BRAIN INFLUENCE ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Brain Influence on Language Development

Abstract

This paper attempts to discover the link between “The Brain” and as to how it influences the “Language Development.”This study will try to explore the concept of “Language Development” in a holistic context. The focus of the research is on “Language Development” in relation to the Brain activities and influence. There already have been many studies and researches regarding the difference in the functionality of various parts of brain. Apart from that, the left and right division of brain has also revealed a lot of information. The impact and influence of Brain activity in accordance with the language development will be discussed. The research also analyzes many aspects of “The Brain Activity” and tries to gauge its effect on “Language Development”. Finally, the research also explains the difference in the right brained and left brained people.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION4

DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS4

The Human Brain4

Research Regarding the Human Brain6

Human Language Development6

The Human Brain Activity and Linguistics7

The Human Brain and Speech7

The Human Brain and American Sign Language8

CONCLUSION9

Brain and its Influence on Language Development

Introduction

There can be little doubt that what separates humans from all other primates is language. Although cases such as Kanzi (bonobo), Washoe (common chimpanzee), and Koko (gorilla) show that intensively trained apes have impressive communicative and lexical skills, they do not possess language as we know it. More importantly, apes neither intuitively learn language (as do human children) nor spontaneously invent it (as did humans). Primate vocalizations and gestural routines are a long way from being languages or even protolanguages. Knowing this, the linguist Noam Chomsky long maintained that human language was so unique that it had no precedents in the animal kingdom. Chomsky's early approach was anti-Darwinian and essentially held that an innate language module somehow appeared, fully formed, in humans. A less saltational but explicitly Darwinian form of this idea has recently been advanced for the FOXP2 gene. Given the complex and supramodal nature of language, it seems highly unlikely that it simply appeared at some serendipitous moment in hominid evolution. For something like language to have evolved, there must have been more or less constant selection pressure toward it for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years. For this reason, many researchers have suggested that hominid encephalization and language are closely connected. It is apparent, however, that simply having a large brain cannot explain language. If it could, we might expect whales and elephants to have language. (Jeremy & Steven, 2007; Buzsaki & Gyorgy, 2006)

Discussion and Analysis

The Human Brain

Humans have large brains, in both absolute and relative terms. Presumably, it is this fact that prompted the normally restrained Charles Darwin to declare, in The Descent of Man (1871), that no one could possibly doubt the connection between large brains and higher mental powers. Whether Darwin was expressing a scientific truth or a cultural prejudice remains an open question. For reasons poorly understood and rarely questioned, humans are enamoured of size-if something is big, it is usually deemed remarkable and ...