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Applied Linguistics and the Neurobiology of Language A lecture

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Applied Linguistics and
the Neurobiology of
Language
A lecture Presented by:
Hajir Mahmood Ibrahim
PhD Program
2021-2022
 01

02 This lecture focuses on the concept of applied linguistics and the

neurobiology of language.
Applied Linguistics

03 The first section discusses research on the neural underpinnings of

04 language
from a theoretical perspective. It introduces hypotheses about what
05 systems may support language acquisition.
The second section addresses some reservations researchers have had
06
about the relevance of neuroimaging research, and also explore the
07 profound attraction such research have for scientists and applied linguists
in particular.
08
The third section discusses the cognitive ontology in relation to the
09 brain.
The final section discusses the aspects of language that are relevant to
10 neurobiological investigation.

Friday, October 15, 2021 2

 01 Introduction
02
Applied Linguistics

03 Neurobiology is the study of the nervous system and how the brain
works. The neurobiology of language refers to understanding
04
language process inside brain architecture.
05 NEUROSCIENCE has made enormous strides in the last 2
decades. The brain is no longer a black box, and the exploration of
06 language from a neurobiological perspective has become a major
07 research focus in the language sciences.
• The concept of applied linguistics and the neurobiology of
08 language.
• Research n neural underpinnings of language in applied
09
linguistics.
10 • Systems that may support language acquisition.
• Aspects of language relevant for neurobiological investigation.
Friday, October 15, 2021 3
 01 Possible Neural Systems Underlying Language
02 Acquisition and Use
Primary Language Acquisition
Applied Linguistics

03
Lee et al presents a revolutionary theory of language “as a complex
04
adaptive system that exists as a cultural artifact without any requirement
05 for innate abstract representation.” Based on this, language acquisition
is seen as emotionally driven process relying on innately specified
06 “interactional instinct”.
07 This genetically based tendency provides neural structures that entrain
children (acquiring their 1st language) to the faces, voices, and body
08 movements of their caregivers.
This innate attentional and motivational system drives children to pay
09
attention to the language interaction and to acquire the ambient
10 language by general learning mechanisms. So, all biological normal
children acquire language through this brain mechanism.
Friday, October 15, 2021 4
However, 2nd language acquisition by older adolescents and adults no longer has
recourse to this mechanism, and therefore success in second language learning is
extremely variable. Still, a learner with sufficient second language learning aptitude
may develop affiliative bonds with language speakers that are sufficiently strong to
recapitulate the attentional and motivational power of first language acquisition.
Based on some research, Lee et al. have proposed a model of social affiliation that
may subserve the interactional instinct. It is divided into two parts:
1. An appetitive component.
2. A consummatory phase (affiliative phase).
The biology underlying consummation develops first and involves the expression of
endogenous opiates during child-caregiver interaction. These opiates provide the
child and the adult feelings of calmness, attachment, and affiliation with each other.
This process, as argued, entrains the child's attentional mechanisms to the caregivers
and serves as a hardwired motivational mechanism that ensures socialization in
general and language acquisition in particular.
Then, the child, in encountering conspecifics more distal than immediate caregivers,
responds to such affiliative stimuli as friendly vocalizations, gestures, smiles, and
touch with positive appraisals and a desire to approach.
The appraisals are communicated via the medial orbital cortex with contextual
information relating to the affiliative stimuli coming from the hippocampus and the
basolateral and extended amygdala. With the aid of dopamine the child’s brain
forms affiliative memories that may be retrieved and acted upon.
 01 Second Language Acquisition
02 Kaplan (2019) begins his investigation of the neurobiology underlying
motivation in 2nd language acquisition. He begins with the notion of
Applied Linguistics

03
stimulus appraisal. He demonstrated how motivations could be reduced
04 to appraisal dimensions, which then are related to neural structures.
05

