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Chapter 10: Language in Context

The author begins by giving a number of examples of metaphorical language ("My son is a couch potato") which convey information to the listener in a way that they understand what is meant and are not distracted by the fact that they are not literally true. This suggests that language functions in a broader social, cultural, and cognitive sense that exceeds merely matching words to objects.

This chapter will explore concepts related to the indirect and contextual meanings of language: written language, language as a medium of thought, language in social context, and the neuropsychology of language

Reading

The act of reading is a highly complex process: it is an indirect method of using language, correlating a system of visual symbols (phonetic or pictographic) to sounds. It engages memory, thinking, intelligence, and perception. Literacy is also a fairly recent development, as it was an unusual skill even a hundred years ago and is now a part of everyday life for every person in developed nations.

Switch to reading disabilities: dyslexia and other disorders that impair reading fluency can be a serious detriment in any society in which written communication is extensive. Reading disabilities are associated to a number of different processes:

Dyslexia may arise from the absence or impairment of any of these capacities. It's noted that there are also various kinds of dyslexia, some of which are innate, others of which appear later in life. Also, dyslexia has been genetically linked to abnormalities in certain chromosomes (6 and 15).

Perceptual Issues in Reading

The ability to read is "truly remarkable" when you consider it as a human quality that does not evolve in lower animals (and even a great many human beings have limited capacity.) The ability to recognize a given letter in multiple fonts and styles, even cursive forms, and even when the letter is distorted or partially obliterated, is quite amazing.

The author also mentions how bizarre the written word can be, yet we understand that "ough" is pronounced differently in written words such as dough, bough, bought, through, and cough.

And then, once the letters are translated into a word, we have access to the meaning of the word - not just one meaning, but an array of meanings when a word is used in different contexts. The definition of a specific word can be detailed in some ways and imprecise in others, and along with the literal meaning recorded in dictionaries, there are the connotations and contextual meanings to contend with.

And while all of this is going on, every word evokes an array of ideas and memories pertaining to the word. There is a great deal of imagery, memories, concepts, and emotions evoked at the recognition of the word "mother" that must be sifted through or set aside when we read the word in the context of a discourse.

All of this is handled with amazing speed, as the average reader reads at a rate of 200-250 words per minute, highly fluent individuals read 500-800 words per minute, and individuals trained in speed reading can achieve rates of 1000-1300 words per minute.

In spite of the wondrous capacity for reading, there is still some despair at the level of public literacy - the suggestion that the average American reads at an eighth-grade level, that the bottom 20% of the population is functionally illiterate, etc. - which has sputted a great deal of research into the learning process.

Specifically, learning to read requires two basic conceptual processes:

Lexical Processes in Reading

When reading, our eyes do not move smoothly over lines of text, but exhibit a motion called "saccades," which are rapid, irregular, and sequential movements as we focus on successive groups of words, fixating for slightly longer on longer or unfamiliar words as well as the last word of each sentence.

It is also reckoned that readers recognize 80% of the words they read at a glance, rather than having to read them letter by letter, and often recognize groups of words. It is reckoned that we "read" four characters to the left of the focal point and about fifteen to the right.

Speed readers show shorter and less frequent saccades, which suggests that they read only portions of sentences, and tests of reading comprehension support this notion: they follow the gist of what they read, on a very superficial level.

Reading leverages lexical access, which enables a characters to be translated to words, and the basic meaning of those words accessed from memory.

Reading is considered to take place at three levels - the feature, the letter, and the word. It is reckoned to involve bottom-up processes in which sensory data to interpret meaning form what is being read, as well as top-down methods of recognizing words as a result of reading their letters as well as identifying letters from their placement in words. Some theories focus on one method or the other, but there is evidence that both occur while reading.

There is some evidence of a word-superiority effect, in which our interpretation of the word as a whole may not match the word itself - as such we can read past typographical errors without noticing them, and are particularly adept at reading past typos when the error occurs within the word (not the first or last letter). On the same basis, there is suggestion of a sentence-superiority effect, in which words omitted from sentences are not noticed, or mentally filled in.

The same phenomena also enable us to read text that is partially obscured or obliterated - even when up to 42% of a word is obliterated, it is still recognizable with ease and accuracy.

Language and Thought

Language is primarily recognized as a method of transferring ideas from one individual's mind to that of another individual, but there is also the thoughts within an individual's mind are often considered to be analogous to language - the assumption is that we use words to ponder things and our thoughts are composed of speech.

