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Psycholinguistics/Syntax in the Brain

Introduction
This text book chapter will focus on discovering where syntax is localized within the human brain. When taking a first year Psychology course, most people learn about Broca's area and the type of aphasia associated. However, syntax is a complicated subject and recent studies have shown that syntax is not solely situated within Broca's area. Instead it appears that syntax has many various properties and uses different areas throughout the brain to process different aspects of syntax, and by harnessing the different regions in your brain it is able to conduct the exhaustive task of decoding syntax.

This chapter will lead you through the history of how syntax was localized within the brain, as well as provide information about how these older views have been replaced through new neuroimaging technology that is now available. Models of syntactic processing will also be discussed.

Franz Joseph Gall
In the 19th century, Franz Joseph Gall proposed the "only true science of mind": phrenology. Phrenology was composed of basic tenents, such as "the brain is the organ of the mind", etc. Gall believed that the mind was separated into individual faculties, and that these faculties had to be separated from one another within the brain. Interestingly Gall believed that the size of the brain was equivalent to power. Gall also believed that the shape of the brain was determined by the development of the separate mental faculties. Since the skull formed its shape based on the shape of the brain, Gall theorized that the surface of the skull could be read as a way to measure psychological tendencies and aptitudes.

Thus a tradition was born within the 19th century that by examining the skull of an individual, you could discover their particular intellectual aptitudes and traits. If an individual had a prominent ridge in the forehead this indicated that they would exhibit benevolent behaviour. Many phrenologists however only looked for subjects that confirmed their hypotheses, and ignored those who contradicted them. Sometimes counter-evidence was explained away so that perhaps someone who did have a large benevolent organ may have other organs that counteracted the organ.

It wasn't until the 1860's when another scientist demonstrated evidence that the popular science of phrenology may be wrong.

Paul Broca
In the 1860’s a French surgeon laid the foundation of cognitive neuroscience and modern neuropsychology with the discovery of an individual (Leborgne) suffering from neurological problems who could no longer respond to questions or produce any type of speech. After the death of Leborgne, Broca performed an autopsy and discovered a lesion on the left frontal lobe. A few months after the discovery of Leborgne, a new patient, Lelong, came to Broca and he had a stroke earlier in the year and also suffered a neurological ailment but unlike Leborgne he was able to produce speech. After an autopsy, Broca discovered that Lelong also had a lesion on the left frontal lobe.The region that Broca identified is now known as Broca’s area, and the neurological problems that come from a disturbance within Broca’s area are typically known as Broca’s aphasia.

Paul Broca was one of the first scientists to conclusively demonstrate that different brain areas can specify a function. This was in contrast to phrenologists who claimed that brain areas were specific to faculties, but never showed any real data that conclusively proved their claims. Lelong and Leborgne both had lesions within the left frontal lobe but Lelong was able to still communicate unlike Leborgne. This difference helped Broca demonstrate that lesions needed to be very specific in location in order to affect speech production.

Carl Wernicke
A few years after Broca’s discovery, Carl Wernicke had a patient who suffered from a stroke in 1873. Wernicke’s patient was able to speak, and while his hearing was not impaired he was unable to understand other people who spoke to him. After the patient passed, Wernicke performed an autopsy and examined the brain. Wernicke discovered a lesion in the left hemisphere of the brain, on the rear temporal/parietal region and concluded that this region was involved in speech comprehension. In Wernicke’s aphasics, it has been observed that they are capable of producing sentences with correct syntax, which suggests that certain brain regions are responsible for syntax processing. Wernicke's discovery contributed to the idea that areas within the brain perform specific functions since he discovered an aphasiac separate from Broca's aphasiacs that had a lesion within the left temporal/parietal lobe.

Neuropsychology
People who suffer from aphasia typically have trouble with either forming speech or understanding speech. There are two different categories of aphasia: non-fluent and fluent aphasia. People who suffer damage to the left frontal lobe typically suffer from non-fluent aphasia (Broca’s aphasia). Symptoms include problems with articulation, repetition of words, speech production, speech comprehension, fluency, and problems with finding appropriate words. People who suffer Broca's aphasia typically speak in short phrases that make sense but take great difficulty to product. Some patients suffer from more severe forms of the disorder in that they are only able to articulate words or phrases that are always repeated whenever they try to speak, as in the case of Leborgne who could only ever say “tan”. However, people with Broca's aphasia are able to understand others and thus are aware of their own mistakes. People with Broca's aphasia typically also suffer from weakness on their right side of their body. Sometimes they may be paralyzed and this is because the frontal lobe also controls motor movements.

Another type of non-fluent aphasia is global aphasia. Global aphasia is a result of extensive damage in the language centres of the brain. People who suffer from global aphasia have severe difficulties with speech and comprehension.

Typically damage to the left temporal lobe causes Wernicke's aphasia which is a fluent aphasia. However damage to the right temporal lobe can also sometimes result in Wernicke's aphasia. People who suffer from Wernicke's aphasia tend to speak in dragged out sentences that have no meaning, sometimes made up words, and sometimes unnecessary words are used as well. It's often difficult to understand what someone with Wernicke's aphasia is trying to say, and people with Wernicke's aphasia have difficultly understanding other people as they are unaware that make mistakes.

Separating Syntax from Semantics
After Broca and Wernicke's discoveries and as technology advanced, new techniques were used to try and localize the exact regions that were critical for syntax processing. Through Event-Related Brain Potentials (ERPs), MRI’s, fMRI’s, and MEG scans researchers have been working diligently to localize these regions.

Researchers began to examine syntax and semantics into further detail. Evidence suggested that there was a distinct difference between semantic and syntactic processing. A study by Freedman and Forster (1985) who set out to study the processing effects on ungrammatical violations. They showed that there were different processing systems involved in syntax processing (i.e. gender information, word category information, etc). After this study came out Neville et al (1991) set out to discover whether syntactic processing was separate from other aspects of language processing through the use of ERP measurements. At this point in time, the only ERP measurement found from language studies was an N400 (a centro-parietal negativity within the brain that occurred around 400 msec) that was reported to be involved in semantic processing. While some studies had shown that a later P600 (a late centro-parietal positivity that occurred around 600 msec) was observed during syntactic measurements, it had not yet been conclusively shown to be related to syntax. Neville et al (1991) formed their study to include sentences that were semantically violated but with proper syntax, or with violated syntax and proper semantics. They set up their experiment in such a way so that the N400 associated with semantics could be seen as well as any other distinct ERP patterns that would perhaps be involved in syntax. They discovered that when a sentence had deviant syntax ERP measurements were recorded that were separate from the N400. These ERP measurements were an N125 (an anterior left hemisphere negativity at 125 msec), which seemed to be involved in detecting syntactic violations, and a P250 (left hemisphere positivity around 250 msec). None of the measurements associated with syntax were observed with a N400. Neville et al (1991) showed through ERP that syntax processing was separate from semantic processing.

Localization of Syntax
Neville et al (1991) had shown through ERP measurements that there were ERP measurements associated with syntax, and that these measurements were separate from semantic processing. Friederici et al (2003) set out to demonstrate that semantic processing at the sentence level, and syntactic information processing involved different systems through ERP measurements. They also found that semantic processing activates a centro-parietal negativity that occurs approximately around 400 ms (N400) after being shown a sentence. This potential is capable of varying due to the different variations in semantic processing, such as lexical-semantic information, lexical status, pragmatic information, and thematic information. However when Friederici et al (2003) compared the N400 with syntactic processing ERP measurements, syntactic processing has an early and late ERP component (left anterior negativity; ELAN) that is between 140-400 ms. A late centro-parietal positivity is also associated with syntactic processing after 600 ms (P600). Friederici et al (2003) proposed that these two ERP components associated with syntactic processing are related to two different syntactic processes: an initial process that is involved in automatically structure-building sentences, and a later process which is involved in controlling the reanalysis and repair of syntax.

After concluding that syntax and semantics were separate from one another, Friederici et al (2003) used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to try and localize the areas involved. fMRI analysis localized the N400 ERP from semantic processing within the brain: the hippocampus may be involved, cortical areas within the superior temporal sulcus, and the left auditory cortex. When using fMRI to analyze the ELAN involved in syntactic processing it was found that the ELAN was localized within the anterior temporal and inferior frontal cortices in both hemispheres, but there was left hemisphere dominance. Friederici et al (2003) designed an experiment using anomalous sentences (abnormal sentences) in order to localize the regions involved in the P600. Friederici et al's (2003) study did identify that the left basal ganglia of the putamen was associated with the P600 potential. It was found to be involved in the later controlled syntactic processing rather than with the early structure building processes. This study did show that there was a difference between semantic and syntactic processing, as well showed the different regions within the brain associated with the two ERPs involved in syntactic processing. Latter studies found that in patients who had neuro-debilitating diseases like Parkinson's disease had a reduced P600 potential as a result of impaired basal ganglia.

