IUBio

Neural level influencing functional descriptions

F. Frank LeFever flefever at ix.netcom.com
Thu Sep 24 22:54:46 EST 1998


Well, it apppears cijadra can wrote quite coherently and with relevant
and interesting content when not tripping on acid!

Too tired (too late at night) for comment on anything but the first
point she makes.  This is known as "code switching" among those who
study fluent bilinguals, and apparently there is some orderliness to
when they switch from one language to another--I believe usually
described in cognitive or social/emotional terms, but in keeping with
my earlier speculation one might think of it in terms of varying
inhibition and rebound, etc.  Socially, this is an important aspect of
communities of bilinguals--in New York City one hears it very
pervasively among English/Spanish bilinguals.

I don't think similarity of grammars is likely to explain it very well.
 My impression is that English and Arabic grammars are much farther
apart than English and German or English and Spanish.

F. Frank




In <36082ab0.39230950 at news.zedat.fu-berlin.de>
cijadra at zedat.fu-berlin.de (Cijadrachon) writes: 
>
>flefever at ix.netcom.com(F. Frank LeFever) wrote:
>
>>... I suggest that these nearby but different language
>>circuits might be mutually inhibitory, making rapid sucession
>>alternation difficult.
>Heard a group of Egyptians changing between Arabic and English often
>even without seeming to notice, often even within the same sentence.
>Might also have to do with how com[patible the grammar is and what you
>are used to?
>>  (How simultaneous translaters manage it, I
>>don't know!)
>The input channels are not the island left out front (that you call
>Broaca's ...) that has to do with the output.
>Might have to do with that.
>
>However altering to often between English and German I start to
>seriously mess up the  grammar in both.
>
>
>>In <6sn4qb$953 at omni.cc.purdue.edu> garyjaz at omni.cc.purdue.edu (Gary
>>Jasdzewski) writes: 
>
>>>Some people in the cognitive sciences, such as linguistics, 
>Cognito = thinking?
>Not sure of the language structurer does what I call thinking,
>at least not in the way mine or the other sort of CPU in the brain do.
>
>Not sure, but maybe I more I select a mode, like Hochdeutsch, Berlin
>slight slang, Berlin deeper slang, German sounding English with a
>tinge of British or American or other groups of English...
>And when it babbles away I might sort of supervise a bit?
>
>
>>argue that we should pay attention to research from the neurosciences
so that our
>>higher level descriptions of some behavior will be neurally
plausible.
>Behaviour like which? Do you mean what might change emotionally
>changing from one language to the other? Or something else?
>
>>  I think this is a good idea, and I'm searching for some good
examples of it at
>>>work from any field.  
>
>...second language...
>
>I might have mentioned it before.
>
>There were two US-American sisters who had lived in Germany for two
>years and then were 5 and 7 years old,
>having spent most time together from what I understood.
>The older made far less  grammar mistakes, but had a broad American
>accent, opposite to the younger one who pronounced words like a German
>here would.
>
>...After a concussion I'd sometimes even mix English and German,
>though rarely, and writing I could not keep style.
>Before  I was able to distinguish quite well between slang ways and
>formal language and exaggerated formal way.
>Afterwards I'd  mix them at the most impossible spots without
>intending to.
>
>...Coming back from the USA after having lived there for some months
>it happend to me that I'd pronounce German words like "Musik" or
>"Japan" the English "syllable-stress" way.
>
>...After the concussion I felt like having holes in the language
>structurer and till this day if I don't watch it I still make rows of
>mistakes and letter changes, though not leaving out entire words and
>syllbles much anymore as in the start I did a lot, also in the start
>many sentences did not make sense anymore.
>A lot felt like learning new, but easier than really learning new.
>
>Mistakes occured in English and German,
>and were similar in both, did  mot have the feeling that it had much
>to do with the language chosen, several areas of my brain simply felt
>like swiss cheese with too many holes.
>
>Practicing a lot within 4-6 months the worst I trained back, a little
>more than a year later I had the impressions, though that might be
>wrong, that a lot of the glia had repaired and that cabelling out
>started to work again better, and then a lot receded fast.
>
>Today when I am tired a lot of mistakes sneak back in.
>
>And watching spelling is still stress in a way it was not before the
>concussion, in places where there aren't people like Frank and  some
>others, and where it is less important how I spell and more how I
>write, I often write off without bothering how I spell stuff much,
>and leave it to people to ask in case I really should fubar it too
>much.
>
>...I might be very wrong, but I had the fleeting suspicion that the
>language structurer (Broca's whatever) might park vocabulary also
>around it.
>...I can talk without it, too, but  the only time I tried after
>someone insisted, though I warned him that it was off-line due to some
>drug-stuff, and that I had not forced it online yet, the contents of
>several sentences came out at once, mostly nouns and verbs, grammar
>adios.
>As  I had predicted him the according person did not get what I said.
>Also the mouth/tongue - control to do with talking felt weird, bit
>like when being drunk. Guess the steering is usually run other ways.
>
>Vocabulary was  far more limited.
>Don't think I could have gotten up to "adjourn".
>Guess "table" would have been there, though.
>Sort of base words still being there, complicated, rarely used stuff
>not.
>
>...After the concussion, when I had scrambled a sentence real bad and
>had gotten all the missing words and syllables back in, turned the 2-3
>letter words and some word positions back around to the order of
>letters they are supposed to have and maybe got sense back into the
>sentence, 
>I then sometimes realized that I had forgotten what the paragraph
>before was about, while before the concussion I used to be able to
>write 10-16  pages and have an idea what was in the, where the written
>stuff was heading, neatly squeeze together the data in words I liked
>into the sentences I was at....
>But I guess that might have had more to do  with damaged storage
>capacities of the lower frontal cortex  than with the language
>structurer.
>Also parallel processing got limited a lot.
>
>...Once after the concussion I said something different and thought
>about something to do with books (don't recall, believe I was seeking
>something near soome book-stacks) and the word "book" out of context
>went into the sentence I was speaking.
>Similar stuff happened several times.
>
>I guess that the language structurer works O.K. has a lot to do with
>transforming the right thoughts into right words.




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