Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!apple!voder!pyramid!prls!philabs!linus!mbunix!bwk From: bwk@mbunix.mitre.org (Barry W. Kort) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Glossolalia and the Juke Box Model of Speech Acts Summary: Doobie Doobie Doo. Keywords: Et tu, Kimosabe? Message-ID: <45523@linus.UUCP> Date: 1 Mar 89 01:17:34 GMT References: <3312@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> Sender: news@linus.UUCP Reply-To: bwk@mbunix.mitre.org (Barry Kort) Organization: Neurotic Netware, Dendrite Faults, NV Lines: 31 In article harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Stevan Harnad) writes: > Perhaps if people (or objects) habitually went around emitting coherent > glossolalic discourse in foreign languages ("speaking in tongues") that > they claimed (in English) not to understand, or if they emitted nothing > but jargonaphasia that they kept feeling fervently to be full of meaning, > things might look a little different, but that's not the way it is. Most people generate spoken language by way of Wernicke's Area of the left hemisphere. (This is perhaps a bit oversimplified, but bear with me.) The corresponding area in the right hemisphere is also capable of storing and repeating auditory material, but without the benefit of real-time language production. It's more like playing back an audio tape than forming a fresh sentence to express a current idea or thought. The right hemisphere auditory material can include music and lyrics, and other memorized material (even from infancy) that has no meaning as far as the left hemisphere language center is concerned. I know many lyrics that are burned into my brain that I never bothered to listen to for their semantic content. Like Mairsy Doats and Toura Loura Loura, I can utter them on cue with no thought or clue as to their meaning. Could it be that Glossolalia and Frere Jacques are just recitations of previously engrained auditory material that lodged itself in the language-deficient Wernicke's Area of the right hemisphere? --Barry Kort