User:Ramz Aziz

I am a transfer student from the University of Waterloo entering my 3rd Year in Neuroscience at Dalhousie University. Previously, I had pursued a major in the Biomedical Sciences; my deep and personal interest in the brain, cognition, neural processes and their pathways, and ultimately the general maladies and mysteries of the mind were what enticed me to switch universities and enter the specialized field of Neuroscience. Although I lack the sort of specialized knowledge about the brain due to the generality of my preceding major, I have a sufficient understanding of psychology and physiology to better develop my insight into the complexities of the mind. In terms of psycholinguistics, the subject seems titillating in the vast prospects and sheer potential that it holds. I must say I am very excited to learn more about this new topic, in the hopes that it will lead to a better understanding of the basis of human interaction: communication.

BLOG POSTS

JANUARY 10th -- 14th, 2011
The first real week of classes brought the subject of Psycholinguistics to a fantastic start, raising several intriguing questions while offering multiple avenues of thought and discussion. Although I had enrolled late in the course and unfortunately missed the greater portion of the lectures, the podcasts did an admirable job in conveying the material. There were a few points that immediately stood out to me as I listened, beginning with the section on psychological and linguistic theories. Personally, I felt Noam Chomsky hit the nail on the head via his nativism theory, which stipulates that grammar and language are intrinsic aspects of human beings and that we learn grammar based on a generative pattern. I have a 3 year old nephew, and I could see how true his theory was when applied to the development of my nephew, who demonstrated the same remarkable language-learning ability based on the generative natural and environmental factors that Chomsky mentions. However, the aspect of the lectures which really sent me on a long train of thought was the relation between language and our ability to think. Personally, I feel that language is integral to our humanity, as it dictates human interaction and our own ability to rationalize and think deeply about the world. If language is foreign to a person, or absent from their psyche, how exactly do they think? Surely they must be able to do so, as those who are born deaf are not in any way less human or competent than those who are not. I have a relative who was born deaf, and am trying to get in touch with him to ask him these questions in order to gain a better understanding of the matter. Stemming from the relation between language and thought, I found it very interesting that language has an impact on the way we think, the way we perceive the world and in a sense, raises the question, “Is our understanding of the world or the more complex aspects of life limited or constrained by language?” This point was coincidentally raised by Dr. Crowder in his Sensory Neuroscience class, as he mentioned that bees were able to see ultraviolet light, and hence colours that we could not. If we were able to see those colours, would we be able to comprehend them? How would we define them? Similarly, how can we understand the meaning or purpose of creation or the existence of a higher power when we are restricted in our ability to think by the limited scope of our very language? Or is there a means to circumvent the problem, perhaps thinking laterally and finding alternate means to seek the truth? I am sorry if I am going off tangent by linking psycholinguistics to metaphysics, but it was certainly something that I will spend time reflecting and pondering on. This concept ties into part of Korzybski’s “The map is not the territory quote”, but even though it is true that words are a representation of a deeper concept, how do we even begin to understand or define “the thing defined” when it cannot be limited or brought within the constraints of our language? I am sure the answers to these questions will become clearer as I gain a better understanding of the relationship between psychology and language as we progress through the course. It will be interesting to see if the neurophysiological basis of linguistics holds the key.

