CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1. Background of Study

Psycholinguistics is the branch deals with the relationship between
language and the mind, focusing mainly on how language is learned, stored, and
occasionally lost. The relationship between language and mind has two aspects,
acquisition and performance, and the two are intimately linked.
The field of psycholinguistics attempts to answer questions about how
language is represented and processed in the brain and what areas of the brain are
used for language processing. Psycholinguistics is an experimental discipline that
tests assumptions about processing and the learning of language. The brain is
divided into two nearly symmetrical halves, the right and the left hemispheres,
each of which is responsible for processing certain kinds of information
concerning the world around us.
There are three major areas of study in the domain of psycholinguistics, so
far we have considered how language is represented in the mind and how
language is acquired. But another area is how people use their knowledge of
language. How do they understand what they hear. How do they produce message
that others can understand it turn.

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 CHAPTER II
DISCUSSION

2.1. Language And The Brain

The brain is divided into two nearly symmetrical halves, the right and the
left hemispheres, each of which is responsible for processing certain kinds of
information concerning the world around us. These hemispheres are connected by
a bundle to communicate with each other and build a single, coherent picture of
our environment from the many different kind of stimuli – visual, tactile and
olfactory- that we receive.

2.2. Four Lobes Of The Brain

Parietal lobe
Frontal lobe

Occipital
lobe
Temporal lobe

2.2.1. Frontal Lobe

The frontal lobe is an area in the brain of mammals, located at the front of
each cerebral hemisphere and positioned anterior to (in front of) the parietal lobe
and superior and anterior to the temporal lobes. It is separated from the parietal
lobe by a space between tissues called the central sulcus, and from the temporal
lobe by a deep fold called the lateral (Sylvian).
The executive functions of the frontal lobes involve the ability to
recognize future consequences resulting from current actions, to choose between
good and bad actions (or better and best), override and suppress unacceptable
social responses, and determine similarities and differences between things or
events. Therefore, it is involved in higher mental functions.

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 The frontal lobes also play an important part in retaining longer term
memories which are not task-based. These are often memories associated with
emotions derived from input from the brain's limbic system. The frontal lobe
modifies those emotions to generally fit socially acceptable norms.
Psychological tests that measure frontal lobe function include finger
tapping, Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, and measures of verbal and figural
fluency.
2.2.2. Parietal Lobe
The parietal lobe is a part of the brain positioned above (superior to) the
occipital lobe and behind (posterior to) the frontal lobe.
The parietal lobe integrates sensory information from different modalities,
particularly determining spatial sense and navigation. For example, it comprises
somatosensory cortex and the dorsal stream of the visual system. This enables
regions of the parietal cortex to map objects perceived visually into body
coordinate positions.
The parietal lobe plays important roles in integrating sensory information
from various parts of the body, knowledge of numbers and their relations, and in
the manipulation of objects. Portions of the parietal lobe are involved with
visuospatial processing. Although multisensory in nature, the posterior parietal
cortex is often referred to by vision scientists as the dorsal stream of vision (as
opposed to the ventral stream in the temporal lobe). This dorsal stream has been
called both the 'where' stream (as in spatial vision) and the 'how' stream (as in
vision for action). The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) receives somatosensory
and/or visual input, which then, through motor signals, controls movement of the
arm, hand, as well as eye movements.
2.2.3. Temporal Lobe
The temporal lobe is a region of the cerebral cortex that is located beneath
the Sylvian fissure on both cerebral hemispheres of the mammalian brain.
The temporal lobe is involved in auditory perception and is home to the
primary auditory cortex. It is also important for the processing of semantics in
both speech and vision. The temporal lobe contains the hippocampus and plays a

