Speaking the Heard Word

 Speaking the Heard Word

To speak a word that is heard, information must first get to the primary auditory cortex. From the primary auditory cortex, information is transmitted to the posterior speech area, including Wernicke's area. From Wernicke's area, information travels to Broca's area, then to the Primary Motor Cortex.

The Brain's Cerebral Cortex (Neocortex)

Speaking the Written Word 

 

 

To speak a word that is read, information must first get to the primary visual cortex. From the primary visual cortex, information is transmitted to the posterior speech area, including Wernicke's area. From Wernicke's area, information travels to Broca's area, then to the Primary Motor Cortex.

Noam Chomsky

Professional Life

Avram Noam Chomsky was born on December 7, 1928, in Philadelphia. He was raised in a Hebrew environment and was exposed to anarchist politics, Zionism and anti-Semitism from a young age. Chomsky attended the Oak Lane County Day School and graduated from the Central High School of Philadelphia. He enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania and focused his studies on linguistics and philosophy, earning his Bachelor’s and his Master’s from UPenn. In 1955, Chomsky earned his Ph.D. in linguistics, also from UPenn, and spent time at Harvard conducting research for his doctorate thesis. The four years he spent as a Harvard Junior Fellow produced not only a prominent thesis, but also led to the eventual publication of one of his most acclaimed books on linguistics, Syntactic Structures.

In 1955, Chomsky left Harvard to accept a position with MIT. A few short years later, he earned his full professorship. Chomsky held several different titles during his more than a half of century with MIT, including Institute Professor and Ferrari P. Ward Professorship. Chomsky was also very active in politics and his anti-war views, published in several of his writings, caused controversy and led to several death threats. An expert in linguistics, Chomsky still travels regularly and conducts seminars, workshops and speaking engagements.

Contribution to Psychology

Chomsky is best known for his influence on linguistics, specifically, the development of transformational grammar. Chomsky believed that formal grammar was directly responsible for a person’s ability to understand and interpret mere utterances. Although Chomsky did not believe that language was innate, he did theorize that animals and humans were both capable of similar types of comprehension when exposed to specific linguistic information, but only humans could continue to develop those abilities through a process he called “language acquisition device (LAD).” Chomsky thought that if the LAD for all human languages could be discovered, it could result in features that would be universal to all tongues, known as “universal grammar.”

Chomsky further developed his linguistic theories in a series of lectures which were published under the name of Lectures on Government and Binding. The lectures covered the Principles and Parameters (P&P) technique that Chomsky formed based on the assumption that every language had similar parameters that could be manipulated and modified. By doing so, learning a language would only require the acquisition of a core set of linguistic principles.

Chomsky also contributed to the field of phonology and influenced the works of other experts including Michael Tomasello and Elizabeth Bates. He explored language hierarchy, a method of classification that has impacted the computer science field dramatically. Chomsky’s linguistic discoveries have benefited the field of psychology in many ways as well. Linguistics itself is a discipline of cognitive psychology, and strives to understand how language is learned and used by children.

In addition to his impact on psychological approaches, Chomsky also contributed to the literary field with his more than 100 published books. He has been recognized for his work as an activist, philosopher, scientist, and professor with numerous honorary degrees and awards, including the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science and the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award.

Children leaning language

Language & the brain

Chomsky's view of language

Language Development

Development and Imitation

Pictures from the Research Trips

Language Acquisition Device

The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is a postulated "organ" of the brain that is supposed to function as a congenital device in language acquisition. First proposed by Noam Chomsky, the LAD concept is an instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and produce language. It is component of the nativist theory of language. This theory asserts that humans are born with the instinct or "innate facility" for acquiring language. Chomsky has gradually abandoned the LAD in favour of a parameter-setting model of language acquisition (principles and parameters). Chomsky motivated the LAD hypothesis by what he perceived as intractable complexity of language acquisition, citing the notion of "infinite use of finite means" proposed by Wilhelm von Humboldt. At the time it was conceived (1957–1965), the LAD concept was in strict contrast to B.F. Skinner's behavioral psychology which emphasized principles of learning theory such as classical and operant conditioning and imitation over biological predisposition. The interactionist theory of Jerome Bruner and Jean Piaget later emphasized the importance of the interaction between biological and social (nature and nurture) aspects of language acquisition. Differing from the behaviorists who emphasize the importance of social interactions in language acquisition, Chomsky (1965) set out an innate language schema which provides the basis for the child’s acquisition of a language. The acquisition process takes place in an infant's mind because of this mental organ which enables him/her to speak despite the limited nature of the Primary Linguistic Data (PLD, the input signals received) and the degenerate nature (frequent incorrect usage, utterances of partial sentences) of that data. Given this poverty of the stimulus, a language acquisition model requires a number of components. Firstly, the child must have a technique for representing input signals and, secondly, a way of representing structural information about them. Thirdly, there must be some initial delimitation of the class of possible language structure hypotheses. Fourthly, the child requires a method for determining what each of these hypotheses implies with respect to each sentence. Finally, an additional method is needed by which the child can select which hypothesis is compatible with the PLD. Equipped with this endowment, first language learning is explained as performed by a Language Acquisition Device progressing through the following stages: The device searches the class of language structure hypotheses and selects those compatible with input signals and structural information drawn from the PLD. The device then tests the compatibility using the knowledge of implications of each hypothesis for the sentences. One hypothesis or ‘grammar’ is selected as being compatible with the PLD. This grammar provides the device with a method of interpreting sentences (by virtue of its capacity for internally representing structural information and applying the grammar to sentences). 

Source: Wikepedia