República Bolivariana de Venezuela

Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Educación

IUTSO-ICAE
Idiomas Modernos Mención “Inglés”

A BRIEF APPROACH
INTO
NEUROLINGUISTICS

Linguistics III

Student:
José Alfredo Mendoza Herrera; C.I.: 30.433.107

Puerto la Cruz, 04/01/2023

 The human brain works like an infinite fishing nest: its
immeasurable neurological extension captures all the
information of the environment and processes it as nervous
stimuli. However, it shares some characteristics with the
brains of other species, because it's a homologous structure
of the evolutionary line.
Nevertheless, there are obvious behaviours and actions
that distinguish us from the other inhabitants of this
planet. To prove this, all you have to do is stop and think
about what you're doing: reading a document. Reading, the
consumption of words; the digestion of messages and meanings.
Reading, among other things (which we don't have the space to
discuss in these pages), is probably one of the main
characteristics of the human species and the inseparable twin
of writing.
Although the brain is the organ that burns the most
energy, this biological addition gives us an incomparable
ability: language. It is true that animals can communicate
with each other, but this kind of talk only provides basic
information in the present day. Human conversation (or
speech, in this case) provides infinite information about
infinite subjects, and also acts as a time machine; a way of
transmitting information from one generation to another.
This evolutionary gift helped us to survive the cruel
environment in which our ancestors were cast. Lacking blood-
stained claws, bestial musculature or sharp fangs, language
became a defense mechanism to overcome the harsh conditions
of our former habitats.
As human groups separated and began to change their way
of life to a sedentary one, they began to adapt their
language to the conditions in which they found themselves.
Perhaps the place in which they settled was one of abundance
of resources, so that words describing their goods were of a
high number; perhaps they had to fight with other human
groups, so that words describing war and violence were
abundant. And since this subject is straying from the main
theme of this essay, let us make a leap of a thousand years
into the future: the time when the different languages were
born.
It’s in human nature answer the why and how of all the
things: from the falling of a leaf, to the composition of the
matter. Realities that were taken as normal and daily
suddenly transform into a maze of unknowns and wonders. And
language, of course, was not free of these kinds of
observations. Language has been, since ancient time, a theme
of doubts and questions. Was in the antique Egypt, about 3500
BC. Nonetheless, the first period when language and the brain
process that produce it begun in the 1960’s with the later
consummation of the field of “Neurolinguistics”, being
discussed their subjects matter in the book Studies in
Neurolinguistics, in the 1970’s.
Neurolinguistics studies the relationship between
language and communication and various aspects of the brain,
in other words it tries to understand how the brain
understands and produces language and communication. It tries
to combine neurological/neurophysiological theory (how the
brain is structured and how it works) with linguistic theory
(how language is structured and how it works).
Neurolinguistics is based in many disciplines, these are
linguistics, neuroanatomy, neurology, neurophysiology,
psychology and a lot more. This subject tries to answer
several questions, but to effects of this essay the focus
questions will be

 What happens to language and communication after

different types of brain damage?
 How is L2 learning explained?
The first of these questions has a special place in
neurolinguistics. Aphasia is defined as "loss of language due
to brain damage". The cause can be, for example, a stroke,
hemorrhage or head trauma. The effect of the lesion is to
alter the comprehension and/or production of language. By
studying these changes, it is possible to understand the
functional systems involved in language and the brain
structures involved. Apahasiology is the branch of
neurolinguistics that studies this phenomenon. Aphasia is an
acquired language disorder. Acquired disorders are also
caused by progressive neurological diseases such as dementia:
language and memory are closely related and independent.
Developmental language disorders, i.e. disorders that occur
in children who have not experienced a specific lesion event,
are also of interest to neurolinguistics. Neurolinguistic
approaches to these types of disorders (such as dyslexia)
typically compare these conditions with similar acquired
disorders, taking into account the special conditions of
language acquisition and the plasticity (ability to be
molded) of young brains. Neurologists also study the language
development of children with non-specific developmental
disorders affecting language.
Neurolinguists have divided language processing in the
brain into three main blocks:

 Block I: subcortical structures (including the

limbic system) and the brain stem (including the
reticular formation), has the function of
regulating tone (tension) or degree of
consciousness. Its damage causes a non-specific
reduction in cortical tone, which reduces the
selectivity of psychological processes.

 Block II: the post-central cortex (including

visual, auditory and sensory areas in the
parietal, occipital and temporal lobes) receives,
analyses and stores information. This block is
said to be responsible for the paradigmatic
organization of verbal communication, i.e. the
organization of phonemic, lexical, morphological,
syntactic and semantic units in the linguistic
code.

 Block III: Block II is said to be responsible for

the paradigmatic organization of verbal
communication, i.e. the organization of
phonematic, lexical, morphological, syntactic and
semantic units in the linguistic code.
Neurolinguists have found that language disorders are
caused by damage to these blocks. For example, afferent motor
aphasia (phoneme substitution that the patient cannot correct
due to lack of kinesthetic feedback on articulatory
movements) is produced by a lesion in Block II; dynamic
aphasia (inability to transform a semantic plan into linearly
ordered speech via "inner speech", absence of spontaneous
speech) is produced by a lesion in Block III.
 This "waterfall" of information helps us to understand
the first unknown: after brain damage, the ability to produce
language is reduced.
Moving on to the second question, the relationship
between neurolinguistics and L2 learning will be explained.
L1 is defined as the mother tongue, the language in which the
individual is involved and which is learned unconsciously;
L2, on the other hand, is acquired with a great deal of
conscious effort. When learning a new language, the mental
grammar on the brain can be a useful tool or a thing that
complicates the action. Imagine for a moment a native
Portuguese speaker trying to learn Spanish: since the grammar
and lexicon of the two languages are far too similar
(Portuguese and Spanish share 89% of their vocabulary), it
won't be difficult for him to learn the language in a few
months; a similar case will happen with the languages of the
same family as Spanish, such as French, Italian, Catalan,
etc. Now imagine a native speaker of Chinese trying to learn
a language like German: since the grammar is not similar,
said person will have a hard time learning the language. This
mental process is called "transfer" and it's divided into two
types: positive transfer (the example of the Portuguese
speaker) and negative transfer (the example of the Chinese
speaker).
Available evidence indicates that the L2 seems to be
acquired through the same neural structures responsible for
L1 acquisition. This fact is also observed for grammar
acquisition in late L2 learners contrary to what one may
expect from critical period accounts. However, neural
differences for an L2 may be observed, in terms of more
extended activity of the neural system mediating L1
processing. These differences may disappear once a more
‘native-like’ proficiency is established, reflecting a change
in language processing mechanisms: from controlled processing
for a weak L2 system (i.e., a less proficient L2) to more
automatic processing.
This short essay provides a brief introduction, a solid
welcome to a complex subject such as neurolinguistics, a
subject that has been studied in depth over the last few
decades.