(EN: Looking ahead, the author does not seem to explore this inner monologue very much, and I have a sense that it is an assumption that is not entirely true. Some part of thinking does seem to leverage language, but my sense is that it is the most short-term and superficial kind of thinking. Because we can only use language to describe our thought processes, we can only understand them in terms of language, and I sense that the majority of thought does not leverage language at all - it seems to "just happen" and ideas "come to" us in a way that we do not perceive and cannot describe. But in using words to attempt to describe it, we create the false perception that it is linguistic in nature.)

Differences among Languages

There are many different languages in use, and it has been implied that the use of a specific language influences the way in which people think.

Much of this is reflective of the culture and environment in which language arose. The Garo people of Burma have many words that distinguish between varieties or rice, and nomadic Arabs have more than twenty different words for "camel" - because these objects were important in the cultures in which the languages arose.

(EN: This is often mistaken to mean that speakers of other languages are unable to perceive the difference, but it is more likely that they consider the difference to be negligible and unimportant. To people who do not depend on camels, and do not encounter them often, one word is enough for their purposes - but I do not think this can be extended to suggest they are incapable of perceiving the difference, merely that any differences they happen to notice seem unimportant and not worth the effort of learning an extended vocabulary to describe.)

The grammar and syntax of language also varies - it is not merely a set of different sounds and sound combination, but also a difference in the way words are put together to communicate thought. Whether an adjective comes before or after the noun it describes, whether we change the verb or the noun of a sentence to shift it to past or future tense, whether we recognize the gender of things (even those that have no sexual characteristics), and so on.

Returning to cognition, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis maintains that speakers of different languages have differing cognitive systems - in effect that the language that is spoken affects the very way in which people think. That is to say that because the Garo people have multiple words for different kinds of rice, the nature of their thinking about that topic is significantly different to speakers of languages that have fewer words to describe it.

But in another sense, this merely adds another level to the categorization schema. That is to say we recognize a hierarchy of food, vegetables, grains, rice, and types of rice - and as such the Garo adapt more readily to discussions about types of rice, but do not necessary have any difference in conceptual categorization on the level of "grains" or "vegetables" than individuals in other cultures. IT could be further argued that even though there is only one word in English for "rice," English speakers have ways of differentiating among varieties by use of adjectives (white rice, brown rice, short-grain rice, long-grain rice, etc.) as well as developing words for kinds of rice (Jasmine, Arborio, Basmati, etc.) and, in developed countries, the addition of brands (Mahatma long-grain white rice is differentiated from Calrose long-grain white rice).

The author also notes that this theory has become mythological: "Contrary to popular beliefs, Eskimos do not have numerous words for snow," but even the idea that they do is accepted and propagated, even by social scientists. The author refers to Laura Martin, who has gone to some lengths to debunk the myth, and who has found that her colleagues cling to the notion even though they cannot find any evidence: "True or not it's still a great example."

Given that language is adaptable - speakers create new terms to describe things that the lexicon does not include - it seems highly unlikely that language limits the ability of people to think.

However, that is not to say that language has no influence at all: if there is not a word for a concept, it must be invented, and if the topic is of little interest to the speaker, he is unlikely to invest time in inventing a term, giving it only cursory consideration as he returns to the main point of his discourse. Should the item in question be critical to the discourse, he will invest the time in creating and promulgating a term. It could thus be argued that a thing is only considered superficially by default and unless it is critical it is given little consideration, and people are less likely to ponder what it ought to be called.

It is also true that we receive new information in the context of information we already have. Consider a shape that consists of two circles connected by a bar - it would be accurate to describe the new shape as being like a dumbbell or a pair of eyeglasses, and the speaker's choice of a term in describing it depends on his experience and present mental state (if he had just been to a gymnasium, he may be primed to say "dumbbell" even though eyeglasses are more familiar to him). And as a precipitating consequence of this choice, the way in which the object is considered will be influenced by association to one concept or another until additional information is gained about it (discovering that the circles are spherical rather than discs would change the perception of shape from eyeglasses to dumbbell).

As such, while we should dismiss the notion that thought is restricted by language, it cannot be denied that language (and experience) has an influence on perception. Not only are we better equipped to speak of things for which we have names and better equipped to remember a thing whose name is known, we are more likely to associate new information to named-and-known things.

There has been some research in an attempt to define linguistic universals, or characteristics that are common to all languages and all cultures. (EN: This has largely been the stuff of science fiction, in that it stems from the belief that there was one original human language, perhaps taught to primitive man by an alien race, and while it's been cloaked in science, the premise is really very silly and the proponents biased toward proving their case rather than objectively considering the evidence, so proceed with caution.)

