People have to use more of their brain to understand Mandarin Chinese than they do English.

http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=3011400

Bingley

so my question is this:

was there ever a time when English, or even it's predecessors, used intonation for meaning?

Having taught at a school that had a large population of Cambodians, Vietnamese, Thai and Laotian students, I do understand in essence how highly inflected languages differ from English .

But what I don't understand is how the melodiousness of expressive English speakers wouldn't also be a right brain function. Sometimes, for instance, when a speaker drives a point home, it might not be so much the content alone of what he speaks, but also the melodiousness itself--the rise and fall of the voice on certain words, stress, enunciation of particular consonants, rhythmic interspacing, and so on--part and parcel of the actor's craft. How are these musical aids to language well-spoken--ones that require the rise and fall of phrases at least and the delivery of the individual words, even down to the beautifully or forcefully enuniciated consonant--still purely left brain functions?

I do understand how Asiatic inflection is different--I did try to imitate my Vietnamese students' language for their amusement. My incorrect inflection always amused them as they told me what I'd actually said--but isn't there a similarity here at least in our own masterful phrasing, delivery and enunciation?

was there ever a time when English, or even it's predecessors, used intonation for meaning?

you mean likd a rising inflextion or tone when we are asking a question?
(rant)
many women, acquire the habit in their teen years of always using a rising intonation, and everything they say sounds tentitive.. or they will tack on an isn't it? to almost every sentence..
It's a nice day, isn't it?

I know how to get there, I think?

every statement is tentive... and then they complain no one takes them seriously.. (of course if they break the habit, they tend to get called agressive, or get told they speak like a man
(/rant)

well, ww and helen, I had thought of that, but my understanding of intonation in speech is that it is actual pitch, not just inflection. ww, it sounds like you are much more familiar with this than I, but I have always wondered whether the pitches used by different people saying the same word matched? and how far, word to word, frequency-wise, do those pitches differ? (those have to be two of the most(worst) poorly worded sentences ever...)

anyway, let me finish this second cup of coffee...(hi Fald!)

Et'

You bring up an interesting point. The pitches probably couldn't match between adults since men's voices would be lower. But, oh, suppose they matched on the octaves! Now that would be something to consider! But I doubt it.

All I know--and it is very little--is when I tried to duplicate the inflected tones of individual words in Vietnamese, I had my students in stitches. The inflection is by far more restricted that just an inflection to show a question with our voices, although it would be related in a very general sense, of troy. The inflected tones were so small in terms of audible range, that I could not hear them correctly and then reproduce them correctly to my students often. Sometimes--strictly by chance and a fairly good western ear--I would nail the sucker. And my students would applaud. But I learned that it would be a cold day in hell before I'd try in earnest to learn Vietnamese. I had trouble enough with trying to speak French to a French man once--I thoroughly annoyed him.

If we had a tape available--a sound file--so that the AWADers could hear these Vietnamese inflections and how very slight differences in inflection change word meaning, that would be helpful, particularly for a general sound differently inflected that would mean about four or five different words.

My question is: Do highly trained speakers with very musical voices use the right brain at all? I would guess they must. And if they do, then the rest of us might a little, if not to the degree of highly inflected languages, such as Mandarin, from what the opening post suggests.

Good post, Mr B - got us using a bit more of ours brains! Thanks for bringing the article to attention.

People have to use more of their brain to understand Mandarin Chinese than they do English.

I wonder if there are spin-offs, side effects, from this. Do Mandarin speakers have higher IQs for example? Does speaking Mandarin in old age keep their brains more active, helping to stave off Alzheimer’s or memory loss? Could make for some interesting research.

