Chapter 9
123 that work for them and use them more often”: See Charlotte Kemp. “Strategic Processing in Grammar Learning: Do Multilinguals Use More Strategies?” International Journal of Multilingualism, 4:4 (2007), 241–61.
134 He recommended reviewing any learned material . . . at intervals: Paul Pimsleur, “A Memory Schedule,” Modern Language Journal 51 (1967), 73–75.
134 what one remembers doesn’t decline steadily over a lifetime: Harry Bahrick, “Semantic Memory Content in Permastore: Fifty Years of Memory for Spanish Learned in School,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 113:1 (1984), 1–31.
135 “including learning, reasoning, and preparation for action”: Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch, “Working Memory,” in G. A. Bower (ed.), The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, vol. 8 (New York: Academic Press, 1974), 47–90.
135 the best predictor of intelligence: See, for example, R. Kyllonen and R. Chrisal, “Reasoning Ability Is (Little More than) Working Memory Capacity,” Intelligence, 14:4 (1990), 389–433.
135 four to five words every second: From Willem Levelt, Speaking: From Intention to Articulation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989).
137 “Have you ever tried on a pair of green spectacles?”: Charles Russell, The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti, with an Introductory Memoir of Eminent Linguists, Ancient and Modern (London: Longman, Brown, and Co., 1858), 421.
138 also known as the Feast of the Languages: www.newadvent.org/cathen/12456a.htm.
138 he was dazzled: Russell, Life, 411–20.
138 A speaker has to do two things: J. Abutalebi and David Green, “Bilingual Language Production: The Neurocognition of Language Representation and Control,” Journal of Neurolinguistics, 20 (2007), 251; J. Crinion et al., “Language Control in the Bilingual Brain,” Science, 312 (2006), 1537–40.
139 requires some powerful neural hardware. J. Lipski, “Code-switching or Borrowing? No sé so no puedo decir, you know,” in Lofti Sayahi and Maurice Westmoreland (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics (Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2005), 1–15.
139 Think of executive function as how you control your mental airspace: This metaphor comes from Nathaniel Kendall-Taylor, Michael Erard, Adam Simon and Lynn Davey. Air Traffic Control for Your Brain: Using a Simplifying Model to Clarify the Science of Executive Function, (Washington, DC: FrameWorks Institute, 2010).
139 “Standing that means ständig ständig führen stein”: Ellen Perecman, “Spontaneous Translation and Language Mixing in a Polyglot Aphasic,” Brain and Language, 23 (1984), 51.
140 builds up a “reserve” that people carry into older age: See, for example, Ellen Bialystok, “Cognitive Effects of Bilingualism: How Linguistic Experience Leads to Cognitive Change,” The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 10:3 (2007), 210–23; Ellen Bialystok et al., “Bilingualism as a Protection Against the Onset of Symptoms of Dementia,” Neuropsychologia, 45 (2007), 459–64.
142 one works hard at tasks that one finds rewarding: Ellen Winner, Gifted Children: Myths and Realities (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 146.
142 “they are intrinsically motivated to acquire skill”: Ellen Winner, “The Rage to Master: The Decisive Role of Talent in the Visual Arts,” in K. Anders Ericsson (ed.), The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports, and Games (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996), 271–301.
PART 3 REVELATION: The Brain Whispers
Chapter 10
148 as late as 1800, more than 100 languages were spoken: Lyle Campbell, American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1997), 16.
148 contained half of the entire world’s linguistic diversity: Lyle Campbell, personal communication, 2010.
148 living their lives in their native tongues: See Gillian Stevens. “A Century of US Censuses and the Language Characteristics of Immigrants,” Demography, 36:3 (1999), 391.
148 23 percent . . . reported that they couldn’t speak English at all: Ibid. 394.
148 illegal to speak any language but English: Bill Piatt, ¿Only English? Law and Language Policy in the United States (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990).
148 By 1960, the number had fallen to 29: J. Holmquist, They Chose Minnesota (St. Paul, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2003), 178.
148 showed up at the teacher’s desk speaking French: Mazat, W. (2000). “Emil Krebs (1867–1930), das Sprachwunder, Dolmetscher in Peking und Tsingtau. Eine Lebensskizze.” (Wilhelm Matzat, “Emil Krebs (1867–1930) The Language Wonder—Interpreter in Peking and Tsingtau,”) Bulletin of the German China Association, 1, 31–47.
