linguisticperception-blog

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Follower Friday

The only thing I like about Twitter is “Follower Friday”, so I’m trying to establish it here on Tumblr, too. Please have a look at these blogs and follow them, if you don’t already:

@linguisticperception

@politicsoflanguage

@lingsamplesentences

@linguistika

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Check out this video about Language: Crash Course Psychology. They discuss morphemes, language acquisition as well as receptive and productive language.

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Bending the Rules with Linguistics!

Yeah right is an English expression which could be translated to “doubtful” which is in sorts a negative or a word which opposes what is follows.

Can you think of instances where two negatives become a negative? Or an instance where it depends on the emphasis placed in the sentence?

One such example can be: “ I wont eat nothing”

Which when the emphasis is on nothing may mean that the person will eat something and when there is no emphasis on anything, it may indicate that the person wont eat anything. 

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Take a look at this article that discusses Whorfianism while attacking the linguistic debate between the fact the language shapes thought and the fact that it does not.

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Check out this interesting TEDTalk by Mia Nacamulli about the benefits of a bilingual brain. Regardless of the age at which a person learns a new language, the benefits are the same: bilingualism leads to higher density of grey matter in brain and can also help delay diseases such as Alzheimers and Dementia.

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Did you know 3% of people of the world have some form Synesthesia? 

Here are some of the answers to your burning questions!

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Interesting explanation about why we use certain foods (bananas, crackers, and nuts) to describe something crazy.

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Take a quick and interesting look at language in The Neuroscience of Language. There are two main regions in the brain which have a direct impact on our speech: Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area. Injuries to these areas, respectively Expressive Aphasia and Fluent Aphasia, affect how we process and verbalize language.

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A quick look at how language affects our perception of colour. Different cultures and therefore languages have an effect on our view of colours. Therefore, our perception of colour is influenced by what we see as well as by the words that we associate to certain colours depending on our culture.

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Do you Have Trouble with Stuttering? Read this!

(Image caption: Typically, the right IFG stops the flow of speech, whereas the left one supports it. In people who stutter, these two areas are conversely activated: The right IFG is overactive and shows tightened connections with the frontal aslant tract (FAT), which is a sign of a strengthened movement inhibition. This interrupts the flow of speech and might inhibit activity in the left IFG. Credit: © MPI CBS)

Stuttering: Stop signals in the brain prevent fluent speech

One per cent of adults and five per cent of children are unable to achieve what most of us take for granted—speaking fluently. Instead, they struggle with words, often repeating the beginning of a word, for example “G-g-g-g-g-ood morning” or get stuck with single sounds, such as “Ja” for “January” although they know exactly what they want to say.

What processes in the brain cause people to stutter? Previous studies showed imbalanced activity of the two brain hemispheres in people who stutter compared to fluent speakers: A region in the left frontal brain is hypoactive, whereas the corresponding region in the right hemisphere is hyperactive. However, the cause of this imbalance is unclear. Does the less active left hemisphere reflect a dysfunction and causes the right side to compensate for this failure? Or is it the other way around and the hyperactive right hemisphere suppresses activity in the left hemisphere and is therefore the real cause of stuttering?

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig and at the University Medical Center Göttingen have now gained crucial insights: The hyperactivity in regions of the right hemisphere seems to be central for stuttering: “Parts of the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) are particularly active when we stop actions, such as hand or speech movements”, says Nicole Neef, neuroscientist at MPI CBS and first author of the new study. “If this region is overactive, it hinders other brain areas that are involved in the initiation and termination of movements. In people who stutter, the brain regions that are responsible for speech movements are particularly affected.”

Two of these areas are the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), which processes the planning of speech movements, and the left motor cortex, which controls the actual speech movements. “If these two processes are sporadically inhibited, the affected person is unable to speak fluently”, explains Neef.

The scientists investigated these relations using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in adults who have stuttered since childhood. In the study, the participants imagined themselves saying the names of the months. They used this method of imaginary speaking to ensure that real speech movements did not interfere with the sensitive MRI signals. The neuroscientists were then able to analyse the brain by scanning for modified fibre tracts in the overactive right hemisphere regions in participants who stutter.

Indeed, they found a fibre tract in the hyperactive right network that was much stronger in affected persons than in those without speech disorders. “The stronger the frontal aslant tract (FAT), the more severe the stuttering. From previous studies we know that this fibre tract plays a crucial role in fine-tuning signals that inhibit movements”, the neuroscientist states. “The hyperactivity in this network and its stronger connections could suggest that one cause of stuttering lies in the neural inhibition of speech movements.”

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This is Daniel Tammet.

He has synesthesia but also the very rare savant syndrome. Not only does he see, feel, taste, hear, and smell things differently, but he can process all these differed perceptions in a way not many of us can, in a way that makes him one of the smartest person in the world. This ability can be accredited to the synesthesia, but mostly to the savant syndrome. Here, he explains the different ways he processes language and the different ways of knowing.

For more information about Daniel Tammet, here is a documentary about him and his adventures; about how he can compute any mathematical expression, learn a whole language in a week, and also about when he met the real “Rain Man,” Kim Peek. ( https://youtu.be/PPySn3slfXI )

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An interesting explanation about our brains interpretation of a new language.

As children, we acquire language quickly in order to be able to communicate with our parents. However, it was shown that adults learn languages much faster than infants through sound interpretation. As we get older, it is easier to distinguish what sounds correct and what does not.

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WHAT DO YOU THINK? 

Does Language Alter the Way We Think or do We Create Language Based on What We Think?

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Discovering Depression with Linguistics?

“Unsurprisingly, people with depression tended to use a lot more negative adjectives and adverbs like "lonely", "sad" or "miserable". However, a more subtle indication of depression was found in a person's use of pronouns. Those with the illness tended to use a lot more singular pronouns like "me", "myself" and "I" than those without depression. Because depression can isolate people, this reflects how difficult those with the illness find it to relate to other people in their lives.”

“People with depression also use a different style of language too. Scientists discovered that those with depression tend to use absolutist words like "completely" and "always" more often, showing that they tend to have a more black and white view of the world.”

“Mental health forums were found to have 50% more absolutist words than those which were not (like Mumsnet and StudentRoom).”

Because these findings were made digitally, they could lead scientists to improve their testing of mental health conditions by doing so digitally instead of relying entirely on therapists... 

...which could potentially help millions of people suffering from depression.

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Although it is obvious that what is written is not in english letters, we are still somehow able to read this… but why?

It seems that while our brain retains patterns in speech, it also retains the pattern created from seeing words on a page. Our brain, when forced to focus on the symbols being used to replace the letters says “this is not english” but when allowing our eyes to scan them, somehow we can make sense of what is being written. This is a prime example of how perception influences cognition and language.

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Binding theory:

“Determines a range of possibilities for pronoun interpretation that may be further constrained by other factors such as a bias to interpret parallel fashion when they occur in sequence, or general knowledge or suppositions about the nature of the world.”

Quote taken from: I-Language: An Introduction to Linguistics as a Cognitive Science by Reiss & Isac page 209)