APHASIA

Aphasia      - damage to brain tissue resulting in language loss

   - caused by strokes, cerebral tumors and lesions, accidents

   - 98% of cases involve damage to perisylvian area of left hemispheric cortex

   - children much more likely to recover from aphasia

Aphasia studies suggest that the perisylvian area is subdivided into at least two smaller areas with distinct functions:  Broca's and Wernicke's Regions

Damage to the entire perisylvian area results in complete language loss

Damage to one or the other region causes two very different types of aphasia

Broca's Region - front portion of perisylvian area

Broca's Aphasia (Emissive, or Agrammatic Aphasia)

Named in 1861 after French doctor Paul Broca

Symptoms:

- great difficulty in speaking, but less difficulty in understanding.

- speech is labored, mainly consists of isolated content words

- grammatical, syntactic connectedness, function words and affixes lost.

- grammar is destroyed; the lexicon more or less preserved intact.

Wernicke's Region - back portion of perisylvian area

Wernicke's Aphasia (Receptive, or Jargon Aphasia)

Named in 1861 after German doctor Karl Wernicke

Symptoms:

- mirror opposite of Broca's aphasia

- patient blabs nonstop, uttering long-winded, grammatically fluent nonsense

- can't understand or respond to the content of questions

- grammar, syntax, function morphemes preserved

- content words mostly destroyed, uses substitutes like "whatchamacallit"

Broca's region apparently houses elements of language that have

   specific function but no specific meaning: 

   syntactic rules, phonological patterns, function morphemes

   that is, the grammatical glue which holds the context together.

Wernicke's region houses the elements of language that have

   specific meaning:  the content words, the lexemes,

   the entire dictionary of ready-made meaningful elements (listemes)

       which a speaker selects when filling in a context.

Do sub-areas of Broca's and Wernicke's region house

   specific subcomponents of grammar or lexicon?  Probably yes.

Implications of aphasia studies for understanding symbolic human behavior.

Semiotics - the study of the intentional use of signs (including language)

Roman Jakobson (Russian linguist) - connected aphasia with semiotics

All semiotic systems contain only two types of cognitive associations:

Contiguity                                                                          Similarity/contrast

(real connectedness in time and space)                        (connectedness in imagination)    

Metonymy, Synecdoche                                              Metaphor, Simile                    

contiguous, but otherwise unlike concepts            synonyms, antonyms, type

Examples:                                                  Examples:

KNIFE- fork, food, eat, meat, cut, blade           dagger, sword, pin

WINE - drunk, tipsy, hangover, grapes champagne, drink, liquor

lost by Broca's aphasic                                                lost by Wernicke's aphasic

CONTIGUITY DISORDER                                               SIMILARITY DISORDER

SEMIOTIC STYLES AND TENDENCIES APPARENTLY DOMINATED BY

BROCA'S REGION                                            WERNICKE'S REGION

prose                                                   poetry

documentary                                       fiction

realism                                                            vs. romanticism

                                                                             symbolism, surrealism

cubism                                                 vs. impressionism

contagious magic                                            vs. sympathetic magic

Conclusions about the perisylvian area:

- involvement in communication unique to humans

- builds not only language, but all conscious symbolic behavior

- humans have inborn propensity for creative symbolic behavior

General conclusion:

                             Keep studying linguistics!