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key role in the formation of long-term memory. Long-term memory (LTM) is
memory in which associations among items are stored, as part of the theory of a
dual-store memory model. According to the theory, long-term memory differs
structurally and functionally from working memory or short-term memory, which
ostensibly stores items for only around 20–30 seconds and can be recalled easily.
This differs from the theory of the single-store retrieved context model that has no
differentiation between short-term and long-term memory.
The superior temporal gyrus includes an area (within the Sylvian fissure)
where auditory signals from the cochlea (relayed via several subcortical nuclei)
first reach the cerebral cortex. This part of the cortex (primary auditory cortex) is
involved in hearing.
Adjacent areas in the superior, posterior and lateral parts of the temporal
lobes are involved in high-level auditory processing. In humans this includes
speech, for which the left temporal lobe in particular seems to be specialized.
Wernicke's area, which spans the region between temporal and parietal lobes,
plays a key role (in tandem with Broca's area, which is in the frontal lobe). The
functions of the left temporal lobe are not limited to low-level perception but
extend to comprehension, naming, verbal memory and other language functions.
The underside (ventral) part of the temporal cortices appear to be involved
in high-level visual processing of complex stimuli such as faces (fusiform gyrus)
and scenes (parahippocampal gyrus). Anterior parts of this ventral stream for
visual processing are involved in object perception and recognition.
2.2.4. Occipitals Lobe
The occipital lobe is the visual processing center of the mammalian brain
containing most of the anatomical region of the visual cortex. Significant
functional aspects of the occipital lobe is that it contains the primary visual cortex
and is the part of the brain where dreams come from.
Retinal sensors convey stimuli through the optic tracts to the lateral
geniculate bodies, where optic radiations continue to the visual cortex. Each visual
cortex receives raw sensory information from the outside half of the retina on the
same side of the head and from the inside half of the retina on the other side of the

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head. The cuneus receives visual information from the contralateral superior retina
representing the inferior visual field.
If one occipital lobe is damaged, the result can be homonomous vision loss
from similarly positioned "field cuts" in each eye. Occipital lesions can cause
visual hallucinations. Lesions in the parietal-temporal-occipital association area
are associated with color agnosia, movement agnosia, and agraphia. Damage to
the primary visual cortex which is located on the surface of the posterior occipital
lobe, can cause blindness due to the holes in the visual map on the surface of the
visual cortex that resulted from the lesions

2.3. Part Of The Brain

2.3.1. Left hemisphere and right hemisphere

The language centers are located in the left hemisphere of the brain in well
over 90 percent of right-handed human beings. Although the figure is somewhat
lower for left-handers, perhaps around 60 percent, it is clear that the left side of
the brain is somehow special as far as language concerned.
Evidence of different sort for the importance of the left brain to language
comes from the study of neurological disorders. In pioneering research conducted
in the 1860s, a French surgeon and anatomist named Paul Broca found that the
damage to specific areas of the left hemisphere resulted in disturbance of spoken
language. Comparable damage to the corresponding areas of the right brain
typically had no such effect.
The role of the right brain. The left brain is not dominant for the
perception and analysis of all types of sounds. As noted, non linguistics sounds

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are perceived better through the left ear. The right brain also seems to be crucially
involved in the interpretation of the voice tone and intonation cues that signal
emotion such as anger and fear. Thus a patient suffering from damage to the right
hemisphere may be able to understand the literal meaning of a sentence boat fail
to recognize whether it is spoken in an angry or a fearful way.

FIGURE 1. The left hemisphere of the human brain, “ Map of Human Cortex,
“ figure by Carol Donner from “Specializations of the Human Brain,” by Norman Geschwind.

2.4. Language Center

The neurological structures involved in language are not situated in a
single area of the brain. Rather, there seem to be a number of language centers in
the brain, each with its own specialized function. Then there are the language
centers of the brain – parts of the cortex that, as far as we know, are used only for
the production and comprehension of language in contrast to the other areas. We
have introduced here, these centers are found only in the hemisphere that is
specialized for language.