Blog Post #2
January 17, 2011 – January 21, 2011

I really did indeed enjoy this past week in lectures, as I felt the material covered was very useful and practical since it pertained most directly to everyday life. In addition, I felt the professor was very wise to cover topics such as imaging techniques (ERP and fMRI characteristics) and how to read a journal article as this knowledge is indispensable when constructing the Wikiversity entry. Beginning with brain organization and lateralization, I felt that this is still a huge area of neuropsychology that needs to be researched. Even though it is stipulated that specific brain areas are responsible for semantics, syntax, speech comprehension and production recent evidence suggests that this is not so. I wonder how valid these early theories of brain organization are if current experiments show that brain activity is not merely localized in one area but utilizes different areas for semantic or syntactic tasks. Should I blindly accept the theory in the presence of such conflicting results? Although it may be true that brain activity is more active in a certain region, I believe more evidence is required before it is concretely determined if it is indeed localized in a neural area. I was also piqued by the concept of brain lateralization, with language stemming primarily from the left hemisphere. I do understand the subtleties of linguistics arise from the right hemisphere, but I was more interested in the left-handed, right-handed aspect of lateralization. At first glance, it seems that right-handed people are more inclined towards strong linguistic skills; however life experience dictates that it is not so. I wonder if any solid conclusions can be drawn from ongoing studies (if there are any), but it will be interesting to see further research done in the area. I also found some aspects of aphasia to be especially intriguing, specifically aphasia in a bi or multilingual person: would such a person experience aphasia in all languages, in a few or only in one? Dr. Newman said research has not been done in that regard, so that is something I will definitely keep in mind for the future. Moving on to lecture 6, Dr. Newman was a lifesaver by clearly explaining the proper methods of tackling those intimidating journal articles. This well-timed lecture certainly came in handy when researching for my Wikipedia entry, Neural Bases of Lexical Access. Although the techniques of making notes, making summaries, reading the abstract and results first etc. were all immensely useful, they are time-consuming. I only hope with more practice, I become more adept at deciphering the cryptic language used in said articles.

Blog Post #3
To begin with, I found this past week of lectures to be most informative and enlightening about the fundamentals of speech perception and the intrinsic differences between phonemes across various languages. Starting with the whole concept of spectrograms, I found it fascinating that with time, human beings could each be identified with the sound of their voices. Would that be possible? Currently, the spectrogram functions to determine the frequency (pitch) of a person’s voice, in effect providing a visual map if you will of a person’s very expression and tone. Imagine if one could interpret spectrograms consciously (though it has been stipulated that the mind does this processing in the auditory cortex subconsciously); but wouldn’t communication be so much easier if the audio information from another person was perhaps interpreted more consciously in our minds, so we were able to discern the persons actual tone and emotional state? I find that miscommunication continues to be a huge inconvenience (and at times peril) in everyday communication and conversation, so perhaps a “visual communication” tool of sorts would go a great way in accurately conveying another individual’s feelings and true message. However, moving back into the realm of reality, I found the different categories of speech perception to be a bit gray in their definition; although I do acknowledge that these categories of speech perception are ultimately useful in distinguishing between the nuances of speech, they lead to an extremely indiscernible area of linguistics: the classification of speech impediments. What defines a speech impediment? From what I can gather, I find that any variance of speech other than the norm can be classified as a speech impediment (I find that particularly terrifying, as its definition is so broad). In that case, if a person has a particular way of speaking, it is demonized and immediately derived as a speech impediment. Perhaps I am blowing an issue out of proportion, but it is definitely a topic I would like to do some more independent research on, just to clarify my own knowledge on the matter. Moving on, I found the McGurk effect to be exceptionally interesting, as I was dumbfounded by the inconceivable notion of COMPLETELY mistaking the syllables being uttered by the man. Lastly, I was most intrigued by the complexity of the processing occurring when a person is reading. What governs a person’s ability to speed read? What dictates an individual’s ability to decipher words that are jumbled up (yet they are still able to read them by using the first and last letter as cues, a form of top-down processing perhaps)? A point of particular interest is that the TRACE model and similar models of reading and interpreting phonemes are extremely similar to the word-processing models (like the spreading activation model and the hierarchical model) so does that imply that reading and speech production go hand in hand? Well there obviously is a connection, but can this relation be quantified and perhaps defined in a concrete manner? So much to know…so much to learn….

January 31st, 2011
Alas, the past week was a dry one for Psycholinguistics in face of the snowy inclement weather; I was also unable to attend the only class on Monday due to a gastral illness. I believe I missed out on a particularly interesting lecture in terms of the morphology of words. I find morphemes to be especially important, as they comprise the basic building blocks of language and their meanings. I would have especially liked to inquire more about the nature of morphemes across languages; would it be possible to discern or isolate morphemes that have migrated with populations over time? I may be confusing my concepts, but are morphemes responsible for the formation of dialects (although that may be more a phoneme phenomenon) or word connotations and meanings along a language? For instance, a certain morpheme in a word found in a certain region may hold a different meaning than the morpheme in another area. Is that even possible? My mind travels to India, which is home to over a thousand dialects last time I heard, has words that mean different things in different areas. Now does that pertain to morphemes, or is it something greater in word semantics that I am missing? I must do some more research in this area. Moving on, I found recursivity to be quite intriguing as well, considering the number of words being invented and added to the English language on a daily basis. The invention of new words must certainly have to do with the incorporation and recursivity of morphemes into existing words. With respect to the finer details of word morphology, I am still attempting to wrap my head around the dual-route models and the associative models; they all seem so plausible it may be difficult to understand the particular circumstances or nuances that they apply to.