149 By then, he had studied: Ibid., 1
149 “I want to learn the hardest one”: Ibid., 2
149 One day an exacting Chinese imperial official: Krebs’s relationship with the Empress Dowager is described by Matzat, 7, quoting Ferdinand Lessing, “Emil Krebs,” Ostasiatische Rundschau (1930).
150 “a striking example of the linguistic outward-lookingness that has pervaded the Indian Ocean world”: Benjamin Zimmer, “Linguistic Imaginations of the Indian Ocean World: Historical Viewpoints from Western Java,” Paper presented at the International Conference on Cultural Exchange and Transformation in the Indian Ocean World, 2002.
151 “Then he was a master of them too”: Werner Otto von Hentig, “Memories of Emil Krebs,” undated typescript.
152 He had translated the phrase: “Man Who Knew 65 Languages,” Western Argus, 15 April, 1930, 26.
152 Hentig described having to fetch Krebs for a meeting: Hentig, “Memories.”
152 With a book in hand, he walked around and around: This portrait is compiled from Hentig’s account.
153 His Tuscan dialect was so good: Ibid., 7.
153 “this wonderful talent bites its thumb”: Ibid., 15.
153 more daily newspapers published in other languages: “Polyglot America,” The Brisbane Courier, Feb. 14, 1929, 12.
153 cluster of real hyperpolyglots at Ellis Island: Barry Moreno, personal communication.
154 eventually was sold to the US Library of Congress: Shuzhao Hu, The Development of the Chinese Collection in the Library of Congress (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979), 83–84. “While the bulk of his collection was devoted to rare lexicographical aids to the study of central European languages, the Chinese items alone numbered 236 works in 1,620 volumes. They are richest in Chinese novels, popular lyrics, histories, government documents, and early examples of pai-hua (vernacular) literature.”
154 “surrendering to his great ambition for language study”: Eckhard Hoffmann has written and talked about Krebs extensively; one example is available here: http://ueberFlieger.qoalu.com/artikel/den-kopf-voller-sprachen.
154 The request came from Oskar Vogt: E. G. Jones, “Review of Cécile and Oskar Vogt: The Visionaries of Modern Neuroscience, by Igor Klatzo,” Nature, 421 (2003), 19–20.
154 “It also appeared a brilliant idea to obtain”: Igor Klatzko, Cécile and Oskar Vogt: The Visionaries of Modern Neuroscience (Acta Neurochirurgica Supplement 80) (New York: Springer Wien, 2002), 30.
Chapter 11
156 languages are controlled in other places besides “Broca’s area”: Harry W. Whitaker, “Paul Broca,” in Robert Andrew Wilson & Frank C. Keil (eds.), The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 2001), 97–98. See also F. Dronkers, O. Plaisant, M. T. Iba-Zizen, and E. A. Cabanis, “Paul Broca’s Historic Cases: High Resolution MR Imaging of the Brains of Leborgne and Lelong,” Brain, 130:5 (2007), 1432–41.
158 “dual stream” model: Gregory Hickok and David Poeppel, “Dorsal and Ventral Streams: A Framework for Understanding Aspects of the Functional Anatomy of Language”: Cognition, 92:1–2 (2004), 67–99.
158 engaged mainly on the left side of the brain: See, for example, G. Vingerhoets et al., “Multilingualism: An fMRI Study,�
�� NeuroImage 20 (2003), 2181–96. Also Rita Franceschini et al., “Learner Acquisition Strategies (LAS) in the Course of Life: A Language Biographic Approach,” paper presented at the Second International Conference on Third Language Acquisition and Trilingualism, Fryske Akademy, Sept. 13–15, 2001.
Chapter 12
161 galvanizing work that promised many answers: Katrin Amunts, A. Schleicher, and Karl Zilles, “Outstanding Language Competence and Cytoarchitecture in Broca’s Speech Region,” Brain and Language, 89 (2004), 346–53.
162 exploring the “neurological substrate” of talent: Loraine Obler and Deborah Fein (eds.), The Exceptional Brain: Neuropsychology of Talent and Special Abilities (New York: Guilford Press, 1988).
163 aren’t held back from hearing and producing: See, for example, B. McLaughlin and N. Nayak, “Processing a New Language: Does Knowing Other Languages Make a Difference?” in H. W. Dechert and M. Raupach (eds.), Interlingual Processes (Tübingen: Narr, 1989), 5–16.