Early researchers theorized that semantics and syntax involved in Wernicke's and Broca's area and thus they wanted to localize semantics and syntax processing onto these areas respectively. Technologies such as electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies revealed that there were inconsistencies with this theory. Grodzinsky and Friederici (2006) examined previous research results that used MEG, fMRI, and EEG technologies and attempted to localize syntactic processing using previous results.

Grodinzsky and Friederici found that the frontal operculum, which is in the left inferior frontal gyrus and is adjacent to the inferior region of Broca’s area, was involved in understanding phrase structures. They also found that the anterior superior temporal gyrus was involved in processing structure violations, and it appeared that it was recruited in order to identify mismatching between the incoming sentence and the expected syntactic structure of the sentence. MEG studies revealed that these two structures were involved in local phase structure building but it appeared that the largest activation came from the left anterior super temporal gyrus, while a smaller activation was seen in the inferior frontal cortex.

Grodzinsky and Friederici saw that when sentences had complex syntax, there was an activation with Broca’s area (Brodmann’s area 44, 45) and they concluded that this activation was due to an increase on the working memory. This was confirmed through electrophysiological data. When integrating syntactic information, the left posterior superior temporal gyrus became active. Grodzinsky and Friederici theorized that this region was most likely used to support the integration of syntactic and lexical information between the left and right posterior superior temporal gyrus. This was supported through ERP measurements, with the discovery of a late centro-parietal positivity that occurred 600 ms (P600) after being presented with information.

The most important thing that Grodzinsky and Friederici concluded was that syntax processing actually occurred within the left interior frontal gyrus (IFG) and not Broca's area. Not only is the IFG responsible for syntax processing but other subdivisions are involved in different stages of syntax processing. See areas in syntax processing for further information.

The Seat of Syntax?
Recent studies on aphasics have shown that while Broca’s area does seem to be associated with some aspects syntax processing, not all lesions are situated within Broca’s area. Dronkers et al (1994) performed an experiment that examined morphosyntactic processing (i.e. structure of sentences) in people who had lesions, and in people who did not have lesions. They found that when patients had a low score on morphosyntactic tests, they typically have lesions on the left anterior temporal lobe (Brodmann’s area 22) rather than in Broca’s area. Also some patients who did have damage within Broca’s area had no sign of a severe syntactic deficits. It seems that Broca’s aphasics are capable of understanding the syntax for certain structures, until complex sentences are used that involve complicated word orders.

These results suggest that while Broca’s area is likely to be involved in syntax, it may only be restricted to complex sentence structures instead of various types of syntactic processing. Other studies have shown that Broca’s aphasics may exhibit deficits in semantic processing as well, which is further suggestion that Broca’s area may not be solely involved in syntax processing. Different studies have utilized different neuroimaging techniques in order to compare and contrast different types of syntactic processes such as comparing complex sentences to simple, sentences to word lists, sentences with pseudowords compared to senseless sentences, and comparing sentences that have syntax violations to ones that do not. The following sections are based on a review paper by Kaan and Swaab.

Complex Sentences vs Simple Sentences
When comparing sentences with complex syntax to simpler sentences, the assumption is that simpler sentences will not have as much syntactic operations as complex sentences, and thus will not activate areas within the brain as much as complex sentences do (Kaan and Swaab, 2002). This assumption was tested by having subjects determine whether two sentences with different syntax had the same meaning, or if they had a separate meaning. It was found that there was enhanced activity in Broca’s area, more specifically with Brodmann’s area 44/45 in the left hemisphere. It was occasionally found that Brodmann’s area 6, 9, 21, 22, 23, 24,30, 31, 32, 39, and 47 would activate. Complex sentences consistently activated Brodmann’s area 44 and 45 but researchers were careful to ascertain that this did not mean that syntactic processing resided specifically within Broca’s area. This was because while these areas did activate while analyzing sentences with complex syntax there was another factor at play that may explain the activation of these regions: memory load. It appears that Broca’s area is activated when sentences contain ambigious words which supports the idea that Broca’s area is necessary for processing and memory for syntax.

Sentences vs Word Lists
Further evidence demonstrates the concept that Broca’s area is involved in processing load by the way of contrasting sentences to word lists. After research compared complex sentences to simple sentences a problem arose: how do you tease out which activations occur specifically for syntax since both sentences use syntax? It was assumed that if researchers contrasted a sentence to a word list that they would be able to determine specific areas within the brain that were activated during syntax processing versus normal word activation. When comparing sentences that contained a syntactic structure to unrelated words in a list with no syntactic structure, it was found that Broca’s area was not significantly activated. The sentences used were not complex which is most likely why Broca’s area was not activated. Instead it was found that Brodmann’s area 38 would activate bilaterally, and it has been found that this area corresponds to the region responsible for patients who had morphosyntactic problems (see Dronkers et al, 1994). This implies that Broca’s area is involved in processing load rather than actual syntactic processing. These tests were not optimal for proving whether Broca's area was activated. This was because researchers were unclear that activation in Broca's area may be due to differences in semantic operations and syntactic structure between sentences and word lists (i.e. a sentence may have different semantic operations than word lists). Researchers reduced semantic processing through the use of a new test: pseudoword sentences vs senseless sentences.

Pseudoword Sentences vs Senseless Sentences
In order to reduce semantic processing, pseudowords and senseless sentences were used. Pseudoword sentences, also known as “Jabberwocky” words, are sentences that are grammatically correct but verbs, adjectives, and nouns are replaced by pseudowords. These pseudowords are phonologically and orthographically correct for the language being examined, but they lack meaning. Senseless sentences consisted of using existing words in grammatically correct sentences that made no sense. The concept of using Jabberwocky sentences and senseless sentences was that they may activate regions within the brain more than a normal sentence because they lacked semantic cues. The result of the experiment showed that Brodmann’s area 22, 38, 41, and 42 activated in Jabberwocky sentences. It was found that a medial area of Broca’s area was activated through the use of Jabberwocky sentences compared to normal sentences, lists of pseudowords, and lists of real words. No frontal activation was found though so it was believed that the activation seen in Friederici et al (2000) study was perhaps due to task demands and not a result of syntactic processing.

Sentences with Syntactic Violations vs Sentences without Syntactic Violations
The last process to determine whether or not syntactic processing was situated within Broca’s area involved studying sentences that contained syntactic violations to correct sentences (i.e. flowers can grew vs flowers can grow) or sentences that contained a different type of violation (i.e. flowers can run). It was believed that when sentences violated syntax, areas involved in syntactic processing would become activated because the normal processing operations would become disrupted. It was found that sentences with syntactic violation did not typically activate Broca’s area but instead would activate superior frontal activity. Areas that were typically involved in semantic violations (Brodmann’s area 6, and 8) were activated but it was believed this may be because syntactic violations would have a consequence for the interpretation of sentences, thus activating regions involved in semantics. This was controlled for through the use of Jabberwocky sentences in other study, and it was found that in these cases Brodmann’s area 44 (right hemisphere) and 45 (left hemisphere) would activate. However it was found that Brodmann’s area 44 would activate for conditions that involved error detection which suggested that this region was not involved in just syntactic processing.

Different Syntactic Processing Systems
When it comes to syntax there are several different categories of syntax that have separate processing systems. These different categories associated with syntactic processing are: word category information, gender information, and verb argument structure.

Studies involving ERP measurements have shown that word category information processing is processed before other syntactic information like gender information. Hahne and Friederici performed an experiment that involved participants listening to sentences that may be semantically incorrect, syntactically correct, syntactically incorrect, or both. They found that when a word category violation has been made the brain processes this violation anteriorly in the left hemisphere around 150-200ms. However, when a gender information syntactic violation has been made, this is processed later (at 300-400 ms) within the same region.

After ERP measurements demonstrated that different aspects of syntactic processing are processed separately, Heim et al attempted to localize these processing systems within the brain.