Do Mandarin speakers have higher IQs for example?
I would hesitate to jump to such conclusions. The fact that a language uses more brain, i.e. more of our limited resources, for what are after all similar tasks among all Earth-dwellers, could mean that the language is less efficient, in purely utilitaristic terms. This does not necessarily mean that it is more difficult. Walking on four legs is probably easier than on two.

i wonder how a stroke effects speakers of mandrin, and other tonal languages.

when stroke victims have damage to broca's area, their speech is effected, but many times they can still sing, and therapy to recover speach uses this intact ability to keep the tongue and other muscles moving.. they sometimes find they can summon up bits of songs, melodies and words, and begin a rudimentary system of communication.

but since tonal languages have a more intrigrated use of the right and left halves of the brain, i wonder if they have more cross connections with singing and speach than speakers of non tonal languages?

what say any of the resident doctors/neurologist? or is the an area of brain patterns that has yet to be explored?

yet another fascinating synapse to explore, Helen!

I don't know how a stroke would affect speaking a tonal language but I can tell you that my Cantonese speaking patients with language impairments had much more difficulty understanding my "Cantonese" than those with truly intact language. (my Cantonese is limited to: good morning, how are you, slow down, stand up, sit down, does it hurt, and are you dizzy. functional but not very sociable.)
On a slight tangent I would frequently have patients who spoke English to some degree before their stroke but not after yet their first language was left unimpaired. Even one lovely lady who had not spoken French since leaving France at age 5. After her stroke she became fluent at French but not a word of English. She started English lessons and her husband of 54 years started French lessons.

People have to use more of their brain to understand Mandarin (emphasis mine)

Do highly trained speakers with very musical voices use the right brain at all? ...And if they do, then the rest of us might a little

Speech and language centres are located in the LEFT hemisphere of the brain in well over 95 percent of all right handed people. However, paralanguage, whish is the associations of language like melody, intonation, pitch, rhythm, gesturing, expressions are predominantly controlled by the RIGHT brain. ALL of us, whatever language we speak, use both the right brain and the left brain to converse. Speakers of languages (like Mandarin), that place great emphasis on intonation would use their right brain more *frequently, or rather, their right brains probably demonstrate more *constant activity during conversation, than ours. As to whether, this translates into more integrated circuitry between the right and the left halves of the brain is not, as yet, established (to the best of my knowledge, but I am not on top of the latest research in this field)

Stroke in the left brain in Broca's area, Wernicke's area and their association areas affects speech and language. The degree to which these faculties are impaired and recovery therefore, depends on the type and extent of the injury. Specific functions have been assigned to each of these areas, (Borca's (frontal)- speech production; Wernickes' (temporal) - speech comprehension) and so, clincial assessment of the different presentations of aphasia, itself can predict location of the injury, even prior to brain imaging.

Stroke in the right brain in the mirror locations of the left's speech and language areas, results in a condition called, "Aprosodia", which, as the name suggests, is associated with loss of the paralanguage components of language. Aprosodia patients have loss of intonation, rhythm, pitch, gesturing, expression, etc.

Also, in many patients with stroke in the left brain's speech and language areas, the right brain does, compensatorily, increase its activity and, consequently, aids recovery of function.

A *most interesting thread, Bingley; thank you.

wow, thanks for all of that, maahey! very interesting!

Yeah, eta, ain't it great? i just know enough to ask simple minded questions most of the time,(stales helped me, and gave me the describe as having knowledge base as a mile wide, and a micron deep)but what is great is, there is always some one here who has some sort of Mile deep knowledge! and i get to add a half micron of information to my store!

i love that i get to hang out with all these knowledgible people all the time, and don't have to pay tuition! and besides, were else could i collect such esoteric information-- bits and pieces and details about linotype machines, neurology, oceanography, sheep!and other things welsh (and aussie!) in nature... some one should make A book of Uncommon Knowledge. they could just cut and paste the whole thing together from the archives of this board!
(the second volume could be a cookbook!)

I've just watched a recent French movie 'Beautiful memories' about people with a variety of memory loss in an institution. One man can only say the word "To, to, to, to … " but a Vietnamese character [delightfully named Mr Bong] listens to the inflections of his voice and translates perfectly.