February 7th - 11th, 2011
The lectures this week delved right into the one of the most personally anticipated aspects of linguistics that I had been waiting for. The first lecture on words was especially insightful, raising several remarkable points pertaining to words and their meaning: for instance, I appreciated the reference to one of the first lectures of the semester, in terms of the “map is not the territory” quote by Alfred Korzybski. It is truly fascinating how different languages have assigned various arbitrary words to represent not only an idea or object, but a whole range of specific feelings, circumstances and situations. I am of course referring to the Hawaiian and Fuengian languages, though I am sure several of these specific phrases exist in my own native Urdu tongue as well. Were these phrases developed in response to certain situations over time? I guess these words are gradually (due to the recursivity of morphemes I gather) formulated to describe situations, phenomenon or feelings that naturally arise in a society. In addition, Zipf’s Law was both shocking and impressive in its scope and applicability to fields even outside of linguistics. It’s astonishing to think that the frequency of words can be graded to such unnerving accuracy; that the frequency of a word is inversely proportional to its rank on the index. More so, the applicability of Zipf’s law to something like Google searches was especially fascinating; I believe the professor mentioned that the first hit was twice as searched as the second and so forth. And to think, this law follows the principle that “the path of least effort is taken”! Imagine that, a linguist establishing a bonafide mathematical model!! Undoubtedly, it demonstrates that intelligence cannot be constrained to one field. Moving on into the area of lexical access, I found the slew of models to be rather redundant and overly simple (by today’s standards I mean: some are not nearly as fancy as the dual-route model for instance). I personally do not agree that the mind is a dumb sorting machine that organizes words into the syntactic roles (like verb or adjective) before they are being processed somewhere else in the brain a la the Connectionist model. There must be a much more active center for word processing than the one suggested. However, seeing as how the neural bases said lexical access pertains to my topic, I found this area to be profoundly interesting. If anything this part of the lectures gave me a better understanding of my own topic, helping to lift the veil of confusion that enshrouded certain aspects of lexical access. Specifically, I was better able to understand the journal articles that I had previously only half-understood, in terms of their then-obscure references to models and patterns of brain activation which I had no background knowledge for. With respect to syntax, Noam Chomsky’s theory of generative grammar seems to make sense, though there a few hiccups here and there. I understand that grammar does not equate into meaning, and that words play both thematic and syntactical role in sentences. Yet, then how does one explain poetry? If I supposedly possess the marvelous powers of 100% sentence comprehension, then why do I become confused by the numerous examples of cryptic poetry that I struggle to understand? Is there a different explanation for this perhaps? Is it the elaborate use of metaphors, allegories, symbolism and such which add another layer of depth to sentences that are not covered by this theory? It is probable that I am misinterpreting some of the postulates of this theory. A last point that I found interesting also was the head-final and head-first languages having reversed roles in terms of the “players” of a sentence: I am assuming that American Sign Language falls into the head-first category since it is based on English (though I am not sure If I am correct to assume that). But does that mean sign language that stem from their respective languages also adopt the same sentence structure? Just a thought…

