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The Structural Design of Language

By Thomas S. Stroik, Michael T. Putnam

In this book, Stroik and Putnam take on Turing's challenge. They argue that the narrow syntax – the lexicon, the Numeration, and the computational system – must reside, for reasons of conceptual necessity, within the performance systems.

Academic Paper


Title: Japanese and English sentence reading comprehension and writing systems: An fMRI study of first and second language effects on brain activation
Author: Augusto Buchweitz
Email: click here to access email
Homepage: http://www.ccbi.cmu.edu
Institution: Carnegie Mellon University
Author: Robert A. Mason
Institution: Carnegie Mellon University
Author: Mihoko Hasegawa
Institution: RIKEN Brain Science Institute
Author: Marcel A. Just
Institution: Carnegie Mellon University
Linguistic Field: Cognitive Science; Language Acquisition
Subject Language: Japanese
English
Abstract: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to compare brain activation from native Japanese (L1) readers reading hiragana (syllabic) and kanji (logographic) sentences, and English as a second language (L2). Kanji showed more activation than hiragana in right-hemisphere occipito-temporal lobe areas associated with visuospatial processing; hiragana, in turn, showed more activation than kanji in areas of the brain associated with phonological processing. L1 results underscore the difference in visuospatial and phonological processing demands between the systems. Reading in English as compared to either of the Japanese systems showed more activation in inferior frontal gyrus, medial frontal gyrus, and angular gyrus. The additional activation in English in these areas may have been associated with an increased cognitive demand for phonological processing and verbal working memory. More generally, L2 results suggest more effortful reading comprehension processes associated with phonological rehearsal. The study contributes to the understanding of differential brain responses to different writing systems and to reading comprehension in a second language.

CUP at LINGUIST

This article appears in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition Vol. 12, Issue 2, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST .



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