Word Category Information Processing vs Gender Information Processing
Heim, Optiz, and Friederici (2003) performed an experiment where they used fMRI scans to show that there was a difference in syntactic processing within Brodmann's area 44. (BA 44) They designed an experiment in which subjects had to perform different decision tasks (i.e. determine whether the gender of a noun was masculine or neuter). The reaction time of the decision was measured via pressing a button. Since fMRI was being used, Heim et al were able to localize the different decision making tasks to distinct areas in the brain. They discovered that word category information and gender information were processed in separate regions of BA 44. Heim et al also discovered that different regions of Broca’s area were activated during specific syntactic tasks such as activation in BA 45 for gender information, and activation within BA 47 for word category information. Both of these regions are known through various research to be involved in semantic processing.

Areas Within the Brain that are Involved in Syntax Processing
The IFG is a region of the brain which is found to be the most important aspect within a syntactic processing neural net. The IFG is responsible for parsing. It has been postulated that when it comes to syntactic knowledge, the left anterior brain appears to be involved in this type of processing. Friederici et al (2003) proposed that when it comes to syntactic processing there are two systems involved: an automatized initial process that is involved in the structure-building process, as well as a second system that kicks in later for a controlled process of syntactic repair and reanalysis.

Neuroimaging techniques have shown that Brodmann’s area (BA) 44 (which is the IFG) is responsible for syntactic processing. Friederici, Mayer, and von Cramon (2000) performed an experiment using event-related fMRI to study processing of single words. The purpose of using single words (that varied in their syntactic and semantic status) was to determine which tasks activated what areas. They discovered that syntax processing within BA 44 can be broken down into other components. They found that the inferior portion of BA 44 is actually responsible for processing local structure building and word category information while the mid portion of BA 44 is involved in syntactic memory.

Other areas involved in syntax processing are the cingulate gyrus, the left superior frontal gyrus, the left caudate nucleus, the middle and superior temporal lobes, the anterior temporal lobe, the posterior temporal area, and the right hemisphere of the brain. White matter pathways that seem to be involved are the dorsal pathways: the arcuate fasciculus and the dorsal pathway that runs from the superior longitudinal fasciculus to the posterior temporal lobe. When it comes to human language, it seems as the though the latter white matter pathway is particularly important.

Kaan and Swaab's Model of Syntax Processing
One model proposed by Kaan and Swaab (2002) is that different regions within the brain are linked together to form a network for syntactic processing. These regions are the middle and superior temporal lobes which may be responsible for activating semantic, phonological, and syntactic information as well as involved in lexical processing. The anterior temporal lobe may be responsible for encoding information to be used at a later point, or in combining the activated information from other regions within the brain. Broca’s area is likely to be responsible for storing large amounts of information that is non-integrated when the sentences become more complex, a syntactic working memory. Broca’s area may also activate the posterior and middle temporal areas to feed back lexical information, or may be involved in recruiting the visual working memory as a way to store information. The right hemisphere of the brain is also activated during syntactic processing in order to process tone, decipher ambiguity, syntactic violations, and discourse processing.

Friederici's Model of Syntax Processing
Friederici in 2009 proposed a new model that involved the language areas of the brain (The superior temporal gyrus (STG), middle temporal gyrus (MTG), the IFG). Her model incorporated both gray and white matter as a way to explain language processing. Friederici included white matter in her model because the areas between the brain need a way to communicate between one another, and white matter fiber bundles do this through connections to adjacent and distant brain regions. Friederici believes that the arcuate fasciculus is the white matter pathway between the IFG and the STG, but research remains inconclusive. Through fMRI and other imaging studies, other white matter pathways have been identified such as a dorsal pathway that runs from BA 44 via the superior longitudinal fasciculus to the posterior temporal lobe. This pathway also contains connections to BA 40, the lateral middle temporal gyrus and superior temporal gyrus, as well as other ventral routes that connect to Broca’s area. Two ventral pathways also exist: the extreme capsule and unicinate fasciculus which connect to the anterior superior temporal gyrus. While her model focuses on how language was processed rather than just syntax, it provides valuable information that was previously unknown. The model does mention that when children are younger they should have problems with processing complex syntactic sentences. This is because the dorsal pathway that connects language areas is not yet fully myelinized within children. Evidence (behavioural and functional imaging) does support that the dorsal pathway for children is not fully myelinized and that this weak myelination may be responsible for deficits in syntactic processing.

Chapter Summary
Syntax processing arose out of Broca and Wernicke's discoveries which were the first stepping stones of real science that began to localize syntax within the brain. As technologies evolved and grew, the search for syntax began to as well. ERP's led researchers to the conclusion that syntax was a separate feature of language processing, and that it was different from semantic processing. The results of ERPs led scientists to other technologies like MEG and fMRI scans to try and pinpoint where in the brain syntax processing occurred. Scientists made the surprising study that what was classically called the seat of syntax (Broca's area) was actually not involved in syntax processing but instead was used for memory load when sentences became complex. As researchers designed and created new experiments, they began to tease the different faculties of syntactic processing apart from one another and realized that syntax processing was a complicated procedure that involved many different processing systems such as structure building, gender information, etc. All of these different processing systems localize to different regions with the brain, some of which are subdivided into further categories (i.e. the IFG) that are involved in syntax processing.

I hope that after reading this chapter you now have some idea as to what syntax is, how it works, and where in the brain syntax functions. Syntax seems like a simple process but when you delve into the nitty gritty details about where syntax actually functions in the brain and how it communicates to other aspects of language processing, you begin to realize the huge amount of power that syntax processing harnesses.

Crossword

Across
 * 1.	Who originally demonstrated that syntactic and semantic processing may be separate?
 * 3.	What ERP measurement is associated with syntax?
 * 6.	One of these technologies showed that syntax was not solely contained within Broca's area.
 * 12.	What scientists in 1985 determined that there were different systems involved in grammar processing (2 spaces)?
 * 13.	Which ERP measurement is associated with a syntactic violation?
 * 14.	One of these structures is associated with the P600 ERP measurement.
 * 15.	What category information is processed before gender category information?
 * 17.	What process is associated with the automatized initial processing of syntax (1 space)?
 * 18.	What pathway is believed to relay information between the traditional Broca's area and Wernicke's area (1 space)?

Down
 * 1.	Why would children have an issue with complex syntactic processing according to Friederici's model (1 space)?
 * 2.	Studies that focused on syntactic violations found activation in this area (2 spaces).
 * 3.	What is Broca's area now believed to be involved (1 space)?
 * 4.	These sentences were used to show that syntax can be intact even with non-sense words.
 * 5.	Friederici discovered that this portion of the brain was dually responsible for syntactic processing (2 spaces).
 * 7.	Kaan and Swaab (2009) proposed that the regions within the brain formed a ____ to process syntax.
 * 8.	What area is involved in basic syntactic processing (2 spaces)?
 * 9.	What process is associated with the second system of controlled processing (1 space)?
 * 10.	Which German scientist has done extensive research on syntax (last name)?
 * 11.	Who demonstrated that the brain could process syntax even when non-sensical words were used (2 spaces)?
 * 16.	Who originally discovered a type of aphasia that led to disordered speech?

Essay Questions

 * 1) Compare and contrast Kaan and Swaab's model of syntactic processing with Friederici's model of syntactic processing.
 * 2) What evidence originally suggested that syntax processing was not localized in Broca's area?
 * 3) What evidence suggested that syntactic processing and semantic processing were separate from one another?
 * 4) How did Broca's research coincide with the basic concepts of phrenology? How do recent findings fit with the concept of phrenology?
 * 5) How did people think language processing occurred in the 19th century? How did Broca and Wernicke's discoveries contribute to our idea of language processing? How do these old findings fit in with more modern science?
 * 6) What are the pros and cons of Kaan and Swaab's model of syntactic processing, as well as Friederici's model of syntactic processing?
 * 7) If you wanted to design an experiment to test for syntactic processing, how would you model this experiment? What results would you expect to find?

