Re: [Fwd: [evol-psych] Brain buzz that proves Chinese is harder ...

--- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com, erobert52@... wrote:

> In a message dated 30/06/03 16:22:20 GMT Daylight Time,
> hubeyh@... writes:
>
> Even allowing for newspaper hyperbole, these claims are the sort of
> extravagant conclusions you'd expect from "evolutionary

psychologists". Because behind

> it all there is usually a less than camouflaged aim of proving

where at all

> possible that there are fundamental "differences" between ethnic

groups. Where

> this all leads you can guess and even if most of the academic

figures

> associated with this school of thought feign surprise at anybody

drawing racist

> conclusions from their work, less reputable characters are falling

over themselves to

> use it to try and give their own nauseous theories a pseudo-

scientific gloss.

>
> Yes, of course the brain behaves differently when when somebody is

processing

> Chinese. There are more homophones, so it would hardly be

surprising if a

> literate Chinese speaker inevitably thought, consciously or

subconsciously, about

> the means used to differentiate between these homophones in the

written

> language. Writing is *visual*, d'oh. Did we really need a

psychologist to tell

> people this?!?
>
> I do wish these evolutionary psychologists would bugger off and

leave

> language to linguists.
>
> BTW, what has this got to do with Nostratic?
>
> Ed.

Um, I think you grossly misinterpreted the article there. Perhaps
you missed this:

"When English speakers heard the sound of Mockney, Mersey or Geordie,
their left temporal lobes lit up on screen. When Mandarin Chinese
speakers heard their native tongue, there was a buzz of action in
both the right and left temporal lobes. [...] The left temporal lobe
is normally associated with piecing sounds together into words; the
right with processing melody and intonation."

Mandarin is a tonal-accent language. Thus, it seems natural to
conclude that its speakers use both temporal lobes to speak/listen to
it, using the left hemisphere to interpret word-order and such, and
the right hemisphere to interpret tone.

I really don't think that the article had much hyperbole or that the
researchers were trying to prove that Chinese are somehow inferior to
other people.

- Rob