February 14th - 18th, 2011
The lectures this week covered some particularly exciting topics like parsing, syntax and my personal favourite, discourse. Although I no longer possess a vivid recollection of the class (since my mind was occupied with…less productive exploits during reading week), my notes resuscitated the dormant cogs of my memory back into action. To begin with, I found parse to be a fascinating lecture due to the variety and complexity of the theories discussed, such as incrementality (which I realized I was guilty of myself many time and have a strong habit of doing) and series vs. parallel processing. I infer that incrementality has a strong relation with finishing other people’s sentences: would it be possible that if two people spend a significant amount of time together, they will eventually be able to discern each other’s parse and thus be able to “read” each other’s minds? Of course I am oversimplifying it and there are a host of other factors, but it still makes for an intriguing idea. Moreover, I was viewing the whole lecture on parse from the perspective of writing: how devilishly wicked (and enticing) would it be to master the use of the intricacies of syntax? Imagine the applications!! I am salivating at the thought of being able to understand the theories (such as those regarding dependency locality and context effect) and utilizing them to lead the reader on a certain stream of thought, or to manipulate sentence structure in such a way as to confuse (but not entirely perplex) the reader in a way to add an extra layer of excitement, depth and meaning to a piece of work. I wish to someday learn how all these concepts tie in together and have a deep, comprehensive understanding of both syntax and parse; this would undoubtedly allow me to write in more creative ways, making my literary endeavours more stimulating for the reader (without being too terribly complex and making said reader feel abashed by my diabolical machinations). Also, it may be frowned upon that I am saying this, but garden path sentences are so much fun!! I especially enjoy reading all the examples Dr. Newman has provided in class, and hope to construct some of my own in my spare time. In an offshoot thought, a point of note was the terribly complex, colossal model for sentence processing proposed by Friederici (2002); although I do acknowledge that it is all very impressive and the entire chart seems plausible, I was wondering how it all tied into the behavioural models we discussed earlier. It would be nice to see how the neural bases of these things translated or related to the other behavioural models such as the network access model. Is there no relation? Or am I getting my ideas mixed up? Moving on to discourse, I especially enjoyed the question: why do we talk? The mini-discussion in class, in which it was proposed that communication was essential for survival, reproduction etc. while Dr. Newman stated that we overlooked the most obvious reason: the need for social interaction. I found this point to be particularly profound: even hermits who desire isolation still feel the need to talk, often speaking to their pets or other inanimate objects like plants to satisfy their intrinsic longing for some sort of social interaction. A last point I would like to make was the variation in discourse among people; how does a person’s discourse define them? Since discourse can vary in its structure, both macro and micro (such as the global structure or even finer details like the use of prepositions), there are many things that could make a person’s style of discourse unique to them. Could personality characteristics, or other factors such as socio-economic or culture of a person determine singularity in a person’s style of speech? Again, I am thinking along the application side of this topic, or more along the lines of how these would play a role in interactions between humans. In terms of neural correlates, we have not as yet discussed speech production in detail, so it remains to be seen what neural centers are responsible for the finer nuances of speech.

Blog Post #7
This week was scarce on lectures for me personally, as I was only able to attend one out of the two lectures conducted. Of these, speech production certainly piqued my interest, as obtaining the proper, pristine, clear majesty of speech is something that I always try to strive for. My own manner of speaking, often characterized as “excessively fast mumbling”, has often led me to question and attempt to understand the nuances behind speech production. In this regard, the lexical bias effect made a lot of sense as it is plausible that mistakes are made on the lexical level, rather than the phonological. However, I feel a better explanation is required in as to why ASL and Spanish have a less likely occurrence of errors. Does the complexity of syntax play a role perhaps? Maybe it is the way the morphemes tie together in sentence construction that may lexically create a mix-up? On a different tangent, I would assume that the type of stimuli would also have some sort of effect on the presence of speech errors; The whole lexical bases of speech errors seems reinforced by the fact that semantic interference can be induced by using distractor words; however, semantic facilitation can occur via pictoral stimuli. The Stroop task also demonstrated this to a certain extent. With respect to music and language, I am immensely impressed by the work done to show the correlations between the syntax of language and music. I wonder though, what is the reason that some prefer one type of music to the other? Is one predisposed to a certain musical palette? Studies show that playing Baby Bach doesn’t really have much of an effect on the fetus or newborn, yet obviously there is some programming occurring from the ages of 5-7 years. Could an eclectic taste in music be cultivated or developed perhaps? I loved how there is a difference in the neural correlates between musicians and non-musicians; I would assume there would be a difference in the motor cortex as well, since guitars, violinists, pianists etc. all have nimble and agile fingers.