Figure 2. Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area

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 2.4.1. Broca’s Area
Named after its discoverer Paul Broca is located in front of the brain – part
of the left hemisphere and responsible for organizing the articulatory pattern of
speech. Broca’s area is located at the base of the motor cortex and directing the
motor cortex, and directing the motor cortex when we want to talk. This involves
the face, jaw, and tongue in the case of spoken language, and the hand, arm, and
body in the case of signed language.
Broca’s area also seems to control the use of inflectional morphemes, like
the plural and past tense markers, as well as function morphemes, like determiners
and preposition, this is a very important function with respect of the formation of
word and sentences.
2.4.2. Wernicke’s Area
Discovered by the nineteenth – century neurologist Carl Wernicke, is very
close to the primary auditory cortex, which is responsible for the reception of
auditory input. Wernicke’s area located near the back section of the auditory
cortex, this section of the brain is involved in the comprehension of words and the
selection of words when producing sentences.
Wernicke’s area plays a major part in the representation of meaning and is
involved both in the interpretation of word and in the selection of lexical items for
the purposes of sentence production. Broca’s and wernicke’s area are connected
by a bundle of nerve fibers known as the arcuate fasciculus. Language use
speaking, listening, writing and reading requires the coordination of these
language centers, if the language centers or the connection between them are
damage, the ability to use language deteriorates.
2.4.3. Angular Gyrus
Angular gyrus is located between wernicke’s area and visual cortex.
Example of wernicke’s aphasia : easy to say something but not appreciate.

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2.5. Language disorder
In the 1860s the Physician Paul Broca observe that damage to the left side
of the brain resulted in impaired language ability while damage to the right side of
the brain did not. Since that time researchers have observed that approximately 70
% of the people with damage to the left hemisphere experience aphasia, an
inability to perceive, process, or produce language because of physical damage to
the brain.
Aphasia is found in only approximately 1 % of people suffering from
damage to the right hemisphere. This provides additional support for the view that
language is localized in the left side of the brain.
Language disorders resulting from brain damage are grouped together
under the general label aphasia.

2.5.1. Broca’s aphasia

Individuals with broca’s aphasia, damage to broca’s area suffer from an
inability to plan the motor sequences used in speech or sign. When they attempt to
produce language, they speak haltingly and have a hard time forming complete
words. They also display a tendency for telegraphic speech, or speech without
inflection and function words as to and the, although the basic word order in
correct. Below is a sample of speech produce by someone with broca’s aphasia.

Example: Broca’s Aphasia

Examiner : tell me, what did you do before you retired?
Aphasic : uh, uh, uh, pub, par, partender, no

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Examiner : carpenter?
Aphasic : (shaking head yes) carpenter, tuh, tuh, tenty year.
Broca’s aphasia seems to result in primarily expressive disorders.
Accordingly, comprehension of the speech of the others is not too much of a
problem for broca’s aphasic. Although they may have some difficulty matching
the correct semantic interpretation to the syntactic order of the sentences. For
instance, comprehension is likely to break down when the sequence of word is
extremely important to understanding of their message, as in reversible passives
such as the lion was killed by the tiger. A broca’s aphasic is quite likely to
understand this as identical to the active sentence the lion killed the tiger.

2.5.2. Wernicke’s area

Broca’s aphasia stands in sharp contrast to the type of neurolinguistic
disorder associated with damage to wernicke’s area. Wernicke’s aphasia on the
other hand result in primarily receptive disorders : it is very difficult for a patient
with this problem to understand the speech of others. As you might expect, this
often results in the wernicke’s aphasic misinterpreting what others say and
responding in an unexpected way. Moreover, because the wernicke’s patient has
trouble interpreting words from his or her mental dictionary, he or she has a
tendency to produce semantically in coherent speech.
Example : Wernicke’s Aphasia
Examiner : Do you like it here in Kansas City?
Aphasic : yes, I am
Examiner : I’d like to have you tell me something about your problem
Aphasic : yes, I, ugh, can’t hill all of my way, I can’t talk all of the thing I
do. And part of the past I can go all right, but I can’t tell from the
other people. I usual most of my thing, I know what can I talk,
and know what they are, but I can’t always come back even
though I know they should something eely I should know what
I’m doing……….

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 Wernicke’s patients also often speak in circumlocutions, or expressions
that people use when they are unable to name the word they want. For example
the patient may say what you drink for water and what we smell with for nose.
The syntactic order of word is also altered. I know I can say may become I know
can I say. That patient with wernicke’s aphasia is unable to comprehend the
speech of others is demonstrated by the fact that they often cannot follow simple
instruction, such as stand up, turn to your right, and so on.

2.5.3. Conduction Aphasia

A patient suffering from conduction aphasia sounds something like a
wernicke’s aphasic (fluent but meaningless speech) but show signs of being able
to comprehend the speech of other. Like a broca’s aphasic, the patient will be able
to understand utterances but will not be able to repeat them. This pattern of
symptoms makes sense of you consider what the arcuate fasciculus does: it
transmit information from wernicke’s area to broca’s area. If these two language
center are unable to communicate, the patient with damage to wernicke’s area
may be able to understand speech and correctly word from the mental lexicon, but
not be able to transmit information to broca’s area so that word can be articulated.