In essence, all human beings have the same speech apparatus and are capable of making the same sounds (though they quickly become limited to a specific linguistic set). Though there are differences in their environments they encounter the same things (plants, animals, geographic formations, and the like) and seek satisfaction of the same biological needs and drives (to eat, drink, sleep, reproduce, etc.)

Some studies have looked to the way in which colors are described, as all humans perceive the same spectrum of light. While there are wide differences, most cultures recognize common sets of colors, in the following hierarchy:

That is to say that if a language recognizes only three colors, they will be black, white, and red. If it recognizes a fourth color, it will be one of the yellow-green-blue set.

Another example given is of the Spanish language's two words for "to be" - "ser" is used for long-term conditions (being male, a carpenter, tall, and the like) and "estar" for short-term conditions (being hungry, busy, tired). There are exceptions, and situations in which the duration is unclear and their use is inconsistent.

It's also considered that English-speaking children tend to learn to identify the color of things before they identify shapes, wheras speakers of languages such as Navajo learn the shapes before the colors. Likewise, English speakers tend to learn more nouns than verbs whereas speakers of Mandarin use more verbs than nouns.

The author asserts that "no one knows for sure" what the implications or consequences of these differences are.

Bilingualism and Dialects

If we accept that language influences thought, this would mean that bilingual people would think differently when expressing ideas in different languages. However, studies in this area are inconsistent.

There is some indication that people who learn a second language in an additive manner (they continue to speak their first language and gain the ability to speak a second) demonstrate "increased thinking ability" whereas people who learn it in a subtractive manner (the words of a foreign language replace those used in the native language, such as when a foreign term is adopted into a language) do not. However, there is a correlation to income level, in that poor people tend to learn a second language subtractive whereas wealthy people tend to learn it additively.

There is also a distinction between simultaneous bilingualism (a child learns two languages at the same time) and sequential bilingualism (languages are learned one after the other). The author feels that the distinction is overemphasized in the United States, where simultaneous bilingualism is presently rare, whereas it's fairly common in some other cultures. Belgians, for example, learn English, French, and German as a matter of course. In India, it is not unusual for four or more languages to be spoken in the same village or household.

Age is considered to be a significant factor in the acquisition of languages. Recall that during the babbling stage, phonemes that are not heard in the environment atrophy, and that it becomes difficult later in life to regain the ability to emit sounds that were lost during this stage - and as such a Japanese child who learns English later in life may have difficulty with non-Japanese syllables of English, but if the child was raised in a home in which both languages were spoken, he will have retained those same syllables and speak them without difficulty.

It is also suggested that some elements of language, particularly vocabulary and complex sentence structure, are not mastered until adolescence, whereas basic pronunciation, grammar, and syntax are learned much earlier. This would explain the reason individuals who learn a second language in adulthood may speak fluently but retain their native accent even after decades of speaking in their second language.

There has also been an attempt, with little success, of determining which factors or teaching methods facilitate second-language acquisition. This is primarily because the student brings their distinctive cognitive abilities and knowledge to the learning experience. For examples are considered:

Each of these students will gain proficiency in certain aspects, but not in others. Whether they will be considered fluent is subjective and situational. Depending on the content, context, and participants in a given conversation, they may be regarded as quite fluent or quite clumsy.

It's also noted that the difficulty of learning a foreign language depends on its similarity to the student's native language - whether the phonemes, word fragments, syntax, and the like are similar or different to known languages. It is relatively simple for a person who speaks Spanish to learn Italian, compared to learning German of Chinese.

There are two alternative approaches to teaching languages: the first maintains that there is a single system that manages all languages, and the second maintains that there is a dual system (or multiple systems), each of which manages a given language. Consider the linguistic system to be similar to a database: the first approach suggests that there is a single table of vocabulary and syntax with a field that indicates the language, whereas the second suggests entirely separate tables.

The dual-system theory is supported by observation of bilingual patients who have suffered brain damage: patients are sometimes observed to incur damage in one language more than the other, or to recover one language faster than the other. If the single-system theory held true, the effects of damage to the linguistic abilities would be more or less equal across all languages.

Another study (Ojemann) of epileptic patients used electrical stimulation to the language cortex of the brain, which found that some areas of the brain were specific to a given language but other areas of the brain were common to both languages, which suggests that both the single- and dual-systems hold true - that is, the brain leverages some common resources for all language and some specific resources for specific languages.

