The rainy blog: brain on sabbatical
Love is rain
Thursday, October 05, 2006
brain on sabbatical

It's almost end of semester... and I'm getting to a stage where I seriously cbf doing anything that I don't enjoy anymore.

I really loved doing my 12 points of independent research. I read what I wanted, I wrote about what I wanted... I got to do things 100% my way... now that that is over, I feel as though these last few weeks are a hurdle that I just have to get through... the unfortunate part is that I actually have to do well on these hurdles if I want to plough on and do the honours course (which I'm sure I'll enjoy) next year.

So, instead of working on essays and projects I'm meant to be handing in, I'm attending lectures on subjects that will not in any way benefit me in the next few weeks and taking up time reading all these articles that genuinely interest me.

Yesterday, I attended this lecture, by Claudia Riehl from Germany, about the bilingual brain, and how the brain functions in bilingual speech production and language acquisition...

Anyhow, the results show that early bilinguals (= people who learned to languages in the home or under the age of c. 3) have an advantage over late bilinguals (= people who learned a second language say, at school or in adult life) in the acquisition of a third language, fourth language, fifth language, etc.

This advantage is efficiency. The effect of learning two languages early in life is that the brain compounds, as it were, these two languages into a mostly overlapping area, and in doing so, has created a strong network that supports subsequent languages.

The late bilingual, on the other hand, stores these two languages separately, meaning that more brain mass has to be used in order to use language.

Thus, the implication is this: The early bilingual's language usage is less taxing on the brain than that of the late bilingual.

Of course, the problem is that showing that something is less taxing on the brain doesn't necessarily show that it is better. Although if we are willing to subscribe to the belief that efficient systems are better, then this view is viable.

This evidence, I believe, fits into a broader framework of linguistic emergentist theory, which I discussed in a paper (follow the previous link). I know this will count as evidence on both sides of the fence of the debate, but I'm an advocate of experience based theories as opposed to universal grammar theories. The problem here is that AofA theories are often linked to universal grammar and critical period hypothesis.

Obviously, this would be an interesting research direction to take. The findings of Riehl, C. do not imply that the final state of the third language in early bilinguals is qualitatively better than that of late bilinguals - but rather, that it requires less effort on the part of the brain.

Thus, the implication isn't that there is a 'Universal Grammar' housed in the brain that can only be activated in one's youth - but rather, that the brain becomes more efficient at language learning the younger one learns a second language.

For more discussion on emergentist theory, see:

O’Grady, W. (2001), The Emergentist Program, forthcoming in Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences, http://www.ling.hawaii.edu/faculty/ogrady/EmergentistProg.pdf

Also, for work by Claudia Riehl, visit http://latina.phil2.uni-freiburg.de/raible/Schueler/ClaudiaRiehl.html (in German!)

Anyhow... so now I've illustrated my point. I've just spent time thinking about the bilingual brain again, when I'm supposed to be a) cleaning the house, and b) working on four projects due over the course of the next three weeks.

*sigh* Uphill struggle...

fon @ 12:38 PM link to post * *