2.5.4. Alexia and Agraphia

Which are both cause by damage the angular gyrus. Alexia defined as the
inability to read and comprehend written words. This occurs when the angular
gyrus cannot accurately match the visual form of a word with a phonetic form in
wernicke’s area. Occasionally, this problem is accompanied by the inability to
write words, known as agraphia. This disorder is of attributed to the inability of
the angular gyrus to relate the phonetic form of stimulus with a written form in the
visual cortex.
Alexia is result of damage to the angular gyrus caused by an accident,
stroke or lesion, dyslexia as current research indicates, is caused by a structural
different in a portion of the brain call the temporal lobe; people with dyslexia can
almost always read and write normally with the special training. Someone with
alexia cannot ever regain his or her previous reading skill.

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 Aphasic Disorder
Broca’s Wernicke’s Conduction
Aphasia Area Aphasia
Articulation - + +
Comprehension = - =
Word and sentence structure - = =
Repetition = - -

2.6. Language Acquisition

2.6.1. Theories of Language Acquisition
Various theories have arisen which attempt to account for how children
acquired language. We will consider three of these: the imitation theory, the
Reinforcement Theory, and a third which has no standard name but which we will
call the Active construction of a grammar theory. The imitation theory claims that
children learn language listening to speech around them and reproducing what
they hear. According to this theory, language acquisition consists of memorizing
the word and sentences of some language.
For example:
Adult : He doesn’t want to drink.
Child : he no Want drink
The Reinforcement Theory asserts that children learn to speak like adults
because they are praised, rewarded, or otherwise reinforced when V x) use the
right forms, and are corrected when they use wrong forms. Reinforcement Theory
is also contradicted by the fact that even on the rare occasions, when adults to try
to correct a child grammar, the attempts usually fail entirely.
For example:
Child : Nobody don't like me
Mother : No, say "nobody likes me".
Child : Nobody don’t like me
(Repeated 8 times)
 The Active Construction of a Grammar Theory.
This theory explains what the Imitation and Reinforcement Theories
cannot explain alone. Within this framework children's mistakes are expected to

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occur and to follow nonrandom patterns, because the child is forming utterances
according to grammatical rules, although the rules are often different from those
adults use. For the same reason, this theory predicts that children will fail to
imitate adult forms accurately even when they are reinforced by adults when the
rules for producing such forms are different from the rules the child has devised.
Perhaps the primary difficulty for most people can be captured in terms of
a distinction between acquisition and learning. The term 'acquisition', when used
of language, refers to the gradual development of ability in a language by using it
naturally in communicative situations. The term 'learning', however, applies to a
conscious process of accumulating knowledge of the vocabulary and grammar of
a language (Mathematics for example, is learned, not enquired).

2.6.2. Phonetic Acquisition

a) Physiological Prerequisites of Sound Production
Teen children start to acquire language, there are various things they have
to learn first: they have to be able to identify the sounds (phonemes) of their
language; they have to learn how to produce each of these phonemes and also its
allophones (the variants of a sound that depend on the context in which this
particular sound occurs) ; they have to learn how to combine into large strings,
that is, syllable or word ; and also how to decode larger strings of sound into
syllables and words when being talked to.
Perception studies have shown that infants at the age of four months can
already distinguish between the vowels [a] and [i]. In this experimental paradigm
the mouths of two adults face are shown to an infant, one saying [a], the other one
saying [i].
b) Babbling
At the age of four to six months or so, children in all cultures begin to
babble, producing sequences of vowels and consonant. Some linguists assume that
babies babble to practice the opening and closing movement of the jaw. As
mentioned before, the baby's tongue is relatively big compared to the size of the
oral cavity. Since the tongue is attached to the lower jaw, as the lower jaw move