Blog Post # 8
Unfortunately, I was not present for classes this past week as pressing matters had drawn me out of the country. Thankfully, the podcasts were of undeniable service since they managed to clear up some of the tricky concepts regarding the speech production models. While the majority of the models discussed seemed to make sense and were straightforward, I found the Weaver model to be most poignant in the way it broke down speech production into three simple steps, which I felt seemed plausible. I agree with the notion that the first stage is where the basic phonemes/morphemes of the word is accessed, the second being the actual formulation of the compound word and the third being the finer touches of prosody to the word. However, I still wonder about how this ties into complex sentence processing, or of whole ideas in a sentence, as opposed to single words that they use in the examples. The early models, such as the Fromkin model, do explain this to a certain extent, but I am not completely satisfied with the explanation of syntactic processing. Even though syntactic processing is done in the initial stages of speech production, my question pertains to the overall theme, purpose and context of a sentence…how do these models account for those? With regards to the tip of the tongue phenomenon, I was particularly excited by its relations to hand gestures. Many people seem to find it amusing that my hands are a dynamic and vibrant extension of my rather active mouthpiece. As such, I found that speaking with my hands really does facilitate lexical access, so to see research reinforce my earlier inferences really clarifies some of my own personal questions. Moreover, I found this relation to be further strengthened via the absence of proper hand gestures in Broca’s and Wernicke’s aphasics. Personally, I was not aware there was such a variation in the types of hand gestures, but I wonder how these tie into American Sign Language…does ASL utilize variations of these gestures in its discourse as well? Do ASL motions fall into this category as well? Lastly, the lecture on writing was especially stimulating, particularly the part which discussed the thought processes behind writing. Creative writing and literature is a beloved hobby of mine, and I could wholeheartedly agree with the notion that the process of transcribing ones thoughts to paper differs in the type of resources being accessed: long-term memory plays a huge role, yet during a test or exam (as in the notorious written section of the MCAT), even the most avid writers tend to falter and experience problems. These problems can be attributed to a lack of planning and ill-preparation (the nagging stress also plays a huge factor I am sure), yet, without the cultivation of writing skills prior to the task it will nary make a difference. However, there is something positive to be gleaned from this conjecture; people who feel writing is “not their thing” simply need to invest the time in establishing the correct skills of thought organization analysis required for a compelling piece. This point leads into the common occurrence of writer’s block, which I was greatly gleeful to have read; having absorbed all the pointers and advice, I found this lecture to be ultimately the most satisfying to have experienced so far.

Blog Post #9
I must say I am simultaneously thrilled and saddened by the fact that we are now covering speech development, but sad that I could not be there in class personally. I have a 3 and a ½ year old nephew myself, and I have been his favourite uncle since the day he was born (I was the first person to hold him besides his parents). Since then, I have had a significant role in his rearing (being the de facto nanny helping out my brother), and have witnessed the stages of his development firsthand. In that respect, I have a tendency of viewing some of the content discussed in the lectures through the context of my nephew, to see if the theory holds true for him as well. To begin with, I found the section on pidgin and creoles to be particularly enjoyable, since I found some aspects of creoles to be prevalent in my own Urdu language here in Pakistan (where I have now started noticing some peculiar things about the Urdu spoken here). The presence of contact languages and the evolution into creoles is unmistakeable here, no doubt left by our lovely British colonial masters who instilled a generous portion of words into the tongue of this country. Urdu is by no means a rudimentary language; it is originally derived from Sanskrit, and over time it has become thoroughly complete; I must confess I have a rather broken and extremely limited mastery of Urdu “Adab”, which is the flowery, high-level “elite” form of the language (similar to Shakespearean English I would assume, which not many people are typically comfortable in using). However, on the streets and in everyday conversation, I find that our regular Urdu has indeed incorporated several English words into our vocabulary, which interestingly most people are unaware of (not surprising, since only 57% of the population is literate). There are numerous examples of English words which are used so commonly, most people don’t realize that there must be an Urdu equivalent, which again none of the people I asked knew about. For instance, the words “bus”, “train”, “phone”, “radio”, “candelabra”, “glue(ing)”, “photocopy(ing)”, “roadblock”, “fax”, “police”, “ball”, “wicket”, “paint(ing)” etc.. are all elements of English incorporated into the Urdu language. Reflexification could be attributed to the transition from pidgin use in the 50’s to a more creole form in the 60’s and 70’s. However, Urdu has shown its resiliency by not being completely dominated with assimilated words. Considering such factors, could it not be possible that modern Urdu is a creole language as well? Moving on to the cuter, cuddlier, part of the lectures, I found it very plausible that babies demonstrate categorical perception early on, as with my nephew who was rather adept at discerning the various pattern of language between English and Urdu (as hard as we tried, I think English will still end up being his native tongue, since we speak it so much more in regular discourse than we realize ourselves). However, going back to the lecture on music and language, which if I remember correctly stated that there was no impact on a baby’s cultural tastes when music was played in the womb; if that is true, then why does the baby show a preference for the mother’s voice. In addition, I guess an Urdu version of Baby Einstein would perhaps instil a greater receptiveness in the child to learn Urdu; yet how does a multi-lingual child not become confused with all the different stresses, phase breaks, patterns and such that are found in each language? This is especially wondrous considering that Urdu and English are so different, especially in syntax and the aforementioned characteristics. On the whole, children are truly mind-boggling, and I find it amusing that they struggle to understand us, while we struggle equally to understand them. Ahh, the seemingly “simple mind” of a child.

