神经语言学视角下语言学热点问题研究——以《科学》杂志《语言与大脑》专刊为例

Rethinking the hot issues in linguistics from the perspective of neurolinguistics:Based on the special section"Language and the Brain"in Science

2019年10月《科学》杂志的《语言与大脑》专刊,从神经语言学视角对语言加工进行了深入的探讨。基于这一专刊及该领域的相关研究,本文对语言的本质、来源和使用等语言学热点问题进行了扼要简述,指出神经语言学的研究支持以下结论:1)语言结构中的语义和音系与句法一样重要;人类语言的独特性还体现在其社会性上,尤其是指代功能和情感交流上;2)尽管语言常常被认为是人类特有的能力,但从行为层面、分子层面和脑神经科学方面对其他动物的研究证明,大脑内言语组件的进化程度在不同物种之间是连续的;3)语言加工不仅仅局限于Broca区和Wernicke区,核心语言功能的关键部分如整合等功能,是与音乐和算数等其他认知功能共享的。预测和注意等认知功能帮助我们大脑预测语句中的新信息或焦点信息,保证语言加工的即时性。另外,人们还需要将语句中的指称、说话人的情感立场和语境结合起来,才能推理说话人的交际意图,并以此为基础,完成交流的过程。

In October 2019,Science issues a special section named Language and the Brain,which discusses language processing from the perspective of neurolinguistics.Based on the studies in this section and relevant researches in this field,this paper makes a brief introduction to three basic questions in linguistics:the language’s nature,origins and use.It is found that current studies come down to the following aspects:1)phonology and semantic are independent component in linguistic structure,who might commensurate with syntactic units.Besides,language is unique because of the sociality,especially reflected in its referential power and affective nature;2)although language is often considered unique to humans,nonhuman animal studies,from behavioral,molecular and neuroscience levels of analyses,proved that seven components of spoken language in the brain could be continuous among species;and 3)a much more complex picture of interacting brain areas emerges than in the classical neurobiological model of language.Some key aspects of core operations(such as unification)might well be shared with other-domains,such as music and arithmetic.Prediction and attention might be relevant to meet the demand of language processing speed via information structure and good-enough processing.What’s more,social communication depends critically on the capacity to make the right pragmatic inferences by combining reference in sentences,speakers’affective stances and contexts.