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up, the tongue moves up with it. For this reason, it is very likely that the infant
will produce vaguely palatal sounds like [h] or [y]. Since the lower lip is also
attached to the jaw, labials such as [b] and [m] occur frequently, too. When the
jaw wags down and the tongue lies on the jaw, the infant is very likely to produce
the vowel sound [a].
c) Phonological Acquisition
 First Words
A major task in the acquisition of phonology involves understanding the
word as a link between sound and meaning. It has been claimed that around the
age of eighteen months, children learn and ask for many new names for objects in
their environment. When children first acquire the concept of a word, this first
word show tremendous variability in pronunciation. Some may be perfect adult
production; others maybe so distorted that they are comprehensible only to the
child's closest companions.
Still other child vary considerably in their pronunciations from one
occasion to the next or consistently use a “wrong” sound relative to the adult
speech's model, for example, substituting a [t] with an [w] in water.

 Acquisition of Phonological Structures

Children initially appear to the regard the entire word as if it were a single
sound (a sound that can vary somewhat). However, as their vocabulary expands
between fifteen and twenty-one months of age, this becomes very difficult for
them to manage. So in order to learn more words, children must begin to break
words into a small number of simpler units, which are sounds that can be used in
different combinations to make up many other words. That is, they arrive at the
idea of a word as a sequence of phonemes whose pronunciation is systematic, and
predictable. Children must, in the course of learning a language natively, acquire
the complete set of phonemes as well as the set of phonological processes found
in the language of the adults in their surroundings.

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 In a childs speech you can frequently observe deletion of consonant and
vowel sequences. In the speech sample below, at least one syllable is omitted from
every word.
For example:
Banana [ _ næna]
Granola [ _ owa]
Potato [ _ de do]

d) Morphology and Syntax Acquisition

 The One - Word Stage
The first words uttered by a one - year - old child typically came people,
objects, pets, and other familiar and important parts of its environment. The
child's vocabulary soon comes to include verbs and other useful words as well as
nouns (including no, gimme, and mine). Children at this phrase are limited to a
word at a time in their production, but they understand and probably intend the
meaning of more than a single word. Certainly children can understand the
utterances of other people even when they consist of much more than one word.
The intonation children use on their one-word utterances may be that of a
question, an ordinary or emphatic statement or an imperative.
 The Two - Word Stare
Between approximately eighteen and twenty-four months of age, children
begin to use two - word utterances. Children at this stage do not just produce any
two words in any order; rather, they adopt a consistent set of word orders which
convey an important part of the meaning of their utterances. At this, level of
development the structure of utterances is determined by semantic relationships,
rather than adult syntactic ones. Most of the utterances produced by a child at this
stage will express a semantic relation like one of the following:
Agent + action Baby sleep
Action + abject Kick ball
Entity + locative Teddy bad
Possessor + possession Mommy book

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 CHAPTER III
CONCLUSION

Understanding the human brain represent one of the great challenges for
modern sciences. The progress that has been made in the last decades has led to
identification of the location and function of the major language centers of the
brain – Broca’s area and wernicke’s area. Many difficult issues remain to be
resolved. Linguist has as yet little understanding of how specific grammatical
rules are represented in the brain, of why the language centers are organized the
way they are, and of how biological maturation affect them. In all of these areas,
knowledge is growing rapidly and it is possible that there will soon be substantial
breakthroughs in the field of neurolinguistics.
Language can acquire with memorize the word and sentence of some
language, they learn language by listening to the speech around them and
reproducing what they hear, it’s according to Imitation Theory. However, the
Reinforcement Theory is contradicted by the fact that even on the rare occasions
when adults do try the correct a child’s grammar, the attempt usually fails
entirely. The active construction of a Grammar Theory holds that children actually
invent the rules of grammar themselves. Their inventions are based on the speech
they hear around them; this is their input or data for analysis.

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Derenzi, E., A. Pieczuro, and L. Vignolo (1966) “oral apraxia and aphasia,”
Cortex 2, 50-73.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain (Diakses Tanggal 31 Mei 2012)

Geschwind, N. (1972) “Language and the Brain,” Scientific American 226. 76-83

Geschwind, N,. and W. Levitsky (1968) “Human Brain : Left-right asymmetries

in temporal speech region,” sscience 161, 186-187.

Lenneberg, Eric. 1967. Biological Foundations of Language. New York: John

Wiley & Sons.

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