Re[2]: "Learning" Language

[Joyce Flaherty <flahertj -at- SMTPGW -dot- LIEBERT -dot- COM>]

     RE: hardwired

     Arlen and Karen Mayer and others debating the Hardwired thread

     ...current research suggests those rules indeed ARE hardwired into our
     brains as our the speech sounds of every language on earth.  As we get
     older, we learn which sounds belong in our language and lose the rest.

     ===================

     A young man who suffered from multiple seizures a day chose to take
     the risk involved with brain surgery to have his epileptic tissue
     removed.  I watched the brain surgery  Most of the procedure involved
     isolating the damaged tissue.  The doctors used instruments similar
     to push pins to identify areas of the brain.  Of course, speech was
     one area.  The doctor made a point of clarifying that the young man
     spoke only one language, and so there was only one area of the brain
     dedicated to this function.  He said while we learn a foreign
     language, the same area of the brain controls our speech.  HOWEVER,
     when we begin to think in the foreign language, another part of the
     brain begins to take over this function.  He pointed out that a
     bilingual person could have brain surgery (for whatever reason) and
     come out of the surgery speaking only one language.  Fascinating!

     So, although the hardwiredness (like that word?) associated with our
     speech doesn't sound to me like a genetic thing, it most assuredly
     does sound like an acquired thing which the medical community does not
     debate.

     The fact that a newborn makes all the sounds of all the languages we
     speak has nothing to do with genetics and everything to do with our
     physical makeup.  I suppose you could always argue that our physical
     makeup is a function of genetics, but you get the idea.  Anyway,
     that's how I remember a prof explaining it to us a few thousand years
     ago.

     joyce flaherty