Piecing It Together

 * 1) If you suffered from a lesion that affected the area in your brain responsible for word memory load, what area(s) would be affected and what kind of deficits would you have?
 * 2) If you were to build a "house" out of syntactic processes, what "pieces" would you require and what order would you "lay them down" to complete your house?
 * 3) If you designed an experiment to test syntactic processing and you presented sentences in a subject-verb-object order what would you expect to happen? What do you think would happen if you switched the order?
 * 4) Construct a flow chart of syntax. For example, what information would be processed first and in what area of the brain? Continue until you've laid down the foundation of syntax processing in the brain.
 * 5) If you had to contribute to an artificial intelligence computer which was meant to store language if something happened to the human race, what aspects of language would you determine were important for syntax processing? How would you organize the different syntactic processes so that they could function approximately like they would within a human being? (Hint: Think about what areas you would need, and what processes need to build on one another.)
 * 6) What areas in the brain do you think are important for syntactic processing?
 * 7) It was believed by phrenologists that language occurred underneath the eye. According to phrenologists, what job would be best suited for a person with a protrusion beneath the eye?
 * 8) Based on what you have learnt from this chapter construct your own syntactic processing model.

Thinking Questions

 * (These are more just interesting things to think about or research on your own!)

 * 1) Syntactic rules vary across languages. Can these syntactic rules influence cultural differences? If so, provide an example.
 * 2) How do the syntactic processing systems interact with one another to create a fluid network? If so many regions of the brain are involved in processing, how is it so instantaneous?
 * 3) What kind of effects could a de-myelinizing diseases like multiple sclerosis have on syntactic processing?
 * 4) Is the methodology of syntax processing varied across languages, or is the processing system the same throughout all languages? What about for bilingual speakers?
 * 5) If you are bilingual (adult learner) and you suffer from a localized lesion that affects your language abilities, will both languages be affected? What if you learnt both languages as a child?
 * 6) Based on what you have learnt from this chapter how would the processing of long sentences be affected by a lesion within Broca's area?
 * 7) How would a phrenologist explain language development for children?
 * 8) Based on what you have learnt about syntax processing within the brain, how do you think it interfaces with semantic processing? Read Semantics in the Brain for more information.

title: Psycholinguistics/Syntax in the Brain


text:
User:Tayd

I am a theatre and neuroscience honours student at Dalhousie University. I will be writing weekly blog posts about the questions and ideas brought up in my third year psycholinguistics class.

Post 1: Language and Thought
One of the more interesting questions we were asked in class this week was "can we think without language?" Personally I would say that we can although it is a tough one to prove. I think language helps to organize our thoughts and it can definitely influence our thoughts but it does not determine them. This question made me think of an experiment mentioned in first year where witnesses to a car accident had a different estimate of the speed of the cars involved depending on the phrasing of the question. A witness would estimate a faster speed if they were asked: “how fast was it going when it crashed?” And a slower speed if asked: “how fast was it going when it came in contact with…?” This is a pretty clear example of the power of language over thought. We also talked about whether a person’s perception of colour is limited by the vocabulary for different colours available in their language. We talked about comparisons between the Dani people of New Guinea and English speakers. I think an interesting study to complement what we talked about would be to look at whether all Dani people categorize colours the same way as each other and whether all English speakers categorize colours the same as each other. I would say that the categorization between Dani people would vary and that the categorization between English speakers would be pretty consistent. This is because most English speakers have been taught how colours are categorized whereas it is a new experience for the Dani who have only two words for colour.

Post 2: Speech Perception
This week we began to discuss how we perceive speech, the phonetic effects topic made it much more clear why children make some of the errors they do when learning to speak and read. I particularly found prosody interesting especially the fact that it is localized in the right hemisphere which is opposite to the hemisphere for language. I wonder if there is a connection between the prosody and autism. Specifically because if you have a right hemisphere lesion it can affect your ability to perceive prosody which means they are unable to understand language meaning based on tone of voice. Autistic people also have difficulty reading people and I was just wondering if there was an anatomical connection.

Post 3: More on Speech Perception and a bit on Reading
This week we dove a little further into how we actually hear speech and into what components of speech we actually need to understand it. We talked a bit about voice recognition programs and how they can be implemented and what there limitations are. Interestingly, a friend of mine just got a new Blackberry and he has found that all his voice mails are converted into text messages. I wonder how this is accurately achieved since it would not be possible to train the voice recognition system to recognize the voices of all callers. To my knowledge though it is accurate. I tried unsuccessfully to find a study that looked at the phenomena of increased visual acuity beyond the fovea in the direction of reading. Specifically, whether a person who is fluent in a language that reads left to right and and one that reads top to bottom would have the increased acuity both to the right and below their fovea. I imagine that they would assuming that it is an acquired phenomena. I suppose a way to answer that part of the question would be to look at illiterate people and see if they also demonstrate an increase in visual acuity past their fovea in the direction of reading.

Post 5: What is a Word?
We began this week with the question: "What do you know when you know a word?" Answers included meaning, pronunciation and grammatical context. We then moved on to discuss how the meaning of a word is not an absolute thing. Most words have different meanings depending on the context and also depending on the culture. What may have a perfectly obvious meaning in one culture may be total gibberish in another. In the article "What Euphemisms Tell Us about the Interpretation of Words," Beatrice Warren hypothesizes that there are two different meanings for a word. One is the dictionary definition which is the definition out of context and the second is the in context definition which is how the word is actually used. Our next topic which I found quite interesting was a bit of a discussion on whether or not euphemisms should be considered words. Examples were given from other languages where one word actually meant an entire sentence. The example being the word "manihlapinatapei" which is from the Fuengian language of Chili and means "a shared look of longing between parties who are both interested yes neither is willing to make the first move". This is interesting yes, but I personally do not think that euphemisms like "bought the farm" should be added to the dictionary. This is because it can also, in another context mean that someone actually purchased a farm which would make everything very confusing.

Post 6: Discourse
Our final lecture before the break was on discourse. Again we began the talk with the question of "what is discourse?" Answers were things like: a conversation with the goal of exchanging information. We talked about the important role of memory but also how memory can distort what we actually hear because we are automatically making inferences based on our own experience. An example would be the creation of false memories which was demonstrated by the Bugs Bunny at Disneyland experiment. When we are told something we will also automatically fill in missing information with things we already know. This was shown with the story about Donald and his 3rd wife who went to Mario's for dinner. Once shown the story we were asked a series of questions none of which had actually answers in the text however we were all able to answer them confidently based on what we all knew about what happens when you go to a restaurant.

When we were talking about "partial processing" we were shown several misleading questions to demonstrate that people do not process all the information they are given and therefore often do not notice a conflict. An example of these questions is "how many animals of each sort did Moses put on the arc?". We were told that people often don't notice the fact that Moses is referenced rather then Noah. In a lab setting this is evidence of incomplete processing however in the real world mistakes like this are often made and people are often too polite to correct the speaker because they know what is meant. In the lab therefore, how do we know that the results are not just a polite habit that is hard to shake off rather then evidence of incomplete processing? People are just so used to silently accounting for other people's mistakes in order to keep a conversation flowing that they might accidentally start doing the same thing in the lab?

Post 7: Language & Music
Language and Music are two things that are very important to all cultures. They can both be used for emotional communication and personal expression. I would like to say right off the bat that I disagree with the statement that was made on one of the slides which stated that Music: Specifically that the concept of musical versus unmusical is a cross culture phenomena. This holds up when you consider people within their own culture, however not when asking people to listen to music that is from a culture that is totally alien to their own. I say this only because I know I have heard "music" that I found hard to believe was considered music. In fact some aboriginal languages sound more like music then a language to a "western ear". I wonder if all those studies that were presented in class would have the same results if an unfamiliar culture's music were used instead of the subject's own. Western music revolves a lot around the idea of a melody but I know other types do not so I wonder if this would have any effect on the results?
 * can generate infinite number of melodies according to rules
 * Everyone can perceive these as music
 * “musical” vs. “unmusical” cross-culturally

I also found it really interesting that aphasics are sometimes able to sing what they want to say even though they cannot say it.

Post 8: Gesture
First off I wonder why research on gesture traditionally uses the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons. Is it because it was the cartoon everyone watched when gesture research took off?

I know I personally use gesture a lot when I speak. It helps me both add life to what I am saying and to help retrieve lost words. Often other people can guess what I am saying even if I cannot find the word I want through gesture. I've noticed that the public speakers who talk with their hands are usually the most interesting to watch, possibly because one is more involved if both the visual and auditory systems are actively engaged?

The fact that Italians use gesture more then us North Americans is also quite interesting. Is it because they are just more physically involved in what they are saying than we are? What other cultures are big gesture users? Another question is "do visual learners use gesture more?" I asked this question in class and it was pointed out that the visual learner category is more of an educational classification and is difficult to measure empirically. This makes sense, however if you performed a study that singled out individuals who use gesture a lot when speaking, one could then look and see if those same individuals also are visual or kinesthetic learners. It would make sense to me that they would be because gesture adds a physical component to speech.