It's vaguely suggested that learning a second language is "a plus" in terms of increasing cognitive abilities. The classroom method of learning (where language is creamed into memory and used only in the classroom) is not as effective or beneficial as natural-pace learning (which occurs more slowly but the language used has an immediate practical benefit) - though certain things such as grammar are most conveniently learned in the classroom setting, even in one's own native language.

(EN: From personal observation of foreigners in America and Americans who've gone aboard for extended period of time, people seem to gain more fluency in a foreign language in a year of living immersed in it that they do in four or more years of university study. And to the author's point, their grammar is generally not great but they are able to communicate and understand effectively if clumsily.)

Linguistic ability is highly natural and adaptive, and as such people invent new languages quite rapidly.

Bilingualism is not the only outcome of interaction between people of different languages. Particularly when the peoples interact frequently, their languages become integrated, with each adopting some of the vocabulary and syntactical structure of the other's language to form a sort of pidgin, and when the pidgin evolves its own vocabulary and rules it becomes a creole.

One difficulty in linguistic study, particularly from ears in which a language evolved without a historical record, is in the ability to accurately differentiate between a "mother tongue" that is the root of sibling languages and a creole that was not the root of the languages, but a coming-together of two pre-existing ones.

(EN: I recall from studies in sociology that bilingualism or pidgin reflects the way in which people interact. When the language communities are isolated in a location and interact infrequently [such as people of different groups living in different neighborhoods of a city], people become bilingual, whereas when they are more closely integrated [people of different languages live in the same neighborhood], their language evolves.)

Another phenomenon is the dialect, in which people who speak a single language adopt idiosyncrasies of grammar, pronunciation, and syntax. For example, consider the differences in the English spoken between Britain and the United States, or the differences in the way English is spoken in different parts of each of the countries (e.g., the English spoke in Alabama is significantly different to that spoken in New Jersey).

It's noted that dialects are mostly 'harmless regional variations" and that speakers of different dialects understand one another, though it can at times become difficult to communicate. In the US in particular, an "American Standard" or "Network" form of English has been cultivated that is generally considered to be Midwestern, but in reality is a sort of flat monotone with as little accentuation, inflection, and pattern as possible. Broadcasters and telephone center workers train to this "standard" English to be as broadly understood as possible.

Dialects are also used for social stratification, with some dialects being regarded as superior to others. This is generally arbitrary, in that it has nothing to do with the language itself, but more to do with imitating the mannerisms of those individuals with the highest economic or political power within a society.

Slips of the Tongue

Slips of the tongue have been (over)emphasized in psychology, based on the theory that they are unintentional actions, and therefore are taken to reveal information that the speaker intends to conceal. The "Freudian slip" is a particular example of the focus on accidents of speech, in which an entire dialogue is ignored in favor of a mistake because the mistake is assumed to be revealing.

Even to cognitive psychologists, whose perspective is significantly different to that of psychoanalysts, slips of the tongue are interesting because there is a lack of correspondence between what is being though and what is said. In essence, slips of the tongue are instances in which there is a disconnect between the mechanisms of thought and the mechanisms of language.

Often, these disconnects are the result of external stimuli rather than internal - a person who is speaking while a radio is playing in the background might mistakenly repeat a word they heard rather than using the word they intended to say. It is also true that internal thought processes can be intrusive - that a thought occurs to a person who is speaking about an entirely different topic.

In other instances, there is no immediately obvious cause for the slip to occur - we have the idea right but the words come out wrong - though arguably such instances may reflect the influence of an external stimulus of which we are aware, but are not giving attention.

It's also noted that we are sometimes entirely unaware of a slip until it is pointed out to us, and even then we may deny having made it, remaining unaware.

The author enumerates some of the kinds of slips that people tend to make in conversation:

These slips of language are not the result of a singly dysfunction, but arise within different parts of the language system. Some arise from motor control, others from the formation of words, others from lexical syntax, others are cognitive, etc.

By examining the kinds of errors that are commonly made, we can infer the way in which we produce speech. For example, a syllable that is stressed is more likely to be misplaced than one that is unstressed, and slips of the tongue occur when an unintentional pattern arises between stressed syllables, unstressed ones, and pauses. Likewise, words that rhyme are often substituted, and there's a plethora of problems arising from using an inappropriate prefix or suffix.

Even at the level of words, it seems that we are more likely to replace a word with another of the same kind (nouns replace nouns, verbs replace verbs, etc.) such that errors exist in syntactic and semantic categories more frequently than across categories.

