Class 11

Language Disorders Analysis and Remedy

Biological Foundations Of Language Language and the Brain The study of the neurological foundations of language is now a branch of linguistics known as neurolinguistics. The investigation of the brain mechanisms involved in the acquisition and use of language is another branch of linguistics called psycholinguistics.

Dominance The major focus of research has been on the functional relationship between the brain's two hemispheres. It is now recognized that each has its own important role and that neither is superior to the other.

Thus each is said to be dominant for certain mental functions. The development of these functions within either hemisphere is known as lateralization. The left hemisphere is dominant for language in most right-handed people.

With right-handed people the left hemisphere is dominant in such activities as analytical tasks, calculation, logical organization ... And language. The right hemisphere is dominant for the perception and matching of global patterns, part-whole relationship ... and emotional expression.

Localization They meant that different human abilities and behaviours are traceable to specific parts of the brain. At least two areas of the brain, proposed by Broca and Wernicke (and called Broca's area and Wernicke's area) have been indicated in specific left side parts of the brain as areas where certain linguistic capabilities are located.

Language is, therefore, said to be lateralized and lateralization is the term used to refer to any cognitive functions which are primarily localized to one side of the brain or the other.

Damage (called lesion) to either area results in a certain kind of linguistic handicap (or disorder)

The Critical Period Hypothesis It seems that first language acquisition takes place during the period when brain lateralization is developing, and ends when lateralization is complete.

This is important because it explains readiness for language learning as a result of the development of predispositions for language learning in the left hemisphere because of lateralization. When the child's brain matures, his readiness for language learning becomes less available. It becomes more difficult to learn a language after one passes this critical period

Not all scholars agree on critical period hypothesis

Language disorders Causes Certain kinds of abnormal growth in the vocal organs, and damage to parts of the brain by accidents or illness producing aphasia are also handicaps clearly caused by a person's abnormal physical condition.

Classification Deafness There are different types and degrees of deafness: at birth, caused by a disease; in old age, mild, improving with growth or chronic. In all cases, deaf people, if not treated, suffer from a certain degree of loss of communication.

Deafness caused by organic reasons is sometimes treated medically. However, in chronic cases, deaf people are tested by the audiogram and, if found treatable, they are provided with hearing aids.

Aphasia Causes: Brain cells die if deprived of oxygen for a few minutes. This can happen: a. if a person suffers from a stroke caused by fatty cholesterol deposits in the arteries associated with smoking, diet and lack of exercise; or caused by artery blockage by foreign matter in the brain area that deals with language.

b. if one of the language areas in the brain suffers from an injury caused by falls, accidents etc.

Types: Broca's Aphasia Damage to Broca's area usually results in a disorder with several symptoms: a- The first feature is poor pronunciation. b- The second is systematic substitution and deletion of sounds;

/sruw/ for/ skruw/: (screw). c. The third feature is impairment in the ability to form morphological and syntactic patterns, especially the loss of most grammatical vocabulary items such as prepositions, determiners and inflectional affixes.

d- This aphasia is also characterized by a certain deficiency' in syntactic knowledge. For instance, passive sentences are difficult for them to interpret.

(2) Wernicke's Aphasia. In contrast with Broca's area, Werincke's area is a language area in the left hemisphere of the brain responsible for the representation of meaning, as well as the interpretation of words during comprehension and the selection of words during speech production.

Patients with Wernicke's aphasia usually suffer from an inability to understand spoken language and to build meaningful utterances; i.e. their speech is usually nonsensical.

(3) Conduction Aphasia Damage to the area that lies between Broca's and Wernicke's areas affects transmission between them. The symptoms are: a- Speech becomes semantically incoherent. b- Language comprehension is impaired. c- The ability to repeat words and sentences is severely impaired, (but there are no articulation problems).

( 4) Anomie Aphasia This is characterized by the difficulty to find words. Some patients substitute a word which is semantically associated, e.g. Spoon> Shovel, eye> glasses. Others may substitute an indefinite expression such as: staff, thing, some,

(5) Alexia and Agraphia A patient, whose speech and comprehension are normal, is unable to read (alexia) or write (agraphia). The recognition of the individual letters is preserved, but there is a total inability to read or write letters in combination. Thus two of the language skills, reading and writing, are impaired, while the other two are not.

3.2.3 Dyslexia A disorder of reading can be the result of brain damage in adulthood; this is called (acquired) dyslexia and is often accompanied by other symptoms affecting spoken language.

Phonological dyslexia This is characterized by inability to read new words (such as technical terms) although patients with this disorder usually have no difficulty in reading familiar words.

Surface dyslexia Patients with this disorder find difficulty recognizing words as whole units. Irregularly spelt words pose special difficulty.

Deep dyslexia. Patients afflicted with this syndrome are similar to patients with phonological dyslexia, but they also suffer from an additional difficulty with word meaning.

Dysgraphia Brain damage in adult life can produce a difficulty in the writing skill; this is called (acquired) dysgraphia. In both cases of dyslexia and dysgraphia, the label "acquired" is added to distinguish them from the most common developmental types which occur in young children without any evidence of brain damage.

Here are a few types of this disorder: - Deep dysgraphia. Patients with this handicap cannot spell words on a phonetic basis. Errors seem to be semantically related (e.g. one person asked to write bun, wrote cake). Most, but not all, patients with this disorder seem to have some deep dyslexic symptoms too.

- Surface dysgraphia. Patients with this handicap cannot spell irregular words (e.g. bisket for biscuit), and sometimes have difficulty with regular words.

3.3 Voice Disorders Some people suffer from an abnormal voice quality that interferes with communication, e.g. harsh harshness, or high nasal qualities. Many of these disorders have physical causes. The majority, however, have a nonphysical or functional cause; e.g. emotional stress.

3.4 Articulation Handicaps There is a wide range of articulation difficulties, from the slight ones that do riot seriously interfere with communication to the acute ones that make communication almost impossible, as it is sometimes the case with people suffering from brain damage.

In some cases, the patients have difficulty in the perception of sound, whereas in other cases it is almost impossible to detect any problems of an anatomical, neurophysiological, or sensory kind as causes for pronunciation disorders.

3.5 Fluency Disorders The main disorder here is called stuttering (or stammering), which is a well-known phenomenon. There are several kinds of this disorder. The characteristics may be one or more of the following:

- abnormal amount of repetition of sounds, syllables, words or phrases; - abnormal lengthening of sounds; - difficulty in releasing sounds; - introducing extra words at points of difficulty; - erratic stress or intonation patterns; - leaving some words or phrases unfinished; - avoiding certain words that contain difficult sounds for the patient.

3.6 Language Delay Many children in their early years suffer from delay in developing their spoken language. At school they may be slow in acquiring the written language. Delay may be a few months or a few years behind normal children.

Delay is mostly caused by mental handicap Delay is mostly caused by mental handicap. Other patients are either deaf, pshycologically disturbed or physically handicapped. But often no apparent reason can be detected.