Post 9: Development:
I found the case about Genie, the girl who was discovered at age 13 with no language because she was a victim of abuse to be particularly interesting. It is one of those cases that proves that language is something that must be taught and yet most of us learn it in the same fashion that we learn to walk, unconsciously. Even though Genie was eventually able to learn simple three word utterances, she never was able to grasp syntax. This suggests that it is not the ability to represent objects, actions or people etc. with words that is learned but the ability to organize those thoughts is? Genie's case shows us just how important talking to your kids for their development.

Post 10: Guest Lecture
This week we had a guest lecture from Linda Wozniak who works at the school of human communication disorders about aphasia. I found this lecture to be very interesting since it is the topic of my chapter. The videos she showed us were particularly interesting because no amount of reading will give you a full picture like seeing or working with an aphasic patient. I think it would have been fascinating to work with the couple where the husband had fluent aphasia and the wife was blind. Wernicke's aphasia is honestly quite hard to believe because it is had to imagine being in the position where you think you are speaking clearly but in fact you are not. I can imagine it is very difficult to accurately assess the extent to which such a patient comprehends information. If however the patient does understand speech, why can they not express themselves with gesture or other non language based methods of communication? To my knowledge, wernicke's aphasia affects a person's ability to produce language and can potentially not affect their comprehension. If this is the case, is it correct to think that the ability to use of gesture comes from the same part of the brain as speaking? Or is it that the patient just cannot transfer the information from an input to an output?

Post 11: Cochlear Implants
This debate was I felt the most interesting because it it a topic that is easily repeatable. I definitely feel that children with cochlear implants should be instructed in ASL as well as spoken language because if their implant were to fail they should not be left completely without means to communicate. In one of my other Neuroscience classes we discussed that fact that there are members of the deaf community who strongly oppose cochlear implants because they have the potential to destroy deaf culture. This is an interesting point because from the perspective of someone who can hear they seem like a wonderful invention and yet this case like many others are examples where scientific advancement is not always thought about from all angles.

Post 12: Thoughts on the Course
What I really liked about this course were the Wikiversity chapters and learning exercises because they are a great alternative to a final term paper. As an undergrad student you spend a lot of time working very very hard on lab assignments and essays that no one but your professor or TA will ever read. This is rather disheartening because after all that work all you have is a letter grade and a paper that you yourself will likely never look at again. With this assignment we got to be part of a bigger picture and got to create something that might be useful to someone we do not even know.

I also enjoyed the debates because they allowed one to focus and learn more about a topic that is somewhat controversial. However given the amount of work that goes into the debates, I think they should be worth more than 8% (plus 2% for peer evaluation)...

With respect to the lectures, it would have been nice to have some small assignments pertaining to the lectures because I personally find it difficult to motivate myself to pay attention to something if I do not need to remember it later. I know that in previous years such assignments were given which allowed the students to more fully understand the topics covered in lectures, Perhaps the blog posts could be cut? So what I am saying basically is that the Wikiversity assignments were great but I would have liked them to be worth less and other things like the debates and alternative assignments to be worth more. I know this would make more work for the students but I also think they would walk away with a more well rounded understanding of the course material.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:Tayd


text:
User talk:Tayd

 Hello Tayd, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. After you leave a comment on a talk page, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone follow the threads of the discussion. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. All users are expected to abide by our Privacy policy, Civility policy, and the Terms of Use while at Wikiversity.

To get started, you may

 * Take a guided tour and learn to edit.
 * Visit a (kind of) random project.
 * Browse Wikiversity, or visit a portal corresponding to your educational level: pre-school, primary, secondary, tertiary, non-formal education.
 * Find out about research activities on Wikiversity.

 * Read an introduction for teachers and find out how to write an educational resource for Wikiversity.
 * Give feedback about your initial observations
 * Discuss Wikiversity issues or ask questions at the colloquium.
 * Chat with other Wikiversitans on #wikiversity-en.

And don't forget to explore Wikiversity with the links to your left. Be bold to contribute and to experiment with the sandbox or your userpage, and see you around Wikiversity! If you're a twitter user, please follow http://twitter.com/Wikiversity. --Ottava Rima (talk) 22:35, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:Tayd


title: File:Crossprodfig3.svg


title: File:Crossprodfig4.svg


text:
User talk:Megan J Mac Donald

 Hello Megan J Mac Donald, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. After you leave a comment on a talk page, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone follow the threads of the discussion. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. All users are expected to abide by our Privacy policy, Civility policy, and the Terms of Use while at Wikiversity.

To get started, you may

 * Take a guided tour and learn to edit.
 * Visit a (kind of) random project.
 * Browse Wikiversity, or visit a portal corresponding to your educational level: pre-school, primary, secondary, tertiary, non-formal education.
 * Find out about research activities on Wikiversity.

 * Read an introduction for teachers and find out how to write an educational resource for Wikiversity.
 * Give feedback about your initial observations
 * Discuss Wikiversity issues or ask questions at the colloquium.
 * Chat with other Wikiversitans on #wikiversity-en.

And don't forget to explore Wikiversity with the links to your left. Be bold to contribute and to experiment with the sandbox or your userpage, and see you around Wikiversity! If you're a twitter user, please follow http://twitter.com/Wikiversity. --Ottava Rima (talk) 23:15, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:Megan J Mac Donald


title: File:Control.1.A.pdf


text: Reticulum cells

title: Reticulum cells


text:
User:Bengisug

Psycholinguistics

THE AUTHOR

Bengisu Gonul, third year psychology and french student at Dalhousie University.

JANUARY 10-14, 2011
INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

In the begining of our class lectures this week, we were primarily introduced to language and were asked to describe what language means to all of us. We all agreed that language is a way to communicate with people. It is productive and generative. New words enter our vocabulary everyday. Language is symbolic and have extensive rules that are agreed upon. Last but not least it is a significant part of our culture. These were some of the examples that we all came up with and I am certain there will be many more to consider as we explore the use of language and its depth. Moreover, we touched on many other facts about language including its complexity (levels of structure like sounds, words used to describe the phonology and morphology of language) as well as its history and major theories that made it so unique to human kind.

Out of all the information we acquired from those lectures, what interested me the most was the different components of language and their similarity with sign language. I learned that sign languages are equally complex as any other language and there is not any universal sign language therefore they differ from one country to another.

Coming from a background of three different languages, including my native language Turkish, followed by English and French, I can say that almost every word used in each of their vocabularies represent the same thing, only written in their individual language. For example, language is related to ideas and concepts formed in the mind, therefore conceptual. If we say horse in English in our minds, we have an image of a horse. This happens also both in French for 'cheval' and in Turkish for 'at'.

So my question is if there was a universal sign language created for every person to use in the world as an alternative, would this have benefited human kind, deaf or not, by giving them the ability to communicate easily with every nation's person?

We human beings are capable of thinking and language determines how we organize and shape our thoughts (how we think). What if language did not exist, would we not be trying to make signs by using our bodies to communicate, therefore, why can we not create a whole new alternative sign language by making up new words for each existing ideas and concepts, and by also adding some exceptional bits and parts of each language/culture of a nation? Using universal sign language might become limiting in expressing thoughts this way, but does the language we speak right now not have its own limitations anyways, where some ideas in one language can never be accurately articulated like explaining what a Keith's beer taste like?

January 17-21, 2011
LANGUAGE AND THE BRAIN

This week’s lectures got me interested in learning more about lateralization of the brain. We know that human brain is separated into two hemispheres, left and right, by longitudinal fissure. Despite their similarities, their function significantly differs when it comes to language. It is founded that core aspects of language like grammar and vocabulary are lateralized to the left hemisphere whereas prosodic language, organization of discourse, emotion and metaphor (having sense of humour, irony, and sarcasm, etc) are lateralized to the right hemisphere of the brain. Viewing all the functions of both left and right hemispheres we can say that if there was damage to our left hemisphere it would be much more severe, therefore it evidently has a dominant role in the brain. Sex and handedness are two functions associated with the hemispheric location of language functions in the brain. There tend to be differences in functional lateralization between those displaying right and left handedness, and males and females.