164 his answer was a resolute yes: Peter Skehan, A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998), 211.
164 They “would have a high range of lexicalized exemplars”: Ibid., 250.
164 “do not seem to have unusual abilities with respect to input or central processing”: Ibid., 233.
165 part of the memory system that remembers facts and words, and which remains robust as one ages: This paragraph draws from Michael Ullmann’s Declarative/Procedural Model, described in “A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective on Second Language Acquisition: The Declarative/Procedural Model,” in Cristina Sanz (ed.), Mind and Context in Adult Second Language Acquisition: Methods, Theory, and Practice (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006), 141–78. His account contains many intriguing possibilities for understanding individual variations that might explain very high levels of language abilities, including gender differences and seasonal/hormonal effects, as well as chemical interventions for enhancing procedural and declarative memories.
165 they just have declarative memories with a lot of capacity: One possibility might be that language accumulators choose certain languages to compensate for relative limitations of procedural memory. That is, they would opt for inflected languages over isolating languages, the notion being that inflections encode grammatical relationships in the words themselves that would otherwise rely on procedural memory. Of the 172 language repertoires I collected in my online survey, only 20 contained Mandarin. Moreover, only 5 had more than one Chinese language or other Southeast Asian language. Typical repertoires were ones like “Portuguese, English, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish” or “Hungarian, Serbian, German, English, Italian, Esperanto.” People were clearly choosing languages whose words are combined of many smaller parts. (This doesn’t seem to explain Emil Krebs, however, whose mental resources weren’t exhausted by Chinese.) Surely this bias toward a certain type of language has partly to do with the fact that the survey circulated on English-language forums and blogs.
165 asymmetry could create clusters of talents and deficits: Norman Geschwind and A. M. Galaburda, “Cerebral Lateralisation: Biological Mechanisms, Associations, and Pathology: I,” Archives of Neurology, 42 (1985), 428–59; “Cerebral Lateralisation: Biological Mechanisms, Associations, and Pathology: II,” Archives of Neurology, 42 (1985), 521–52; “Cerebral Lateralisation: Biological Mechanisms, Associations, and Pathology: III,” Archives of Neurology, 42 (1985), 634–54.
167 left-handers often reported having speech problems: K. M. Cornish, “The Geschwind and Galaburda Theory of Cerebral Lateralisation: An Empirical Evaluation of Its Assumptions,” Current Psychology, 15:1 (1996), 68–76.
167 people with autism have higher rates of non-right-handedness: See Senole Dane and Nese Balci, “Handedness, Eyedness and Nasal Cycle in Children with Autism,” International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2007), 223–26. Also, P. R. Escalante-Mead, N. J. Minshew, and J. A. Sweeney, “Abnormal brain lateralization in high-functioning autism,” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Vol. 3, No. 5, (2003), 539–543.
168 more males than females who perform both very high and very low: G. M. Grimshaw, G. Sitarenios, and J. K. Finegan, “Mental Rotation at 7 Years: Relations with Prenatal Testosterone Levels and Spatial Play Experiences,” Brain and Cognition 29 (1995), 85–100.
Chapter 13
173 the tool that Amunts used on Krebs’s brain slices: This project, called the Human Brain Mapping Initiative, constructs maps of the probability that any given point of a brain belongs to a certain named region. Such a mapping avoids one of the pitfalls of traditional brain anatomy, in which individual brains vary so much in size (ranging in weight from 1,000 grams to 1,700 grams) and in structure that the brain areas (such as Broca’s) don’t line up.
173 Amunts found that in Krebs’s brain: See Katrin Amunts, A. Schleicher, and Karl Zilles, “Outstanding Language Competence and Cytoarchitecture in Broca’s Speech Region,” Brain and Language, 89 (2004), 346–53.
174 “meta-linguistic abilities far beyond automatic speech”: Ibid., 351.
174 may also have something to do with Krebs’s Chinese: J. Crinion et al., “Neuroanatomical Markers of Speaking Chinese,” Human Brain Mapping 30:12 (2009), 4108–15.
174 Italian research team revealed in 2009: C. Bloch et al., “The Age of Second Language Acquisition Determines the Variability in Activation Elicited by Narration in Three Languages in Broca’s and Wernike’s Areas”: Neuropsychologia, 47:3 (2008), 625–33.