Thank you SO much, maahey! I've copied your info. and saved it to my personal files. They didn't tell me what part(s) of my mother's brain were affected by her stroke; they just told me that she would never talk or understand speech again. Words were important to her, which is probably why they have always been to me. So I told them to let her go. It took ten days. (That was 1995. There was a bit more to it than that, but.)

i love that i get to hang out with all these knowledgible people all the time, and don't have to pay tuition! and besides, were else could i collect such esoteric information-- bits and pieces and details about linotype machines, neurology, oceanography, sheep!and other things welsh (and aussie!) in nature... some one should make A book of Uncommon Knowledge. they could just cut and paste the whole thing together from the archives of this board! Yes! Yes! I love this place!

a Vietnamese character [delightfully named Mr Bong] listens to the inflections of his voice and translates perfectly.
That sounds like a wonderful film, paulb. [HUG]

when stroke victims have damage to broca's area, their speech is effected, but many times they can still sing, .. they sometimes ...can summon up bits of songs, melodies and words, and begin ... communication.
Stutterers can often sing clearly with no impediments on certain consonants .... now, wait a sec ... do people who stutter have trouble just with consonants? Never heard of anyone's having trouble with vowels (a, e, i, o, u)
Years ago there was a joke that gained wide currency about a stuttering sailor who had to sing about a man falling overboard for the Captain to understand. The punch line had to be sung for full impact!
Anyone remember it?

From my very limited exposure to the problem, stuttering is not limited to consonants. I had the uncomfortable experience many years ago of being briefed on the "Chi-yi-yi-yi-nese" situation by an area specialist at the National Security Agency.

Again dragging an "old" thread up to the top...

We have more tonal sense in English than you'd first think. Have you even been in a church full of people reciting a prayer? There's some kind of common tone (or maybe two, one for men, one for women) that everyone settles down to for the duration of the prayer. You'll notice it if you consciously try to say the prayer in a "normal" voice - you'll stick out like a sore thumb, partly because your pitch doesn't match the group, and partly because prayers are more monotonic than speech.

Another example I like to think of is the notes for "I don't know". If your mouth is full when someone asks you something, you can avoid being rude by sort of humming the correct notes for "I don't know" and they understand you perfectly every time.

those are great thoughts, Bean. I would guess that there are more of those "I don't know's" out there, too.

mm hmm.

My Dad - whose first language is not English - can't hear the difference between "uh huh" and "uh uh" and their corresponding humming equivalents.

prayers are more monotonic than speech

Shouldn't that be monotonous, Bean?

now who's wearing the skirt?

parm mah bushel!

Shouldn't that be monotonous, Bean?

Sorry, I slipped and used a math word IRL (monotonic = not increasing, or not decreasing). (If you call this Real Life.)

I thought monotonic meant that it only increased or decreased.

E.g.: http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/MonotonicallyIncreasing.html

I thought monotonic meant that it only increased or decreased.
Well--Bean said that monotonic = not increasing, or not decreasing . (I added the boldface.) Not increasing means, I think, that something either stays the same or decreases; and the opposite for not decreasing. So it seems to me that her def. fits.

I looked at the site, and, while not coming anywhere near real comprehension, I did find it cool that they make a distinction for staying the same. If a sequence could stay the same or get smaller, they say it is "monotonically nonincreasing". If one could stay the same or get larger, they say it is "monotonically nondecreasing".

her def. fits

Point taken, Jackie. Score another one for careful reading.

a distinction for staying the same.

There's a similar distinction between positive and non-negative. The former does not include zero; the latter does.

Yeah, what Jackie said. I gave it some thought and was fairly sure that "monotonic" on its own allows the possibility of staying the same, so that's why I defined it so oddly.

True..... Half of the people I know got lower grades for Mandarin and Canto. than they did for English.... Mandarin is easier than Cantonese though, there are nine tones in Cantonese, as opposed to the four tones of mandarin. So the Canto. word for 'try' [a] can become the word for human waste... Charming...

Welcome aBoard, Brina! Nice to have you.

So the Canto. word for 'try' can become the word for human waste
If you don't succeed. . . hmmmmm