonerism: puinea gig instead of guinea pig(deney faresi,kobay).

Acquisition of Negation and Questions

Stage 1: No walk
Stage 2: Don’t walk
Stage 3: He don’t walk, Can I go?
Stage 4:  Why teddy bear can’t go outside?

D)    Language Learning Motivation

Integrative: You want to learn.
Instrumental: You want to be a teacher or being promoted at work place.

Extrinsically motivated learners, learn not because learning itself is beneficial in being more compenent and enjoyable but because learning bring rewards, such as praise, grades, better test results, a better job.
Intrinsically motivated learners, learn just because learning itself is enjoyable.