My question: Is hand dominance always directly related to brain dominance? The majority of people are found to be right handed in the world and since most of them use their left side hemisphere they have more advantage over others in acquiring and stimulating their language skills. So if the majority is right handed, what about the minority of people who are left handed or equally skilled with both hands called ‘ambidexterity’? Left handed people tend to have a more even distribution of language in both hemispheres, just like ambidexterity people I assume. In that case, what I wonder the most is if it is better to be right brained than left brained? I started doing some research to find out if hand preferences appear by nature or nurture and I found out that left and right handedness is determined inside the womb of mother by the nature which can be monitored by which hand is held close to mouth of a baby (fetus)(Roja, 2010) If we chose our dominant hand naturally while we were still inside our mother’s womb, could this mean the hemispheric dominance was then determined (controlled) by the preference of our hand? What about ambidexterity? Can we say that it is nurture rather than nature since there will always be a dominant hand chosen for each person even though they are able to use both of their hands equally throughout their development? I have been a left handed person ever since I was a baby. I have never tried to learn how to use my right hand and I find myself talented in learning many languages. So if we say that since you are born right handed, you will use your left hemisphere the most which will advantage you in language production and comprehension and if you were born left handed, you will use your right hemisphere more even though you are using slightly your left hemisphere.

Are there any ways of determining hemispheric dominance in a person, because I really want to know how I learned and kept three languages fluently whereas most of my right handed friends have a hard time learning their native language, English, let alone a second or third language?

January 24-28,2011
PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS

I would like to start this blog by saying how interested I am becoming in this class every week as we explore different subjects. I was specifically happy to be in Friday’s lecture (not that I missed any classes before) when we were discussing phonetic awareness. Phonetic awareness is the awareness of, and ability to manipulate, sound structure of a language. When Dr. Newman wrote the example “ghoti” on the board and asked us how to pronounce it, the pronunciation in my head sounded different than that of my classmate who volunteered to read it aloud. I then began to think consciously about phonetic awareness of the Turkish language, and how it should be a lot easier than in English since Turkish only requires to know the first and last of the 4 steps of acquiring phonetic awareness. Because we read as we write and there is no change in the sounds of the consonants, we do not need to have the onset step. The vowels also sound the same within each word they are being used; therefore, there are no differences in rime and so there is no need for that step either. For example, if I were to say the word cat and the name Kate in Turkish, the vowel ‘a’ would sound the same for both of them; however, the ‘c’ and the ‘k’ never sound the same even if there was a different vowel beside them. This is because they both have their own unchanging sounds throughout the entire Turkish language.

I hypothesized, while unaware of the upcoming slides, that Turkish would be a much easier and easier language to learn and read. Of course, as we then saw in the following slides, it was true. We also continued talking about deaf reading and how they may have no experience with phonology at all. Based on our class discussions and research, I am going to put forward my belief and findings to say that it is easier to learn and read Turkish than it is to learn English, since there are not many steps to go through, and the letters in my language have only one unchanging sound, and also do not change the sound of any letters beside them.

January 31- February 4,2011
MORPHOLOGY

This week due to the weather conditions we only had one class on Monday and we talked about morphology. As we learned in our lectures, morphology is the smallest unit of linguistic meaning or function. (Newman, 2011) There are several morphological typologies that represent different features of morphology changing from one language to another. They are called analytic (isolating), agglutinative, synthetic, polysynthetic, and infixing. In isolating language, there is a low morpheme to word ratio meaning that morphemes are almost equal to words (1:1 ratio). In agglutinative languages, there are words containing several morphemes that we can differentiate from one another and each morpheme represents only one grammatical meaning. Synthetic languages have one morpheme with various meanings. Polysynthetic on the other hand, opposed to analytic languages, have high morpheme to word ratio, meaning that one word could equally be a whole sentence. Lastly, it is the infixing languages where affix is inserted inside base. Further research explains that analytical language includes Chinese and English, whereas Russian is an example of a synthetic language. As I was searching to find which countries use agglutinative languages, I realized it was my native language, Turkish. For polysynthetic language, we can give an example of Amerindian languages. I can definitely see why Turkish would be considered an agglutinative language since its word structures are formed by productive affixations of both derivational and inflectional suffixes to root words. (Ex: cat-cats is a inflectional rule, whereas derivational is also considered a word formation forming new words like catfish)

Regarding all these possible typologies, I realized how each language’s simplest structure and content could be so different from each other and I am not sure if I can tell you exactly why that is.These typologies however would be complicated in learning a new language for someone who is not familiar with those that are not used in their own language. So if I know English, Turkish and French that means that I am familiar with an agglutinative, synthetic (French) and analytic which is considered moderately to be in English language. It is already frustrating to distinguish morphological rules between these three languages sometimes. My question then is that if I wanted to learn another language, would it be easier for me to learn one that is also an example of one of these typologies since another type of morphological typology would probably make things even more complicated? I personally always wanted to learn either Chinese or Japanese. Chinese is analytic language whereas Japanese is agglutinative. Their both structures are not new with the rest of the languages that I know by having the same type of morphological typologies. Therefore, my question now is: which language would have still been easier for me to learn, Chinese or Japanese, considering that Turkish is my native language and I have been talking English for 6 years?

February 07-11, 2011
LEXICAL ACCESS

This week in class we were introduced to lexical access, which could also be called as the 'mental dictionary'. Tapping semantic knowledge refers to the study of meaning in language and changes of meaning. It is used to refer to the meanings of individual words, sentences and longer texts. There are 8 different classes of semantic knowledge. Word association is one of them used when something comes to someone's mind, they immediately say it out loud, so the strength of associations between words is known. There is also lexical decision task which is easier to implement with computer. One button if it is a real word, another button for unreal word. The reaction time for real word in this case is important. A priming example would be a donkey image presented before an ass word, so you are more likely to jump right away to a donkey, rather than the word buttom or jerk. Eye movement is another type of knowledge used to track peoples' eye movements by presenting a paragraph and seeing which word they most frequently stare at. Self-paced reading is another type where there is a space bar included to go to a next word and it looks at the amount of time that has passed in trying to read that word and press the space bar. Semantic judgements, neuroimaging, and naming are also other types of semantic knowledge. These are all universal types used throughout all world languages to illustrate the relationship between words and meanings. Since they all require an advanced language acquisition, what would other possible types of semantic knowledge for infants be since they have not yet developed language? By researching, I found that gesture can be both a source of semantic knowledge and an expression of that knowledge. Gesture provides a window onto evolving semantic representations and, therefore, can be a method of assessing what a child knows at a time when oral language skills are limited and are, perhaps, an unreliable indicator of what the child knows. Given the debate that gestures are learned and not innate, how early can a child learn gestures compared to learning spoken language? I ask this because oral language skills are limited at the time and not because they are an unreliable indicator of what the child knows in order to communicate. I just think that infants will have semantic knowledge close to age 1, but since they cannot fully produce speech yet, they would use gestures and that is not necessarily because they do not know the semantic meaning of things.

February 14-18, 2011
SYNTACTIC COMPLEXITY OR WORKING MEMORY

In this week’s lectures, we have learned that the working memory plays a central role in all forms of complex thinking. Syntactic complexity is a great example of one of these forms of complex thinking. We examine how human cognitive capacity accommodates or not to the complex demands that occur in language and we also examine human’s performance to certain regions of sentences. For example, when a person is reading a sentence, he or she spends more time on the main verb and on the last word of the subordinate clause than on other parts of the sentence. (Newman, 2011) The person also takes a longer time to read object relatives than subject relatives. (2011) The reason why the person does that is because the verbs are grammatically related to a large number of other constituents, such as subjects and direct objects. The person therefore has to spend more time to think and evaluate those verbs.