06

07
Neural
08 appraisal motivation
structures
09

10

Friday, October 15, 2021 7

Learners make evaluations of stimulus situations occurring along several parameters
(Five categories of stimulus appraisal): novelty, pleasantness, goal or need
significance, coping potential, and self- and social image.
1. Novelty: determines whether the stimulus is new or experienced previously. It
can be evaluated as positive or negative.
2. Pleasantness: the stimulus might be seen as novel and interesting or as unusual.
3. Goal/need: determines whether the stimulus is conducive to goals or satisfies
needs.
4. Coping potential: whether or not he/she is capable of coping with the physical
or psychological consequences in a situation.
5. Self and social image: determines how engaging the stimulus situation would
affect the individual’s ideal self or how it would affect the evaluation of the
individual by significant others.
Many studies explored these five categories; some of these studies used questionnaires
on all of the five categories to assess motivation in SLA, others investigated
pleasantness, etc.
At present, continued research is extending this model to areas such as the insular
cortex and specific components of the autonomic nervous system such as the vagus
nerve, to additional areas of the prefrontal cortex (medial and lateral) and to the
temporal poles.
Motivation, of course, is of no use unless it leads to action. Therefore, in order to
understand the neurobiology that would subserve learners' efforts to acquire a language
he or she is motivated to learn, we need to study the neurobiology underlying the
transformation of motivation and behavior. For example, when animals search for
food, the resulting appraisals generate signals that pass from amygdala and orbital
frontal cortex to the ventral striatum in the basal ganglia and then to cortical and
subcortical motor system and finally to the spinal cord. This system might be used to
achieve 2nd language acquisition.
Unlike first language acquisition, the process in acquiring second language is reversed;
the affiliative comes first:
The learner appraises one or more speakers of the target language positively and makes
efforts in the appetitive phase to affiliate with them. This affiliative goal is based upon
a positive appraisal of the target language speaker in terms of novelty, pleasantness,
coping potential, and self- social image.
The individual makes efforts to come into physical proximity with the valued other,
and as it pursues that goal, when it contacts stimuli that are predictive of success, the
neurotransmitter, dopamine, is released into the ventral and dorsal striatum.
Successful affiliation leads to calmness, engagement, and attachment, because the
hypothalamus releases opiates which is a reward similar to heroin and morphine.
What happens when the child grows up to adulthood?

As the child passes into adulthood changes take place in the hermoepeptide. Dopamine
levels increase until the onset of puberty and then gradually reduce throughout life.
The abundance of dopamine, opiates, oxytocin, and vasopressin in the child's brain
supports interaction with conspecifics and guarantees primary language acquisition.
 01 Willingness to Communicate
02 There comes a point in any affiliative contact when a 2nd language
learner has to make a decision about whether or not to talk.
Applied Linguistics

03
This means that although a person may genuinely desire to learn the L2,
04 and may even have an integrative motivation, he or she may, in certain
situations (and these could be frequent), decide not to engage in verbal
05 interaction in the L2.
06 What happens here can be described in terms of the “polyvagal theory”.
The neurobiology of what might be going on in that moment is
07 suggested by the social engagement system.
08

09

10

Friday, October 15, 2021 12

It is argued that becoming socially engaged requires the organism to reach an appraisal
that such engagement would be safe. This is accomplished when the face recognition
areas of the brain judge the facial expression of the conspecific as friendly, welcoming,
and sympathetic, when the learner's auditory perception appraises the conspecific's
vocalizations as welcoming and comforting, and when the conspecifics body
movements indicate friendliness and receptiveness.
Under these conditions, the learner's ventral vagal complex operates to release
oxytocin in the bloodstream and then various cranial nerves to prepare the facial and
head muscles, the larynx and pharynx, the muscles of the middle ear, and the heart and
lungs for social engagement.
 01 From Declarative to Procedural Skill
02 One of the most important questions in SLA
research is whether declarative knowledge can
Applied Linguistics

03
become procedural skill. In another wards, can
04 hippocampus get information to the basal
ganglia?
05 Research has proved the possibility of such an
06 action:
The appraisal areas of the brain project to the
07 hippocampus that has access to declarative
08
knowledge about the target language. The
hippocampus projects to the shell of the nucleus
09 accumbens. Information is transmitted to the
motor cortex, then to the thalamus which in
10 turn transmit it to the dorsal basal ganglia.
Friday, October 15, 2021 14
This transition requires motivation generated by the amygdala, the orbital frontal
cortex, and the dopamine.
Such conceptual/theoretical approaches on neurobiology in language acquisition has
some advantages. Knowledge about the brain is developing exponentially. Current
technology (e.g., neuroimaging) could test the model in minor ways, but the
technology is expensive and access is limited.
 01
Language Use: Pragmatics
02

Patients with ventromedial prefrontal damage have severe difficulties in

Applied Linguistics

03
personal and social reasoning. Medical cases such as Phineas Gage
04 showed that insults to the prefrontal cortex left individuals with
05 knowledge of social rules but an inability to implement them. The
patients were said to have normal language. This means that such
06 patients would likely have problems in appropriately choosing what to
say, when to say it, how to say it, and to whom to say it.
07