Blog Post #10
Blog Post #10 It’s definitely good to be back, as I dearly missed the energy and stimulation that personal lectures can provide; podcasts are serviceable, yet their biggest detriment is the inability to ask questions. Although the other two lectures were engrossing as well, the clear standout winner this week was undoubtedly the class on Friday. Thankfully, I returned from my t just in time for a fantastic lecture on aphasia. The guest lecturer was phenomenal and the lecture was one of the most informative I had ever seen. Aphasia is nothing new to me, as it has been discussed in numerous psychology courses throughout my undergraduate tenure. But truly, this is the first time I have ever felt that I have a much more solid, well-round and ultimately deeper knowledge of what aphasia is really like. The lecturer thoroughly explained the nature of Broca’s, Wernicke’s and Global aphasias in logical progression, but the primary reason her method of explanation was outstanding were the videos and personalized examples of real people who suffered from these ailments. You can read about something all you like, but you won’t have a true understanding of what it is unless you see it or (God-forbid) experience it yourself. In that regard, the lecture was a truly eye-opening experience, and taught me the actual phenotypical or behavioural differences between the kinds of aphasias. I am glad to hear that some of the participants have shown marked improvement, which leads to me the thought: does age of onset influence development of aphasia? Does neuronal plasticity at a certain age affect the chance of improvement? What kind of tasks or measures can one take in everyday life to aid recovery? Obviously therapy is a must; the lecturer stated the earlier the better. However, does this improvement or recovery of language abilities signify strengthening of communication between the dendritic processes? Better communication of neurons in the speech production/comprehension pathway? Is there something happening with the neural circuitry on a physiological level? There must be, since aphasias are brought about by lesions resulting in physical damage to the brain. However, if the recovery of neural pathways is unlikely (since neuroplasticity prevents significant change) is there a re-routing of the language comprehension/production pathway? Since the area previously responsible for this task is damaged due to lesions, are there other regions that have taken up the required processes, like auditory processing, lexical retrieval, grapheme-to-phoneme conversion etc.? Since these patients have been shown to improve and regain somewhat normal functioning, there must be some sort of mechanism or solution to compensate for the damage in a certain brain area.

Needless to say, I am deeply intrigued by this lecture, and will look for other avenues of information to develop my knowledge. Aphasia would certainly make for an enriching research project…