A research study done by Kemper et al (1992) displayed the relationship between working memory and reading comprehension. The study included two experiments done to both college students, 18 to 26 years of age, and adults, 60 to 92 years of age. There were tests of working memory, a standard time reading comprehension test, and a reading test designed to explore how syntactic complexity effects comprehension. In Experiment 1, they found that the age group declined in working memory and reading comprehension. In Experiment 2 on the other hand, they found that age group declined in reading rate but not comprehension. The results therefore suggested that working memory limitations affect older adults’ ability to process complex syntactic constructions, lowering comprehension in the timed test (Experiment 1) and reducing reading rates in the untimed test (Experiment 2). (1992) This experiment was great evidence to the effects of working memory in reading comprehension between different age groups by contrasting two sources of syntactic complexity. We also find in this study that syntactic complexity can also be due to the processing of left branching (LB) sentences. It explains that LB sentences are difficult to understand because an embedded clause forms part of the main clause subject in these sentences and precedes the main clause predicate. (1992) Regarding this study, we should be able to say that an adult’s reading comprehension would be enhanced by eliminating LB sentences and lowering syntactic complexity. The study however found that even if we eliminate all these negative aspects there are still other factors of reading comprehension, such as those involved in the analysis of discourse structures and the retention of anaphoric and propositional information which are also affected by aging. (1992)

After reading about this study, I started wondering how different the results would be if this study was comparing the native readers and the ESL (English Second Language) readers. I did some research and found that for language learners, cognitively complex tasks have an effect on the complexity and fluency of their reading and speech. (Iglesias, 2008) As the complexity of the task increases, learners will prioritise complexity or fluency to read and communicate effectively (2008). If there is a significant difference in language comprehension between native speakers and learners, from a cognitive point of view, should we expect that the task of reading will be more complex and will take much longer time than those native speakers did in the research previously mentioned? What about the age difference between ESL learners? There were still limitations to Kemper’s study where it suggested other manipulations designed to facilitate semantic and pragmatic analyses. What about for language learners? What possibly can facilitate their performance on these tasks? I can see much better now why my mother is still struggling to fully understand, speak, and read English language. Being 50 years old with no previous experience in this language, she has been taking classes, having multiple tutors, and volunteering in English speaking environments for 5 years hoping to improve. She is doing great for herself but compared to a younger generation, who also began 5 years ago, her success is not even close to being equal to their accomplishments.

February 28-March 4, 2011
SPEECH PRODUCTION

In this week’s lecture we began to talk about speech production and how we get from thought to speech. Before going into speech production we were introduced to two traditions, speech errors and the lexical bias effect. We were told in the lecture that examining speech errors were very easy and did not require technology to see when and why people make errors in speech and the kinds of errors they make. It was found in a study that people were less likely to make an error when the error results in non words than it was in real words, so these errors were in a lexical level as opposed to a phonological level. This is called the ‘lexical bias effect’, hypothesizing that people were more likely to substitute in a real word so there was a bias for phonological speech errors to select true words compared to changed phonemes (non-words). There was another study where people did random phonological exchanges in words. They took a bunch of English words and exchange the phonemes. They found that one third of the words would turn out to be real other English words, which is a high number. Actual number of speech errors people made in various recorded studies turned out to be real English words (40 to 45 percent) so there was a lexical bias effect in speech production. I started wondering right away if there was a lexical bias effect in second language production and so I did some research. I found in a study done by Costa et al (2006) that the lexical bias effect (LBE) reveals the presence of interactivity between the phonological and lexical levels of representation. These effects suggest that there is feedback in second language production and that it extends the two languages of a bilingual. Costa et al tested for LBE in second language production where highly proficient Catalan–Spanish bilinguals were asked to perform a SLIP task in their L2 (Spanish). The second experiment tested for LBE across the two languages of a bilingual person when performing the SLIP task in Span¬ish. Spanish–Catalan bilinguals showed more errors if the resulting error was a word in Catalan than if it was a non-word. My question in this case is what would happen if the person was tested for only words from one language? Would the LBE across languages be reduced? For example, if the production of Catalan errors were comparable to that of non-word errors meaning that the experiment contained only Spanish words. I know it would be impossible to conduct such experiment with the present combination of languages in these experiments, but I still wonder about the difference between the lexical bias effect in one language and lexical bias effect across languages (bilinguals).

Later on in the lecture, we learned many other facts about how we access semantics before we access phonology in generating words. It is apparent that we initially access the meaning then phonology comes afterwards. There was another study shown in class where it was looking at the facilitation or an inhibition that either fastens or slows the time in phonological priming. In the experiment, if a distractor word is presented before the object was named, you will get semantic interference, but if a picture is presented before, you will get semantic facilitation. It is indicated that by seeing a picture, you access semantics and the activation spreads to related things and you get names of the words which facilitates the name in that word, whereas if you see the word going through different process where you are biased by the phonology of that word, you want to say that word and it interferes with your naming it. (Lecture, Newman, 2011). There was also a phonological facilitation if the distractor word is simultaneous, before or after the object to be named. In early stage of semantic activation, it is important to present the thing early enough that you activate the concept to related concepts so you are faster whereas if you get these semantically related words too close then it will go to inhibition rather than activation. We also looked at both the syntactic info and phonological info and asked the question of which one do we access first, or if we access both at the same time? This has to do with motor responses in our brain, indicating that it is lateralized. This is when a person is cognitively active on either side of their body and the syntactic and phonological info in their brain is present on the opposite side of that body part they are using. For example in one study, whichever hand participants respond with, the other side of their brain is working. They also found in this study that you always go with syntactic info when you have made a decision and then you go to phonological info and it is never the other way around. I thought this lecture was crucial for speech production showing how this process works in our brain as we think and produce speech. I have always been curious about people who know multiple languages so they are not necessarily bilingual or trilingual, but multilingual. I would love to experiment with a multilingual person’s brain activity as they are being exposed to these tests in various languages they know to find if there are any differences in brain activity from one language to another.

March 7-11, 2011
TIP OF THE TONGUE PHENOMENON

In this week’s lecture, we were introduced to a phenomenon called ‘Tip of the Tongue’. This phenomenon occurs occasionally to everyone when they have difficulty retrieving words they know. I see this phenomenon in equal amounts between my friends from Canada (monolinguals) and my friends from foreign countries (bilinguals) often when they are speaking. I was not 100% sure however if it would be the same amount between monolinguals and bilinguals and so I decided to research it. I found a study that gave me answers, but it also caused me to ask more questions. The experiment was done to twenty-two American Sign Language (ASL)–English bilinguals, twenty-two English monolinguals, and eleven Spanish–English bilinguals where they named fifty-two pictures in English. The study found that bilinguals reported more tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) failures than monolinguals. Three accounts of this disadvantage are that bilinguals experience between-language interference at a semantic and/or phonological levels, or that bilinguals use each language less frequently than monolinguals. The result provided that the increased TOT rates associated with bilingualism cannot be attributed exclusively to competition between phonological forms. Bilinguals with no possibility of competition between languages at the phonological level also experience more TOT than monolinguals.

My question about Tip of the Tongue phenomenon is whether or not it is memory related or language related? I get confused as I think about my own personal experiences with speech errors. I personally make more speech errors and face the TOT phenomenon more in my native language than the two other languages I speak. I have been talking my native language ever since I was born and I recently became fluent in English and French, taking an extensive amount of courses while of course moving to Anglophone and Francophone country, Canada. This study argues that there are no phonological overlaps between the languages that were being tested and it was found that reduced frequency of use in those languages is the more comprehensive explanation of TOT rates in all bilinguals. I agree with this statement since I have been speaking my native language the least amount compared to others, having no possible opportunities other than my home. On the other hand, I have been learning and speaking English for years and I can say that I am almost as confident as native English speakers. Therefore, I find these to be associated with the frequency of use of these languages creating two different TOT rates. The study also suggests that all speakers who divide their language use between two languages, whether signed or spoken, experience increased TOT rates. This supports the reason why I would experience such errors since I talk three languages on a day to day basis. How is it possible then to make such errors in your innate language instead of the learned ones? Does it really have to do with the memory and the frequency of use of these languages or does it have to do with semantic and phonological differences in these languages? I think more research could be done for this underdeveloped phenomenon.

March 14-18,2011
DEVELOPMENT OF SPEECH PERCEPTION

I am very happy about Wednesday’s lecture as we started talking about the development of speech perception. It is the topic I picked to write for my chapter and that is because I am really interested in finding out how children can learn to produce language and how this process happens and how long it takes to happen. I also edited the development of speech production chapter in order to have a perfect understanding of children’s abilities, not only in perceiving speech but also producing speech later in their development. One of the most important reasons why I want to know so much about this part of children’s development is because I am a Turkish girl living in an Anglophone city, and currently dating a Lebanese guy who speaks Arabic. Hypothetically speaking, if I ever decided to have a child with him, how possible it will be for our newborn to learn so many languages separately without getting confused and overwhelmed. I have always been worried about this and I cannot really say that I know for sure if children are capable of discriminating between many different languages which could all really be regarded as their native language. On the other hand, let’s say if he/she did not encounter other languages than just one while in the womb and right after birth, my question becomes, until what age a child can learn to speak how many languages without an accent and with fluent grammar, almost as if others were also his/her native languages? We also learned this week that infants are capable of recognizing speech sounds, but as they get older (12 months) their perception to consonants decrease in any foreign language and it increases in their native language. Therefore, how effective would this statement be if the child is encountered with various native languages?