Metaphorical Language

The use of metaphor, simile, and allusion are often considered literary devices used in the arts and entertainment, but are also a part of everyday speech in practical contexts. Cognitively, they represent a further level of abstraction, as the meaning is conveyed not by the words of the message itself, but in reference to a concept that is indirectly related.

In terms of analysis, metaphorical language consists of four key elements. Consider the metaphor that "billboards are warts on the landscape" ...

In essence, these parts work together to refer to certain qualities that are implied without being literally stated - such that understanding a metaphor requires the listener to understand what is or is not included in the reference.

The author considers some of the various theories as to the way in which a metaphor is understood, which largely explore the manner in which the four elements are connected to one another, which ultimately boils down to characterization schema - in the previous examples, "warts" and "billboards" are both contained within the category of disfigurements or things that are unsightly.

In terms of understanding, the first time a metaphor is heard, the recipient is required to work out the connection, which most people of the same culture seem to do readily. Once a metaphor has been established, there is no longer any need for mental effort, in that it functions like any other word in a language.

Aside of the entertainment value, metaphors serve two functional purposes: first, to convey a richness of meaning in very few words, in some cases conveying a meaning that is difficult to express in literal terms; and second, to create societal divisions between insiders who understand a metaphor and outsiders who do not.

Language in Social Context

The field of pragmatics studies the way in which people use language in different contexts. Specifically, a person may use language differently when speaking to different people. An adult does not speak to a child in the same way he speaks to another adult, nor does he speak to a layman in the say way he speaks to colleagues in his profession, nor does he speak to casual friends in the same way he speaks in the workplace.

Under most circumstances, speakers change their pragma without conscious thought, though social differences may make a person keenly aware of his conversational choices (people are keenly aware of the linguistic choices they make when speaking to figures of authority, for example).

In general, communication is based on a "shared ground" among people engaged in a conversation. Where participants have common knowledge and common goals, conversation becomes both specialized and fluid. The difficulty in speaking to someone for the first time is in establishing that common ground - not only do you have nothing to say to a person, but you do not know what language to use when communicating with them.

It is reckoned that a great deal of nonverbal communication is intended to establish common ground: gesture, posture, expression, inflection, and the like are peripheral to communication, but define the relationship between people in basic ways (dominance/status) as well as specific ways (cultural similarity).

The author uses physical distance as an example of the way in which people of different cultures communicate: Americans typically seek 18 to 24 inches of personal space, Scandinavians a bit more, and those of southern Europe and South America a bit less. The author speaks to the comical slow motion "dance" that is seen when one person attempts to stand too closely to another. But as two people of different cultures become acquainted with one another, they eventually work out a mutually acceptable distance.

Speech Acts

Speech Acts refers to the purposes to which language is used, for which five categories have been identified:

  1. Representative - Presents a statement of belief that the speaker wishes the listener to accept as truth. Example: "Bob is a liar." Such a statement may be supported by an argument or evidence, but in itself is a statement about a belief, even if something is believed to be a fact.
  2. Directive - Indicates that the speaker wishes the listener to do something. Example: "Help me lift this." A directive may be a polite request of an abrupt order, but its nature is essentially the same.
  3. Commitment - Indicates that the speaker intends to do something. Example: "I am going to leave at six." Commitments pertain to the future, as past and present actions are representations.
  4. Expressive - Presents a statement about the state of the speaker. Example: "I am upset with you." Expressions are usually psychological, as statements related to action or somatic state are taken to be representations.
  5. Declarative - The speaker intends by the very act of making a statement to bring about a change in the state of affairs. Example: "I pronounce you husband and wife." A declaration is similar to a representation, though its intent is more in the nature of creating rather than merely acknowledging.

There are also four indirect speech acts, differentiated from regular speech acts in that the desire of the speaker is not directly communicated but implied:

Indirect speech acts are often used by an individual in a disempowered position to make a polite request of another person who is in an empowered position (they have the option to refuse, or their status is such that the other person has no authority to command them). They may also be used by passive-aggressive or manipulative persons to infer that others have a responsibility to do their bidding, without risking the kind of confrontation that might occur if they gave a directive.

Conversational Protocols

Within conversation there are protocols by which information is exchanged - appropriate ways of asking a question to get an answer that falls within the desired parameters and appropriate ways to respond to certain questions.

For example, consider the greeting ritual of "Hello. How are you?" The appropriate response is a brief and positive statement such as "Fine" or "All Right" rather than a lengthy report of one's physical and emotional state.