08

09

10

Friday, October 15, 2021 16

This transition requires motivation generated by the amygdala, the orbital frontal
cortex, and the dopamine.
Such conceptual/theoretical approaches on neurobiology in language acquisition has
some advantages. Knowledge about the brain is developing exponentially. Current
technology (e.g., neuroimaging) could test the model in minor ways, but the
technology is expensive and access is limited.
A team of five students led by an anthropologist and a neurologist conducted an
expirement on patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a disease that leads to
progressive degeneration of the frontal lobe and the temporal lobes. They began doing
research in the patients' homes and during daily activities such as shopping and visits
to the doctor. As was expected, pragmatic deficits were evidenced—some of them
quite obvious and others more subtle.
Many other studies were done on patients with FTD and What seems to emerge from
these studies is that FTD patients' difficulties with appropriate behavior, theory of
mind, self-awareness, and egocentricity all contribute to pragmatic distortions in their
verbal interaction with others. These results indicate that prefrontal cortex and the
anterior temporal lobes are part of the neural substrate for language. This finding is
consonant with the speculation previously articulated that the orbitofrontal cortex is
integral in stimulus appraisal and, therefore, in motivation for learning.
 01
Language Use: Reading
02

A particularly good example of an effort to understand that neural

Applied Linguistics

03
underpinnings of a language process is to consider an the biology of
04 reading.
05 Reading is not a skill for which the brain evolved. It is an enterprise in
which each reader has to co-opt brain regions and systems that have
06 evolved other purposes; language acquisition colonizes neural systems
that have evolved for other sensory and motor processes.
07
This means that the brain has the ability to reuse neural tissue for any
08 higher cognitive processes.

09

10

Friday, October 15, 2021 19

This perspective on the neurobiology of language in which brain mechanisms designed
for other purposes is, of course, a radical departure from the traditional view of
language as governed by innate domain-specific linguistic representations of a
universal grammar.
 01
Why is Neuroimaging So Attractive?
02

In recent years, the availability of neuroimaging technology (ERP,

Applied Linguistics

03
FMRI, etc.) has allowed some neurobiological investigation of SLA,
04 multilingual processing, and bilingualism in general.
05
However, many researchers were disappointed by the result of such
06 investigation. There exists the possibility that applied linguists may
dismiss the neurobiology of language by implicitly equating
07
neuroimaging with neurobiology; in other words, because of the
08 limitations of neuroimaging, some researchers may think applied
linguists should stick to the examination of the SLA at the psychological
09 and behavioral levels only.
10

Friday, October 15, 2021 21

Kaplan argues that the solution is more knowledge about neurobiology. For example,
an fMRI study of SLA may indicate activity in a brain area during certain aspects of
second language processing. This result provides locational information about such
processing. If this research were complemented with an ERP study, one would also
have information about the temporal duration of that activation. But then what does an
applied linguist who doesn't know neuroanatomy or neurophysiology do with such
information?
However, it is important for applied linguists to place hope on neuroscience, because
there are enormous difficulties that are presented by trying to infer mechanism from
behavior.
A further reason for incorporating a neurological perspective to the study of 2nd
language acquisition is that all we will have are inferences about mental mechanisms
based on behavior and neuroimaging. Applied linguistics researchers interested in
processing might have to take the processors seriously; a brainless approach will
sooner or later hit a wall.
The most successful sciences appear to be those in which the phenomena of interest
are easily indexicalized. If a phenomenon can be observed with the naked eye or with
some visual prosthesis (e.g., telescope, microscope), and if words can unambiguously
refer to the phenomenon, then facts can be accrued and some degree of certainty can
be attained. Therefore, in science one is always looking for indexicalization.
The concept of indexicalization “seeing” is used in many sciences such as physics,
astronomy, as well as in engineering when we generate words to refer unambiguously
to the various components of any piece of technology. It is possible to understand
completely how some technological instrument operates. We make it from visible
parts, and we observe its visible processes, and therefore, the technology is thoroughly
indexicalized, and we can say we know it; we understand it.
However, in the social sciences it is very difficult to get clear indexicalization;
frustration with this fact, and implicit comparisons of social scientific endeavors with
those of engineering frequently leave us feeling that the enterprises of sociology,
anthropology, and psychology are either less deserving of the label science or that they
must be done more rigorously so that they can behave like the sciences and
technologies.
Accordingly, neuroimaging is seen as so attractive because it allows us to see
cognition, to verify with our eyes the neural basis of the phenomenon we are
interested in. However, FMRI images must undergo several transformation to provide
even limited locational information. “Seeing” is such a valued source of information
for humans that, among nonneuroscientists, the idea of getting brain images of the
phenomena you're interested in becomes irresistible.
 01
Problem of Words: Cognitive Ontology
02

A major problem in the study of the brain is matching psychological

Applied Linguistics

03
categories to neural regions and neural circuits. This is due to the fact
04 that a single neural area can subserve many psychological functions, and
05 many neural regions can be part of the substrate for a single
psychological function.
06 This problem is exacerbated by the fact the psychology inferred function
from behaviour by designing an experiment that requires some behaviour
07
or action then observing the behaviour over many subjects and finally
08 assigning a mental label to that function. So, the label was symbolic not
indexical.
09 On the other hand, neuroanatomy is largely indexical: biological
structures are referred to by unambiguous terms. Therefore, with the
10
emergence of cognitive science, there was a problem in connecting the
Friday, October 15, 2021
symbolic terms with the indexical anatomical entities. 25
The attempt was to map the psychological notion of attention onto some physical entity
in the brain. However, other areas are also active when an animal attempts to hold
information about a stimulus that is no longer present. The brain's neurons active under
these conditions are called working memory neurons. So, information in current use
(working memory) can be considered as attended to.