I have done much research about infant development of speech perception for my chapter and found many interesting facts about infant’s ability to respond to speech like sounds and discriminate between them. I have also found three different procedures used to test these speech perception capabilities in young infants including high amplitude sucking, head turn, and visual habituation. They all have their own ways to test different age groups. Sucking is found to be an ideal technique since it is one of the few activities over which infants have good motor controls and therefore is easily conditioned. Visual habituation is more sensitive than other techniques for revealing infant’s discrimination capabilities and it also test many aspects of visual perception. Lastly, it is the head turn technique which tests habituation simply by recording how newborn reacts to new stimuli. We learned in the lecture that these techniques all prove to be effective in healthy infants. It makes me wonder however as I think about infants getting older or as we experience infants with deficits in their language acquisition, there would be a need for different techniques to determine their abilities in speech perception and production. I would like to search and find if there are any development lists who invented some different kinds of techniques for those infants with deficits in language acquisition.

March 21-25, 2011
This is the last week of Dr. Newman’s lectures and we have touched on incredibly interesting topics. I do not even know where I should begin to give all of my thoughts about the new things I have learned this week. We initially talked about bilingualism and the ability to learn more than one language early or later in life. We also asked if there is a disadvantage to being bilingual since two different languages in one's home will confuse children if one is not consistently used, but there is very little evidence for that. Evidence suggests that at early ages, kids exposed to more than one language may be delayed in uttering their first words, but certainly by grade 5 there is no disadvantage to having learned multiple languages. We also talked about languages being learned in different ways, associated with different brain activities for each language. I found a study done in 1997 by Kim et al who used the fMRI method to examine cortical activation among a range of bilinguals who were proficient in a number of languages. They divided the participation pool into two groups: early (L2 acquisition before the age of five) and late (after the age of twelve) bilinguals. The results suggested anatomical variation between early and late bilinguals such that although early bilinguals showed similar activation in both Broca's and Wernicke's areas during a silent sentence generation task while late bilinguals displayed common activation in Wernicke's but not in Broca's area. (Dave, 2007) These results indicate a late language acquisition in children, suggesting that their "critical period" cannot be ignored and that language learning after a certain age is differentially represented in the brain. My question in class was about the older ages and their ability to learn another language and if there is any change to the function of their brain that is different from younger bilinguals.

Next lecture, we learned about aphasia and its negative influence on people's lives. As we were watching videos of people with expressive (non-fluent), receptive (fluent) and global (both expressive and difficulty with receptive) aphasia, I could not stop thinking about how it would be if these people were bilingual. Since most people in the world know more than one language, bilingual aphasia should be an important line of research for psycholinguistics. I have learned that aphasia has a devastating impact in peoples’ lives from as young as 18, running up to 78 years old. It brings along problems such as not being able to get a message across to someone, difficulty in naming things and therefore substituting words for one another, having trouble with numbers, reading and writing, and having an overall frustration. Regarding all of these negative aspects, I cannot imagine how challenging it would be when providing treatment to bilingual aphasics as opposed to monolingual aphasics. I question if our brain really provides separate stores for each language we know. And if it does, how are we able to switch between languages and use them appropriately and without interference? My other question is can one language experience aphasia while not affecting another one? And if both languages become affected, which one should therapists focus on more in aphasic treatments, the L1, the L2, or both?

March 28- April 1, 2011
In the three years I have attended Dalhousie, I can say that this is the first time I have ever been asked to participate in a debate in a class. I am very thankful to Dr. Newman for creating a whole new subject format in his class this semester. By doing so he has also encouraged us to integrate information from different parts of the course and reflect deeply about the content we learned each week, not only in our chapters but also in our debates as well. The topics Dr. Newman picked for the debates are current issues that we can relate to with what we have been learning in class this semester and that of course makes it more interesting to participate and therefore learn more.

Our debates started this week and there were some really interesting topics that I did not know about before. The first team that presented their debate was arguing either for or against the usage of Ebonics as the primary language in the Oakland School. I never knew that Ebonics is a recognized language so that was a surprise for me to begin with. Being the first team, we also have to be more lenient with them since they did not have the chance to view other presentations before hand in order to improve their own. Overall, they did a good job with finding information. The side for the usage of Ebonics argued that it should be used as the primary language in schools in Oakland since it is the primary language there, and if they diminish the language by telling children it is wrong to speak it in school, it will lead to a loss of cultural identity. They believed that fewer children will drop out of school if they will not be judged for what and how they speak. The competing side on the other hand was very intense and had very good points supporting their argument, arguing that speaking only Ebonics may be very problematic for children in the long term and create low self esteem and therefore low success. I found the topic interesting because of how similar it is to our debate topic that we will be presenting next week.

Our topic is also about the usage of minority languages in Canada and our position is against having only the majority language (in this case English) being taught to children from 4-12 years old in schools. We were able to work on our debates more sufficiently by viewing other debates; especially the one about Ebonics, which really helped us become more prepared and state our position clearly. I am so far enjoying the idea of having these presentations, which makes it much more fun than typical oral presentations.

April 4th-8th, 2011
I find it hard to believe that we are ending our studies this semester and writing our last blog posts. I have stated many times that I am an international student from Turkey and bilingual. However, I do consider myself trilingual now. Therefore, I had great reasons to take this class and I am really glad I did it. Just like other students, the evaluation format was surprising in the beginning and I could not stop wondering if it was really going to be a better way to learn the material compared to other psychology classes I have taken at Dalhousie University. Well it surely was Dr Newman, I can assure you that I have enjoyed and learned so much in your class that my friends are interested now in taking your class as an elective.

Before this class, I took Psycholinguistics in French and then decided to take it in English so I could compare and understand the differences in many aspects between the two official languages in Canada. I was lucky to do this because I got to learn not only about those two languages, but much more. Each class lecture was an interesting topic and we had the chance to relate each topic in our blog posts every week and in our debates close to the end of the semester. The blog posts that we wrote each week were very helpful to keep students on task and it also gave us a chance to become creative thinkers and writers by doing research for all the questions we haven’t gotten answered during the class. Wikiversity chapter on the other hand, was one of the most interesting projects I had to do throughout my university years. I have to be honest that when it comes to being creative on the computer I am the worst person to ask for that. I remember having hard times trying to figure things out in terms of its format and almost cried at some point, but that is all in the past now. I can say that I was really lucky to pick one of my favourite subjects which was the children development and speech perception to write about and therefore, it was fun to make research for. There are couple of issues however that should be considered in terms of making the project easier for students (ex: the pictures were really hard to find for my topic however for other broad topics it was much easier to find on Wikimedia Commons). Lastly, I found the debates very helpful for students to learn how to make effective research and an argument to support their side of the debate. My subject again was of my interest (minority children continue learning their primary languages from 4-12 years old and not seeing them as interference) and I found many cultural aspects affecting it. It is usually challenging to have group presentations but this time it was much more productive and we had a really good stand in our argument.

Overall, I really enjoyed participating in this class and I definitely support the idea of having a different format in this course. It really helps our writing abilities and our effective research experience. I want to thank not only Dr Newman, but also Sarah Dhooge for being really understanding with all the complications I had in my assignments. I really appreciate your help and your positive feedback. This class motivated me to become a better linguist in my personal world and I will retain everything I learned for my further studies.

title: User:Bengisug


text:
Stromal cells

In cell biology, stromal cells are connective tissue cells of an organ found in the loose connective tissue. These are most often associated with the uterine mucosa (endometrium), prostate, bone marrow precursor cells, and the ovary as well as the hematopoietic system and elsewhere. These are the cells that make up the support structure of biological tissues and support the parenchymal cells. Fibroblasts, immune cells, pericytes, endothelial cells, and inflammatory cells are the most common types of stromal cells. The interaction between stromal cells and tumor cells is known to play a major role in cancer growth and progression. Stromal cells near the bottom of the epidermis (the very top layer of the skin) release growth factors that promote cell division. This keeps the epidermis regenerating from the bottom while the top layer of cells on the epidermis are constantly being "sloughed" off of the body. Certain types of skin cancers (basal cell carcinomas) cannot spread throughout the body because the cancer cells require nearby stromal cells to continue their division. The loss of these stromal growth factors when the cancer moves throughout the body prevents the cancer from invading other organs.

title: Stromal cells