Chapter 14
177 Different languages activated overlapping areas of the brain: R. S. Briellmann, M. M. Saling, A. B. Connell, et al., “A High-Field Functional MRI Study of Quadri-Lingual Subjects,” Brain and Language, 89:2 (2004), 531–42.
179 training increases the number of synapses: A. Norton et al., “Are There Preexisting Neural, Cognitive or Motoric Markers for Musical Ability?,” Brain and Cognition, 59 (2005), 130.
180 “Automatic acquisition from mere exposure”: Eric Lenneberg, Biological Foundations of Language (New York: Wiley, 1967), 176.
181 If a child learning Swedish can’t become a native speaker: Niclas Abrahamsson and Kenneth Hyltenstam, “Age of Onset and Nativelikeness in a Second Language: Listener Perception Versus Linguistic Scrutiny”: Language Learning, 59:2 (2009), 287.
181 Some have figured that only 5 percent: Larry Selinker, “Interlanguage,” International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 10 (1972), 209–31.
181 at fewer than 1 percent: R. Coppetiers, “Competence Differences Between Native and Near-Native Speakers,” Language, 63:3 (1987), 545–73.
181 a type of sentence that’s hard for people to learn: Sonja van Boxtel, T. Bongaerts, and P. A. Coppen, “Native-like Attainment of Dummy Subjects in Dutch and the Role of the L1,” International Review of Applied Linguistics, 43 (2005), 355–80.
182 In another project, an exhaustive battery: Stefka Marinova-Todd, Comprehensive Analysis of Ultimate Attainment in Adult Second Language Acquisition, PhD dissertation (unpublished), Harvard University, 2003.
PART 4 ELABORATION: The Brains of Babel
Chapter 15
189 Sorensen wrote in an article about the place: Arthur Sorensen Jr., “Multilingualism in the Northwest Amazon,” American Anthropologist, 69 (1967), 670–84.
190 typical person will “speak only two or three”: Leslie Moore, “Language Mixing at Home and School in a Multilingual Community (Mandara Mountains, Cameroon),” Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (2006), 1.
191 “speaks pelasla, wuzlam, and French fluently”: Scott MacEachern, Du Kunde: Processes of Montagnard Ethnogenesis in the Northern Mandara Mountains of Cameroon (London: Mandaras, 2003), 274.
191 four languages was the norm: Ibid., 275.
196 The languages borrowed each other’s sound patterns: Murray Emeneau, “India as a Linguistic Area”: Language, 32:1 (1956), 7.
19
6 For instance, Sanskrit: Ibid., 9.
197 Added to this mix was the third invasion: See, for example, N. Krishnaswamy and L. Krishnaswamy, The Story of English in India (New Delhi: Foundation Books Ltd., 2006).
197 range from 5 to 50 percent of the population: David Graddol, English Next (2006), www.britishcouncil.org/learning-research-english-next.pdf, 94.
197 the power structure along with independence: Krishnaswamy and Krishnaswamy, Story of English, 109.
197 “over which one language is spoken from end to end”: George Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, vol. I, part 1, 93.
198 newspapers are published in at least 34 languages: From the 2001 linguistic census of India.
198 The next most populous Indian languages are Bengali, with 70 million speakers, and Telugu, with 69 million: All of the figures here from Paul M. Lewis (ed.), Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 16th ed. (Dallas, TX: SIL International, 2009).
198 one house with many mansions”: Wendy Doniger, The Hindus (New York: Penguin Press, 2009), 197.
198 Bangalore, bringing Tamil with them: The history is related in S. M. Lal, Convergence and Language Shifts in a Linguistic Minority: A Sociolinguistic Study of Tamilsi in Bangalore City (Mysore: CIIL, 1986).
200 Hindu fundamentalists attacked Indian women dressed in Western clothes: See Somini Sengupta, “Attack on Women at an Indian Bar Intensifies a Clash of Cultures,” New York Times, Feb. 9, 2009. Also, “Police to Invoke Goondas Act Against Hindutva Extremists,” The Hindu, Jan. 27, 2009.
200 “They were being forced into a clipped and compromised existence”: Raju Srinivasaraju, Keeping Faith with the Mother Tongue: The Anxieties of a Local Culture (Bangalore: Navakarnataka Publications, 2008), 15.
201 “Within two generations, the Indian literary past”: Sheldon Pollock, “The Real Classical Languages Debate.” The Hindu, Nov. 27, 2008.
201 the notion is obvious in the painting Goddess English: www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12355740.
Babel No More Page 31