Lecture 1 Flashcards
Thinking of the concept of language and the varieties of languages across the world
Why did one of them become the standard (gained a social standing in society ) - English language
What is the neuropsychology of language?
Investigations of correlations between patterns of language impairment and loci (location) of brain damage
Why do we want to study normal brains?
bc no physiological damage has occurred.
Controlled subject (no unexpected differences in processing)
You want to study how fast the average brain processes language - extremely fast - contentious acoustic language
Why do you not want to study abnormal brains?
Small sample size (patient populations are very small in size)
It does not tell us about how language is processed in real-time
Why do we need to know how normal brains process langaunge
We need to understand the framework to understand how it works
Figure out small problems to build up to figuring out the larger issues
How do we start to understand how the brain works?
We combine lesions studies with functional neuroimaging of the brain
Temporal resolution
The accuracy with which one can measure when an event (e.g a physiological change) occurs
Spatial resolution
The accuracy with whcih one can measure where an event (e.g a physiological change) is occurring
What does modelling what the brain is doing in real-time in healthy young (and older) adults
Gives us a good CONTROL model for understanding what happens in impaired populations
If you don’t know how a car works, unlikely you’ll be able to fix a problem
Lingua franca
A shared language used by speakers of other languages. e.g Swahili, Modern Standard Arabic, Mandarin, English
Chinese
A cover term for mutually unintelligible languages
- Mandarin
-Taiwanese
-Cantonese
Arabic
Also a cover term since Arabic spoken in Cairo not the same as that spoken in Beirut.
Spoken in North Africa, Middle East
All varieties of Arabic are descended from Classical Arabic, language of the Qu’ran (holy book of Islam)