To violate such conventions is to obstruct conversation. The querent must either rephrase the query to get the information he desires, or give up on getting the information he originally desired from the respondent - whether the conversation turns to another topic or he simply chooses to terminate the conversation.

The author defines some "maxims" of communication protocol:

(EN: The author originally provided four, but I felt the need to subdivide: sufficiency and precision were lumped together as "quantity" and honesty and reliability as "quality" and "Clarity" etc.)

As the explanations above suggest, conversational protocols are meant to be followed, though there are certain situations in which a violating them either facilitates or intentionally obfuscates interaction.

Gender and Language

There are often marked differences in the way that people of different genders communicate using language. (EN: It's worth noting that many characterizations of gender-based language are dismissed as stereotypes - but they nonetheless bear out).

Some random bits:

(EN: On the point of dominance, it's often been observed that men in a disadvantaged position - either physically weaker or having less clout within an organizational setting - adopt more submissive roles, and women in advantaged positions adopt more dominant roles in conversation. So it may, indeed, be less a matter of gender and more a matter of power and the tendency of females to assume a submissive position by default is a cultural issue.)

The difference in communications styles between the genders is such that their interaction is likened to cross-cultural communication. This leads to many misunderstandings, to the degree that communication is the root of many relationship issues.

Some effort has been made to equalize the status of women and men in western culture, but even in situations in which they are politically or socially equal, the differences in communication styles remain. The present climate seems to favor encouraging the understanding of the cultural differences rather than changing the culture itself - that men and women should try to understand one another to improve communication rather than altering their gender identity or roles.

In a sidebar, the author suggests that gender differences in communication can be leveraged by a speaker: by adopting the appropriate manner of conversation based on the gender of the other party, we can more effectively communicate with them. (EN: This seems a little patronizing, but is likely true that you cannot count on the other party to consider your style and must adapt to theirs, though in general my sense is that conversation among people or groups of people shifts to the conversational preferences of the party that has the most power, by virtue of their status prior to the conversation.)

Discourse and Reading Comprehension

The author defines "discourse" as a communicative unit of language that is longer than an individual sentence. A story or lecture, an essay, a book, or even a conversation are instances in which the meaning of multiple sentences must be retained to understand the whole matter that is being communicated.

Just as grammar and syntax are applied to structure sentences, so do passages of discourse have a systematic structure that is necessary to their comprehension, which is necessary to communicate the relation of information presented in individual sentences. To take a unit of communication as simple as a brief paragraph and rearrange the order of the sentences is to obfuscate comprehension.

The author provides a brief paragraph in which one person speaks to another of a book. The reader is able to grasp the meaning of a pronoun (he/she/it) very easily, as well as to understand a response such as "yes" in reference to a question one person asks of the other.

When we study the production of discourse (writing or speaking) we learn its various forms and structures - but intimate knowledge of these forms and structures is not necessary for the reader to understand a passage of text. He seems to be able to do so by applying his experience of discourse to the text and derive its meaning without being able to identify its structure.

"Semantic encoding" is the process by which sensory information is translated into words. The most basic form of semantic encoding is assigning a word to a thing that we may speak of it in a way that others understand the object or concept we wish to convey. To compose a sentence, we must have the words in memory that describe things, actions, and their qualities.

In that sense, knowledge of vocabulary is the basis for the ability to communicate and understand what others are attempting to communicate to us. The ability to pronounce a word is separate to the knowledge of what it means. (EN: An excellent point, as there are many instances in miscommunication where people will guess the meaning that they do not know, or even instances in which a speaker will use a word improperly because he does not understand its meaning.)

Consequently, people with larger vocabularies interpret the meaning of information in speech or in text much more rapidly and accurately than people with smaller vocabularies, and they also have greater facility in encoding their own thoughts into words.

Aside of study to memorize the meaning of the word, we also attempt to derive meaning from context - that is, rather than seek or ask what was meant, we engage in a form of analysis to attempt to guess it based on contextual cues. (EN: I speculate that this proclivity stems from esteem - the desire not to seem unintelligent by asking the speaker to define a term results in failing to gain knowledge, thence to seem all the less intelligent by responding incorrectly or, worse, misusing the term in speech.)

On a syntactic level, we can quickly assess the function of a word in the context - to know if the imaginary word "flidge" is a noun or a verb by the way it is used - and then apply the information we do understand to arrive at a rough approximation of its meaning. In the sentence "John flidged his answer because he did not understand the question" we immediately recognize the word to be a verb, and we understand it to convey a sense of failure or inappropriateness applies to John's response. (EN: Referring to an earlier passage, this is the reason we are able to continue a conversation when a speaker has had a slip of the tongue.)

