Neurolinguistics and language acquisition

Neurobiological foundations of language

2005

Neurolinguistics Goals:
By the end of this section you should be able to:
identify the main language centers of the brain describe effects of injuries to language centers explain how certain types of specific brain damage provide evidence about how language is processed in the brain

Definitions
Neurolinguistics: the branch of linguistics concerned with the biological and neural foundations of language. Modularity: brain is structured and subdivided into specific areas that control particular faculties. Aphasia: a specific language disorder following brain lesions caused by stroke, tumor, gunshot wounds, or severe infections. Lesion: A circumscribed pathological alteration of brain tissue. (appears as a scar on the brain)

Neurolinguistics
Neurolinguists investigate
How the brain processes language Where the brain processes language

Who neurolinguists study

Normal subjects Abnormal subjects
patients with brain injury (e.g. stroke) patients who have had brain surgery

Brain structure
The part of the brain with greatest mass is called the cerebrum. the cerebrum is made up of two hemispheres, the left and right hemispheres which are connected by nerve fibers called the corpus callosum

Brain hemispheres
right hemisphere

front of head

back of head

left hemisphere

Lateralization
Contra-lateral control
a given hemisphere controls opposite side of body
Left hemisphere controls right side of body Right hemisphere controls left side of body

Other hemispheric specializations:

Right hemisphere specialties

Holistic, spatial processing
pattern-matching (e.g. recognizing faces) spatial relations emotional reactions music (processing by musically naive individuals) linguistic intonation (but not lexical tone!)

Left hemisphere specialties

Sequential processing rhythm temporal, relations, analytical thinking, music (processed by musically sophisticated individuals), mathematics, intellectual reasoning
language, speech sounds especially so for adult, male, righthanded, literate, monolingual subjects

Language:left hemisphere
Evidence: dichotic listening experiments
Thai tonal contrasts
[na@] aunt (high) [na^] face (falling) [na#] field (mid) [na&] thick (rising) [na$] (nickname) (low)

Thai speakers process tone with left hemisphere English speakers presented with tonal contrasts process tone with right hemisphere

Language:left hemisphere
Evidence from aphasia
Brain injury locations resulting in speech deficits are almost always in left hemisphere

Language:left hemisphere
Evidence from split-brain patients
Severe cases of epilepsy treated by severing corpus callosum Task of naming object held in left hand (right brain)
left eye open (right brain), right eye covered
much harder than

right eye open (left brain), left eye covered

corpus callosum (connects hemispheres)

Lateralization: Caveats
Lesser left hemisphere specialization for language if:
left-handed female illiterate multilingual

Modality and lateralization

No effect of language modality on lateralization for language Left hemisphere specialization for language even for signed languages

Localization for language

Hypothesis: specific parts of brain control specific parts of body or bodily functions, including language

language centers (left hemisphere)

Brocas
Wernickes Arcuate fasciculus
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language centers (left hemisphere)

Evidence for localization: aphasia

Broca's area lesions result in Broca's aphasia (a.k.a. expressive aphasia, motor aphasia) Characteristics of Brocas aphasia basic message of meaning clear but speech is not fluent phrases are telegraphic (absence of function words) incorrect production of sounds Cinderella, as told by a Brocas aphasic Cinderella...poor...um dopted her...scrubbed floor, um, tidy...poor, um...dopted...si-sisters and mother...ball. Ball, prince um...shoe.

Evidence for localization: aphasia

Wernickes area lesions Characteristics of Wernickes aphasia speech is fluent, but often nonsensical or circuitous Description of a knife by a Wernickes aphasic Thats a resh. Sometimes I get one around here that I can cut a couple regs. Theres no rugs around here and nothing cut right. But thats a rug and I had some nice rekebz. I wish I had one now. Say how Wishi idaw, uh windy, look how windy. Its really window isnt it?

Evidence for localization: aphasia

Lesions at arcuate fasciculus (subcortex nerve fibers connecting Brocas, Wernickes areas) Conductive/conduction aphasia Characteristics
usually good comprehension, fluent speech but difficulty repeating difficulty reading out loud difficulty writing

DISORDERS OF SPEECH: APHASIAS

Approximate left hemisphere area where acute lesions almost always produce language disorders

Aphasia is caused by a brain injury, which may occur during a traumatic accident or when the brain is deprived of oxygen during a stroke. It may also be caused by a brain tumor, a disease such as Alzheimer's, or an infection, like encephalitis. Aphasia may be temporary or permanent.