This issue has been identified in the biological literature as the problem of cognitive
ontology, and the question posed is, “How does the cognitive ontology of psychology
map on to neurobiology?”
It is argued that we should be able to predict a neural structure from psychological
function, and we should also be able to predict psychological function from neural
structure.
Therefore, “different investigators assigned different labels to the same area”. A
research by Price and Friston, 2005 was set to solve such a problem in that they
mapped psychological function to anatomy. Their research on posterior lateral fusiform
PLF assigned a number of cognitive processes to that region. They concluded that a
particular psychological function may emerge depending on what other neural areas
are coactivated with, and/or have input to, the region of interest.
On the other hand, Poldrack (2006) confronts the cognitive ontology problem when
investigating the process of reverse inference, in which cognitive processes are
inferred from the activation of particular brain regions. He observes that the cognitive
ontology of the neuroimaging databases is rather uneven (indicating such very broad
categories as attention, language, memory, music, reasoning, soma, space, and
time), and therefore, the database ontology provides poor fits with the processes as
described in cognitive psychology.
Therefore, a serious problem that applied linguists face when they try to match terms
for processes in language acquisition and use to regions and circuits in the brain is that
these terms—coming from psychology, psycholinguistics, and cognitive science—may
not fit the structure of the brain.
There are a couple of possible outcomes to this dilemma:
1. First, it may be the case that as we learn more about the brain and develop
technology that allows us to image neurocircuitry (not simply brain regions), we
may find a more satisfying fit between psychological constructs and neural
structure.
2. Second, in very many instances, do not correspond to the labels we have given to
psychological processes derived from observations of behavior. A possible solution
could be to remain with a psychological label
 01
To What Aspects of Language Should Neurobiology
02 Be Responsible?
Applied Linguistics

03

04
This question relates the biology of language to the evolution of
05 language. If we want to understand the basic human capacity for
language, we have to consider language as it may have existed during
06
the environment of evolutionary adaptation.
07

08

09

10

Friday, October 15, 2021 29

It is generally accepted that language is acquired without overt instruction. On the
other hand, literacy skills are usually learned through explicit instruction in school.
Therefore, reading and writing may be things that the brain can do, but not what it
would do spontaneously, naturally, and without pedagogical intervention.
It seems that language, as it was evolved, would be a spontaneous conversational
interaction among illiterates, particularly those who have had little or no exposure to
the oral language of literates.
It is argued that a neurobiology of language might be best seen as responsible to
ordinary conversational interaction. Of course, speakers who have not had schooling
would be the best source of relevant data or any informal, natural conversational
interaction among speakers.
However, such data indicate that language may be very different from what linguists
have supposed.
For example, in ordinary English conversation, subjects, verbs, and objects do not
have to be expressed if they are recoverable from the linguistic or situational contexts.
This forces us to question the very nature of grammar that the brain processes.
If we want to understand the biological basis of language, we must conceive of a
sentence in evolutionary terms—in other words, as it existed prior to the development
of writing.
Prior to the emergence of writing, manuscripts lacked spaces between words.
Furthermore, the ancient and medieval grammarians were concerned with meaning
units and logical units, not with syntactic units. Latin was also taught without reference
to sentence, not because sentence was being ignored, but rather because the concept of
sentence did not yet exist.
This evidence seems to indicate that sentences are, in fact, units of written language,
and therefore neurobiological studies of their processing may tell us very little about
the human language faculty as it emerged during the environment of evolutionary
adaptation.
 Conclusion
• It is concluded that applied linguists who study the neurobiology of language have to
become interested in the brain qua brain. They have to know what is not understood
about the brain, and they have to enjoy working in that vacuum.
For example, current investigation of the neural substrate shows little evidence of
anything that might be the basis for universal grammar. But there is always the
possibility that new technology that allows exploration of the brain with finer
resolution may find the biological basis for innate representations of grammatical
knowledge.
• The brain is not a machine. It is the product of slow biological change, not the
product of intelligent engineering.
• Applied linguists have a role not only in discovering the neural basis for language
and use, but also in discovering the nature of the brain itself.
 Hajir Mahmood Ibrahim
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