Language & mind

Language & Mind in Linguistics.

1. Chapter 8 Language & Mind Group 8 BS (Hons) English Hafsa Wahid (13) Lecturer : Ma’am Shaista Rana Haidar (47) Nida Zameer (21) Hamza Tahir (38) Sonila Younas (30)

2. Language & Mind… Universal Grammar & Its Relevance Mentalism, Rationalism & Innateness Language & The Brain

3. Universal Grammar & Its Relevance

4. In 13 th & 18 th century, a system of universal grammar was developed in which the connection between logic and grammar was made clear with some kind of philosophical justification. But for various reasons, universal grammar, in the traditional sense went out of favour in the course of 19 th century. It revived in the last twenty years, as a part of ‘Generativism’ by Chomsky and his followers. Chomsky’s version of universal grammar suggests that: ‘’Some rules of grammar are hard-wired into the brain , and manifest without being taught .’’

5. It is language that is being investigated, rather than some other faculty or mode of operation of the human mind, a whole new subdiscipline has developed in recent years called Psycholinguistics .

6. Psycholinguistics is the study of language & mind: the mental structures & process which are involved in the acquisition, comprehension & production of language. Neurolinguistics is the study of physical structure of brain & how language is represented & processed in the brain. Cognitive sciences is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind & its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It focuses on how information is represented, processed, and transformed within nervous systems. Sociolinguistics studies relation between language & society: how social factors influence the structure & use of language.

7. The existence of mind & its relation to the body which it inhabits, or with which it is in some way associated, constitute a long-standing & controversial philosophical problem. To formulate & solve the Mind-Body problems , the following may be mentioned here:- Dualism Materialism Idealism Monism

8. Mentalism, Rationalism & Innateness Chomsky & his followers have claimed that language provide evidence for mentalism: i.e. for a belief in the existence of mind. They say that the acquisition & use of language can’t be explained without making an appeal to principles of any purely physiological account of human beings. They refuse those psychologists, notably the behaviourists, who insist that everything that is traditionally described as mental is the product of simple physical processes. Chomskyan mentalism has both negative & positive aspect. Its negative aspect is its anti-physicalism or anti-materialism and anti-behaviourism .

9. Reductionism: It’s a doctrine that some sciences are more basic than others, in the sense that the theoretical concepts of a less basic science are to be defined, ultimately, in terms of the theoretical concepts of a more basic science. Chomsky’s positive aspect constitutes original & controversial part of his mentalism. Chomsky sides with the rationalists , who emphasize the role of reason. He takes the view that the principles whereby the mind acquires knowledge are innate. That mind is not a blank slate upon which experience leaves its imprint, rather it’s a block of marble, which can be hewn into several shapes but whose structure imposes constraints upon the sculptor’s creativity.

10. Chomsky says: Language serves for the expression of thought that human beings are innately endowed with the capacity of form some concepts rather than others and that concept formation is a precondition of one’s acquisition of the meaning of words . Chomsky’s positive contribution to the philosophy of mint & to the psychology of language-acquisition, rests upon his recognition of the importance of structure-dependency as an apparently universal property of human languages. Structure-dependency: To say that a rule is structure-dependent is to imply that the set or sequence of objects to which it applies has an internal structure and that the rule makes essential reference to this structure as a condition of applicability or determinant of its manner of application.

11. Besides Chomsky’s mentalism another theory was also influential by Swiss psychologist, Piaget . Known as theory of Cognitive Development. According to Piaget, there are four stages in development of child’s mental processes. Sensori-motor stage Pre-operational stage Concrete operational stage Formal operational stage

12. In these stages, crucial for language-acquisition, in Piaget’s view, is the transition from the sensori-motor stage , which lasts from birth to about two years old. During this stage child experiments with concrete objects in his environment. Next is pre-operational stage , which lasts from two to seven years. During this stage child comes to manipulate words & phrases on the basis of his prior understanding of the way in which concrete objects can be compared, moved around & transformed. Attractive in Piaget’s work is its attempt to account for language-acquisition in terms of more general principles of mental development.

13. ‘‘ Language & The Brain ’’ Structure Of Brain:- The brain plays the most significant role in the operations that we normally described as mental. The human brain is very complex the way it performs its various functions. The brain – most particularly the cerebrum – is divided into two halves, or hemispheres , linked by the corpus callosum . The outer layer of both hemispheres consists of grey matter – the cortex – containing neurons & nerve cells; & these are interconnected by means of an equally numerous set of fibres in the white matter that lies below the cortex. The right hemisphere controls the left side of the body, whereas the left hemisphere controls the right side.

14. There is a s pecial relationship between language & that left hemisphere, so generally speaking language is controlled by left hemisphere. The process whereby one hemisphere of the brain is specialized for the performance of certain functions is known as lateralization. The process of lateralization is maturational, in the sense that it is genetically preprogrammed, but takes time to develop. Lateralization seems to be specific in human beings. It is generally thought to begin when the child is about 2 years old & to be complete at some time between the age of five & the onset of puberty.

15. Lateralization in general is commonly held to be an evolutionary precondition of man’s development of superior intelligence. It is widely held view that lateralization is a precondition of the acquisition of language. It becomes difficult to acquire language after the age at which lateralization is complete, it is referred to as critical age for language acquisition in the sense that language will not be acquired at all, or at least not with full mastery of its resources after this age. Language acquisition faculty is independent of other intellectual abilities. Different aspects of language processing appear to be more characteristic of the left hemisphere than others.

16. Language behaviour involves the integration of several neurophysiologically distinct processes. All these things are certainly consistent with Chomskyan hypothesis that Language-faculty is a uniquely human but genetically transmitted capacity which is distinct from, but operates in collaboration with, other mental faculties.