It's also noted that high-verbal individuals (larger vocabulary, broader syntax, etc.) are better able to estimate the meaning of an unknown word by virtue of having a larger lexicon (particularly prefixes, suffixes, and parts of words) and a better grasp of how words function in context.

In terms of understanding information in discourse, one theory (Kintsch) maintains that we attempt to maintain information in active memory to understand what we read - but rather than storing the exact words, we extract the fundamental ideas from groups of words, so that they might be used to interpret new or unknown information. That is to say that we hold propositions in memory, which are pieces of a sentence. ("Penguins are arctic flightless birds" represents three propositions, bot one: penguins live in the arctic, penguins cannot fly, and penguins are birds.)

As such, the capacity of short-term memory is not taxed by the number of words, but the number of propositions - such that whatever the language used, a passage of text that contains more propositions requires greater mental effort to understand, and there is greater risk of a necessary proposition dropping from short-term memory.

It is also reckoned that propositions that are assumed to be central to the subject of a discourse (macropropositions) are retained in memory longer than those that seem incidental to it. This apparently applies to long-term memory as well as short: an experiment (Kintsch) that asked subjects to read a 1300-word passage of text and summarize the main ideas immediately, a month later, and three months later found that subjects had the ability to recount the central propositions just as well in later summaries as the one they wrote immediately after reading it - but extraneous details were mostly forgotten after one month and completely forgotten after three.

(EN: Leaping ahead again, this would explain the reason that two people may have entirely different interpretations of a conversation. Each of them presupposed what the topic was, remembered the propositions relevant to their assumption, and forgot any that that they presumed to be irrelevant. Because they had different expectations in advance, they had different interpretations in arrears.)

It follows then that the recipient of a message immediately translates the words of the message into propositions, and then assembles the propositions into the discourse - that is to say that they comprehend the propositions used to describe a subject rather than the exact words used to describe it. Their mental representation of discourse represents the main ideas communicated rather than the exact language.

However, there may be a disconnection between what the sender of a message intended to be the main subject and what the receiver took to be the main subject. That is to say that a speaker states "John broke his watch when he fell down the stairs" means to focus on the broken wristwatch, whereas a listener might be more attentive to the accident that caused it to become broken, and will be primed to pay attention to information about the accident and ignore any further information about the watch - even to the point of substituting a different concept entirely, "I thought you said he broke his wrist when he fell down the stairs."

This arises because understanding a discourse requires a mental model to be created that makes inferences about what the subject of the conversation will be, so that relevant details may be given priority. Much of this pertains to the degree to which the message is focused: the more extraneous detail provided, the greater the possibility that the listener will misidentify the topic of the sentence.

There is some reference to "bridging inferences" that can cause disconnection. To say that "John took his lunch out of his backpack. The egg salad had spoiled" requires the listener to make the connection that the egg salad was part of the lunch to which the speaker had just referred. In such an instance, a wordier message can avoid misunderstanding. "John brought an egg salad sandwich for lunch. When he took his lunch out of the backpack, he found that the egg salad had spoiled." While there are more propositions in the second passage, the meaning is less mistakable to a listener.

There is a minimalist proposition that asserts that readers of a message attempt to use the most proximate information to interpret a sentence in a discourse - that what was said in the previous sentence is used to the exclusion of information in the sentence just before that one, and to the exclusion of information from the previous paragraph, and to the exclusion of any pre-existing knowledge in the reader's mind about the subject in question ... but the author suggests that the evidence for this is not consistent or compelling.

What we remember from a given discourse often depends on our point of view, or the mental state in which we happened to be when we first heard or read it.

The author gives the example of a passage of text that describes a mansion, combining information about its state disrepair (a leaky roof and a musty basement) as well as some of the more lavish contents (silver candlesticks and a collection of antique coins displayed on the mantle), and suggests that a prospective buyer and a prospective burglar would pay attention to different details, per their interests.

(EN: A more subtle distinction is made in the bargaining process, in which a seller expects a higher price because of the positive features of the home such as tile floors and a fireplace and the buyer offers a lower price because of defects. This is particularly evident in advertising where products are described in desirable terms and the undesirable ones are omitted or relegated to the small text.)

Neuropsychology of Language

The neuropsychology of language often focuses on the defects in speech and interpretation related to specific conditions.

