Language

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Lecture 7 Language 1. Language vs.
communication 2. Brocas Aphasia 3.
Wernickes Aphasia 4. Aphasia for action? -
Apraxia
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communication - behaviours used by one member
of a species which convey information to
another language - a communication system which
has symbols (e.g. words) and rules for ways to
put the symbols together (e.g. grammar)
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Human language (Hockett 1960) semanticity -
using a symbol to stand for something else
(e.g. a name) arbitrariness - the symbol doesnt
necessarily resemble the thing it refers to
displacement - can refer to things which are
not in the present environment
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Human language (Hockett 1960 Contd) duality -
a symbol can mean different things in different
contexts (e.g. shes the chair of that
committee vs.I need to get that chair leg
fixed)
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Kanzi and the Savage-Rumbaughs
Kanzihes a Bonobo initially learned about
lexigrams at the side of his mother
Matata also quite good at english
comprehension-could match heard word to the
lexigram additional lexigram introduced
conversationally his capacity is now 500 symbols
(comprehension?) and 200 for production
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quotable quote from (the inaccurately named)
Famous monkeys through history page
http//www.ape-o-naut.org/famous/famous/reallife.h
tml formerly Great Monkeys biography page I
saw Kanzi following requests on T.V. and let me
tell you, that chimp can talk!!! Kanzi is much
better at responding to vocal commands like "Take
off Sue's shoe." In one particularly arresting
feat, recorded on videotape, Kanzi was told,
"Give the dog a shot." The chimpanzee picked up a
hypodermic syringe lying on the ground in front
of him, pulled off the cap and injected a toy
stuffed dog. more on Kanzi from the Georgia
State University Language Research Centre (LRC)
group can be read here http//www.gsu.edu/wwwlrc
/biographies/kanzi.html
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Brocas aphasia an acquired language disorder
where the patient has trouble producing speech
but less trouble in comprehending
speech expressive aphasia non-fluent
aphasia
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Goodglass cookie theft picture
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Wernickes Aphasia an acquired language
disorder where comprehension of speech is most
impaired while the patient can still produce
speech(but often just a word salad) fluent
aphasia
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A description of the Cookie theft picture by a
patient with Wernickes aphasia ...they have
the cases, the cookies, and they were helping
each other with the good
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neologism - new word - errors in
pronounciation or complete creation of words
which are not part of the recognized language
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Neologisms of a Wernickes aphasic ..it was
my job as a convince, a confoser, not confoler
but almost the same as a man who was
commersed Oh posho oh pat and he indent have
the pat. Letenseped anyeted, oh how in kennel
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• Kim et al. (1997). Distinct cortical areas
  associated with native and second languages.
  Nature, 388, 171-174.
• studied bilingual participants who had acquired
  their second language late in life or early
• used fMRI to image the working brain while
  performing tasks in both languages

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Kim et al. (1997) Nature, 388, 171-174 only one
focus in posterior brain (Wernickes area)
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Kim et al. (1997) Nature 388, 171-174 language
acquired late, two separate foci in the frontal
regions of the brain (Brocas area?)
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Herbert, M.R. et al. (2002). Abnormal language
asymmetry in language association cortex in
Autism. Annals of Neurology, 52, 588-596.
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Apraxia the inability to carry out skilled or
purposeful actions which cannot be explained by
hemipariesis, dementia or aphasia e.g. poor
movements to verbal command Show me how you
would make a salute e.g. poor copying of
movementsDo exactly as I do