Author : Jarek A. Sierschynski
Release : 2012
Genre : Language acquisition
Kind : eBook
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Book Synopsis Representing and Perceiving Language as a Natural Structure in the Environment by : Jarek A. Sierschynski

Download or read book Representing and Perceiving Language as a Natural Structure in the Environment written by Jarek A. Sierschynski. This book was released on 2012. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dissertation, I propose a view of language which allows it to be treated as a natural structure in the environment. As I show, much of the natural view of language originates from discussions in linguistics and biolinguistics (e.g., Chomsky, 1967, 1986; Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch, 2002) but is also tied to work in language acquisition (e.g., Kuhl, 2004; Lidz, Waxman, & Freedman, 2003) as well as neuroplasticity (e.g., Bach-y-Rita, 1972; Pascual-Leone et al., 2005). Throughout the dissertation I expand traditional representations of the association between the individual, language use, and correlated neurobiological structures. My expanded point of view is based on a reassessment of the relationship between the individual and the biological structures (e.g., neurons, white-fiber matter, etc.) that make language and thought possible. Ultimately, this reevaluation introduces two perspectives pertaining to the association between individual and language, (1) the bodily individual as the location of the language faculty and (2) the cortical individual as manifested in cortical structures together with neurobiological structures that are language. I demonstrate that these two positions can be joined, thus giving rise to a point of view that allows non-traditional, representational access to the language faculty and thought. I provide an example by representing language use as willful movement within neural correlates of language. In existing disciplines concerned with language, instrumentally mediated representations such as fMRI or microscopic imagery generated in investigations of neural correlates of cognition, provide much of the understanding that defines the association between individual and the brain. I maintain that these images represent the association between an instrument and a subject's brain functioning, not between the subject and the subject's neural structures. Instrumentally mediated representations provide heuristic, i.e., functional information about the brain while requiring the observer to imagine both structure and function with instruments and their representations. I examine those representations using discussions from philosophy of science (e.g. Pitt, 2005; Van Fraassen, 2008) and philosophy of art (e.g., Lopes, 1998; Wollheim, 1968) arguing that an individual's connection to neurobiological structure manifesting language can be represented as the association within and with a natural structure.