Blog Post #11
It has been a somewhat less intellectually invigorating week thus far, with debates being the focus of the class instead of the always informative lectures. However, I was only able to attend one, as I missed the other debate due to a volunteering commitment; the third debate actually starred me as the participant, and it went well. The debate that I was fortunate enough to be present for was Ebonics: the FOR side argued that Ebonics should be used for instruction in schools located in the Oakland district, while the AGAINST side stated that it shouldn’t. Personally, after witnessing both sides battle it out, I have to side with the AGAINST camp. It is true that a large portion of the students (53% if I remember correctly) conversed primarily in Ebonics, and that it is unique enough to be a language of its own. However, being bilingual myself, I would hesitate to introduce a second language into a school system so hastily. I agree with the AGAINST side on several points. First, 47% of students do not speak Ebonics, and perhaps would not be open to Ebonics being used as the primary mode of instruction. Moreover, English is the official language of the United States, and though they may recognize Ebonics as being a significant minority language, the language of instruction must still be English (if that was not so, then Spanish would have been used in instruction in certain schools already). In addition, if each district or locality were to teach students in the dominant language of the area, that would have an ill-effect on the unity and fabric of the country. While it is true that cultural differences need to be celebrated, they do not need to be reinforced. This would lead to discord in certain parts of the country, much like what is happening in Pakistan or India, where you have disharmony due to exaggerated linguistic and cultural differences which end up dividing a nation instead of being its greatest strength. India, specifically, has over 300 languages which can be further differentiated into an even greater number of dialects; it is to address this very issue that English has been introduced as the unifying language of the country. Even though it is not official, English is used extensively on television, in public addresses and in mass media communication. Again, this is because no matter what district or locality you are in, it is far more likely that you will encounter someone who speaks English as opposed to somebody who speaks in your own unique dialect. Keeping this in mind, it would be a step backwards for Ebonics to replace the sole unifying language of the country; it would set a possibly dangerous precedent for other communities who will campaign for their own language to be taught in their respective localities. However, I must emphasize that Ebonics must certainly be cherished and preserved, either via second language courses or through awareness campaigns, as with any other minority language. But introducing Ebonics to REPLACE English would be a grave misstep, with inevitable ramifications further down the road.

With regards to my own debate, I argued that children with cochlear implants should receive instruction in Oral communication only, as opposed to Total communication (which incorporates sign language and speech). Statistically, it has been shown that children in oral communication have greater speech production and speech perception, along with greater linguistic ability (equal to or better than kids with normal hearing in some cases) and conversational fluency. It has been determined that reliance on oral-aural communication and an emphasis to communicate without depending on sign language has been the primary rehabilitative factor. In short, if the primary goal is to improve a child’s verbal communication and English comprehension skills, then undoubtedly Oral communication is the way to go, although these decisions must obviously be made on an individual basis addressing the needs of the child.

Blog Post #12: The End of an Era
My oh my, where has the time gone? The whole semester seems like a blur before my eyes! Alas, Friday brought the culmination of one of my most favourite classes, and I must say I am sad to see it go. In retrospect, Psycholinguistics has been one of the most fun, satisfying, informative and ultimately rewarding classes I have ever taken. Considering my level knowledge when I first started, I have made leaps and bounds in my understanding of Psycholinguistics and its various aspects. Throughout the course, I have learned about several areas of language which I had questions about, starting with the very first lecture on language and thought. I learned the difference between linguistic relativism and linguistic determinism, learned about the Whorfian hypothesis and the ability of language to constrain one’s thought. Even though that debate has seemed inconclusive, I feel that I lean more on the side of language directing or facilitating thought in a certain way; however, I still do acknowledge that an individual’s thought pattern is also greatly influenced by one’s culture (or society) and the manner of education that one has received. Similarly, I have made several gains in other avenues of language, such as my understanding of garden path sentences, the pitfalls of sentence syntax and structure, and the elements needed for the construction of a functional sentence. Discourse was also a favourite of mine, as it dispelled my previous notions about language being essential for reproduction and survival; it now seems more likely that discourse is essential just for the intrinsic human need for communication. Lastly, I especially enjoyed the debates as well, as some of them covered key aspects of the course, allowing room for discussion at the later stages when everyone was somewhat knowledgeable about the debate topics. I could reminisce all day about those rare yet rewarding moments when one finally has attained an elusive piece of knowledge and understanding; having it nestle in your brain is the definitive “Oh so that’s what it is!” experience, and one that I have had the fortune of experiencing myself on quite a few occasions throughout the course. All in all, I am glum to say goodbye to this course (which does not happen often in undergrad I find), and I have had perhaps the best learning experience under the tutelage of Dr. Newman and his innovative (and effective) teaching techniques. I shall recommend this course highly to anyone else who might be interested, in hopes that they shall undergo the same positive experiences that I have had in this course.

Farewell…