Psycholinguistics, English language acquisition and learning

Dr. Ana Laura Rodríguez Redondo

Questions on Deacon's (2003) excerpts
__________________________________________________________________

State whether the following assertions are True or False according to Deacon's (2003)
excerpts.

Grammatical and syntactical information

processing depend on certain grammatical
processing centers
Language types do not influence neural
organization of the brain in human beings.
Bilingual individuals organize each language in
a different part of the brain. And they do it in
different ways.
Any person who uses an inflected language, and
who suffers brain damage in Broca's area tends
to show a strong tendency towards
agrammatism.
Speakers of inflected languages with brain
damage in Wernicke's area tend to show
impairments that affect the production of speech
and the analysis of grammatical transformations
more frequently than those who have damage in
Broca’s area.
Each type of syntactical operation is located in a
different part of the brain. However, those
different parts of the brain would be different
depending on the specific grammatical features
of each language.

Explain using your own words the following excerpt from T. Deacon (2003:152):

If we took the view that a particular language function (e.g. the passive transformation) was
a distinct primitive operation that was 'computed' by brain regions specialized for it, then
we would be forced to conclude that English and Italian speakers have different kinds of
brains with different types of language regions that make this possible. This, of course, is
absurd. what happens is that in the process of learning one of these languages, particular
syntactic functions tend to demand most from areas of the brain that were previously
specialized to perform [other] similar manipulations of the signal. . . . Over the course of
maturation and in response to constant language use, the development of a certain degree of
skill in this process is accompanied by progressive specialization of this region...
 Psycholinguistics, English language acquisition and learning
Dr. Ana Laura Rodríguez Redondo
Questions on Deacon's (2003) excerpts
__________________________________________________________________

State whether the following assertions are True or False according to Deacon's
(2003) excerpts.

Lateralization is the localization of different

cognitive functions in different cerebral
hemispheres.
Lateralization is due to evolutionary reasons
that relate brain and language.

Functions assigned to either side of the brain

allow parallel processing. This implies that
different cognitive computations are
distributed throughout the entire cerebral
cortex.
Story and joke comprehension depend on
functions located in the left hemisphere.
Discourse context is hard to grasp for
patients with right hemisphere damage.
The analysis of long sentences and the
process of recalling sentences share the
same neural systems.
When we recall long sentences and analyze
them, we tend to use the left hemisphere to
optimize both processes.
Processing of prosodic features directs
listener's attention to significant linguistic
elements, and provides pragmatic
information about the information being
processed.
The left hemisphere is the only cerebral part
that is involved in the processing of
prosodic features and sounds decodification
and interpretation
We have the tendency to process our native
language in the left hemisphere. However,
studies on simultaneous translators show
that it is possible to develop each
hemisphere so as to process each language
in different hemispheres.