Language and Cognitive Sciences (語言和認知科學)

Wang, W. S. Y. (Invited speaker)

Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies

Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk

Description

Distinguished Lecture in Celebration of FHM 10th Anniversary (香港教育大學人文學院十周年名家講座)

Period	18 Oct 2022
Held at	The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Degree of Recognition	Local

Documents & Links

Abstract: Language is a highly complex, adaptive system, made up of several interactive hierarchical components, each constantly changing through use. Early thinkers, such as Plato in Greece and Xunzi in China, recognized clearly that the basic building block of language is the word, which itself is a largely arbitrary pairing of form and sense. In the Han dynasty, Yang Xiong studied how words may differ from region to region, and Xu Shen compiled a comprehensive dictionary of the Chinese language based on its written form. Another breakthrough was achieved during the Ming-Qing period, when Chen Di (1540–1620) tried to reconstruct the spoken form of the Shijing poems, composed around 3,000 years before present. This achievement in China preceded similar advances made in the West by William Jones (1746–1794) in reconstructing the Indo-European family of languages by almost two centuries. Interest in language as cognitive behavior began systematically when it broke down, beginning with the famous case presented to Paul Broca (1824–1880). It became increasingly clear that various linguistic abilities may be impaired selectively at different levels, depending on how the brain is damaged. Through research on a diversity of impairments across various languages and along various timelines, and with the tools that modern cognitive and neural sciences can now provide for experimentation, we now have a much clearer knowledge of not only what language is, but also the biological bases of how it came to be. With increasing new knowledge at hand, we are now in a better position to cope with the challenges of language in normal and pathological contexts.