Aphasia

Aphasia is a broad category that pertains to impairment of language functioning resulting from damage to the brain. There are a number of different types of apahsia:

Autism

Autisms a development disorder whose symptoms include abnormalities in cognition, social behavior, and language. It is biological in nature, though work to identify specific genetic markers has not been sufficiently conclusive. Moreover, various theories attribute it to different parts of the brain, and some attribute it to multiple parts. In sum, we recognize the condition but have only a vague idea of its causes, except that it is not caused by damage or trauma but seems to be innate.

There are various theories as to the nature of the disease, but they generally focus on difficulties in communication among different parts of the brain. That is, each part of the brain functions properly, but they are not coordinated - analogous to an orchestra of musicians each playing a different tune, and playing it perfectly.

About half of autistic subjects fail to develop functional speech, though the nature of impairment is highly idiosyncratic and there are virtually no common symptoms save for echolalia, a condition in which a subject will repeat (over and over) a phrase they have heard, either immediately or several hours after initially hearing it.

Lesion Studies and Event-related Potentials Research

By studying patients with brain liaisons, researchers have associated many linguistic functions to specific regions of the brain. For example, lesions in Wernicke's area have led to a better understanding of certain kinds of aphasia, but at the same time have indicated linguistic function is governed by a much larger part of the posterior cortex than Wernicke himself theorized.

Additionally ,recent imaging studies of post-traumatic recovery of linguistic function have found that, when one area is damaged, certain functions are relocated to other parts of the brain. For example, in a patient who suffered damage to the areas of the left hemisphere typically associated with language, increased electrochemical activity occurred in the right hemisphere; or in other instances, activity in the frontal lobe developed after damage to the temporal lobe in areas that were once dormant during linguistic performance.

According to one model (Gerschwind 1970), speech sounds received in the inner ear are received by the primary auditory cortex of the temporal lobe, then to an association area at the junction of temporal, occipital, and parietal lobes join, at which point meaning is assigned to the data received. From there, the processed information travels first to Wernicke's area, then to Broca's area (though it is also theorized that Wernicke's area has more to do with language production than language comprehension).

This results in a latency of about 400 milliseconds from stimulus onset, though there is a difference in speed of interpretation based on whether the sentence heard was in the context of a discourse (it may be as much as 6000 milliseconds of the sentence represents an abrupt change in topic or is entirely anomalous).

It's also noted that men and women process language differently at the phonological level. An MRI study of men and women (Shaywitz 1995) asked participants to perform one of four tasks (recognize when two letters were identical, when two words had the same meaning, when words rhymed, and compare the lengths of two lines, the last as a control task). Both men and women performing letter-recognition and word-meaning tasks demonstrated activity in the left temporal lobe. When performing rhyming tasks, men showed activity in the lower left frontal lobe and women also showed activity in the lower right frontal lone.

In a broader sense, men tend to show more left-hemisphere activity during linguistic function than do women, whereas women show activity in both hemispheres, but to a lesser degree. In terms of lesions or injury to the brain, this suggests that women should recover more quickly and more completely given that activity is dispersed.

Another study (Kimura) examined the way in which sign language is received and interpreted, which found that subjects process sign language and spoken languages in very similar ways. While signing involves spatial processing and motor functioning rather than auditory discrimination, once the sense-data is received it is interpreted as language regardless of the medium of communication.

There is also evidence that the mechanisms responsible for learning language are different to the ones involved in using a language that is already known. In general, the left hemisphere is most active when executing processed and practiced routines where the right hemisphere is active when dealing with novel stimuli.

A related finding is that individuals who learn a second language later in life, rather that learning multiple languages as a child, show greater right-hemisphere involvement when speaking in an unusual language. (There is a caveat that this is not true of all people).

While a great deal of information has been gleaned from styling patients with lesions or trauma, there is some reluctance to draw conclusions solely based on this evidence:

Other Methods

Although lesion studies have been valuable, researchers have also used other methods to investigate the localization of linguistic functions.

One example (Ojemann) involves the use of electrical stimulation of the brain. Stimulation studies have found that certain locations of the brain seem to have discreet effects on particular functions. Stimulation of one point might result in difficulty recalling the names of objects, whereas stimulation to another might lead to easy but incorrect name association. However, it has been found that there is a high degree of idiosyncrasy, such that two subjects might react differently to the same location and level of stimulation, so these observations cannot be reliably generalized.

Some observations have been made from stimulation studies

The flow of blood and oxygen in the brain has also been used as a method to observe activity when practicing linguistic skills.

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