Study of brain damaged patients

Paul Broca 1824 1880

Damage in Brocas area - Problems in production: articulation, poor use of grammatical features - Understanding of speech fairly normal

Carl Wernicke 1848 1904

Damage in Wernickes area

- Prosody and pronunciation intact, speech is fluent but empty, but a lot of different word distortions and difficulties finding the right word - Severe comprehension deficits

The classical view of language in the brain

- Two language centres, for production and comprehension respectively: Brocas and Wernickes area.

- The arcuate fasciculus: a bundle of nerve fibers connecting Wernickes area to Brocas, is essential for normal language function. Damage to it causes conduction aphasia:
speech fluent, auditory comprehension relatively good, but repetition of heard words is impaired.

Brocas aphasia
Samples of spontaneous speech:
"Yes ... Monday ... Dad, and Paul ... 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 ..."

Performance profile
- Production difficulty: slow speech, articulation difficulties - Little intonation present (dysprosody) - Often agrammatism: 1) sentence construction deficit,
2) possibly selective impairment of grammatical elements, or 3) difficulty in understanding syntactically complex sentences.

- Comprehension relatively good

Non-fluent aphasia

The brain of a patient who suffered from Wernickes aphasia due to a stroke in the left middle cerebral artery

Wernickes aphasia
A sample of conversational speech
Examiner: What kind of work have you done? Patient: We, the kids, all of us, and I, we were working for a long time in the ... you know ... it's the kind of space, I mean place rear to the spedawn ... Examiner: Excuse me, but I wanted to know what work you have been doing. Patient: If you had said that, we had said that, poomer, near the fortunate, porpunate, tamppoo, all around the fourth of martz. Oh, I get all confused.

Performance profile
- fluent but meaningless speech - auditory comprehension deficit - word-finding difficulties, word substitutions and made-up words - normal prosody, syntactic processing relatively normal

Conduction aphasia
Example of conduction aphasics repetition performance:
BED bed PRESIDENT

peh-tn HIPPOPOTAMUS ?
Performance profile
- Repetition disproportionately severely impaired, speech fluent and auditory comprehension relatively good - Word-finding difficulties, sometimes semantic difficulties - Outstanding difficulty is in the proper choice and sequencing of phonemes in speech output, leading to numerous phonological errors

Other types of aphasias

- Global aphasia: wide-spread left-hemisphere damage, all basic
language functions are affected, some more than others.

- Anomic aphasia: primarily influences an individual's ability to find

the right name for a person or object. As a result, an object may be described rather than named. Often results from damage in inferior temporal areas.

Some less common types of aphasias:

- Transcortical sensory aphasia

- Transcortical motor aphasia

- Subcortical aphasia - Crossed aphasia

Clinical characterizations of aphasic syndromes

Fluency of Output Language Comprehension Repetition Name of Aphasic Syndrome

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Bad Good Good Bad Good Good Bad Good Good Bad Moderate Bad Bad Good Good
BROCA WERNICKE CONDUCTION TRANSCORT.MOTOR TRANSCORT.SENSORY GLOBAL

Bad

Bad

Bad

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Neurolinguistics summary
Hemispheres of brain have different specialties, including language (most clearly for right-handed (etc.) individuals) Lateralization is not affected by language modality Language centers within the brain: Broca's, Wernicke's areas especially important Neurolinguistics provides evidence for human specialization for language

Acquisition Goals:
By the end of this section you should be able to:
explain what is meant by innateness of language identify the major milestones of 1st language acquisition describe major similarities and differences between 1st and 2nd language acquisition

Innateness hypothesis
Innateness (Lennenberg)
humans are genetically predisposed to aquire linguistic competence (though not in any specific language) humans are born with the knowledge that language has systematic and unique patterns humans are born with the critical abilities that enable them to learn linguistic patterns patterns that are common to language in general are considered parts of universal grammar

Innateness hypothesis
charactistics of innate behavior
innately determined behavior is common, especially in species specific communication emerges before its necessary emergence not triggered by specific event little effect of direct teaching and overt practice regular sequence of milestones correlated with maturation critical period after which behavior cannot be adequately acquired (note difference between babies and adults learning a language)