Neurolinguistia

Neurolinguistics, the branch of linguistics that studies the relation between language and the structure and function of the nervous system, is one of the world’s absolute most important fields of study, but it doesn’t receive enough attention. Much of the terrain of beautiful Neurolinguistia remains uncharted. Why is this? Too abstract? Esoteric? Dry?

It’s an amazing realm to be explored. That should be a helpful analogy.

Posts of mine touching on neurolinguistics:

• Amygdalamania
• Why we are living limited by Chomsky’s so-called universals & free creation
• What’s the point of a monochromatic photo of a rainbow?
• Explaining Japanese productivity
• The Linguistics of China’s Power
• The Radikyial view of African linguistics
• Saving Turkicity
• The Super-Tongue Alliance

It is important to underline that crossover fields like neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics are not the purest areas within linguistics itself. From my point of view, I sit right at the other end of this spectrum with my turgid passion for philology, rather intimidated and put off by Chomsky’s clean cut scientific tenacity. But for the rest of you: this is a field which needs ploughing!

Why? One of the pivotal developments within the Buzz-Concept Project has been my realisation that languages are not related to each other ultimately and primarily by any frivolous lexicological or typological link. Nope. While related languages do necessarily always show some parallels in this respect, the similarities aren’t always readily visible. I can now tell you that the Orientalesque languages are profoundly linked -beyond genealogy- by abstract lexicology, sharp phonology, innovative morphology and efficacious ideologies. But compare Chinese (Sino-Tibetan, Oriental) and Nahuatl (Uto-Aztecan, Amerindian):

🇨🇳 人人生而自由,在尊严和权利上一律平等。他们赋有理性和良心,并应以兄弟关系的精神互相对待。

Rénrén shēng ér zìyóu, zài zūnyán hé quánlì shàng yīlù píngděng. Tāmen fùyǒu lǐxìng hé liángxīn, bìng yīng yǐ xiōngdì guānxì de jīngshén hùxiāng duìdài.

🇲🇽 Nochi tlacameh ihuan cihuameh quipiah manoh cualli tlacaticeh, nochi zan ze totlatechpohuiltiliz ihuan titlatepanitalohqueh, yeca monequi cualli ma timohuicacah, ma timoicnelicah, ma timotlazohtlacah ihuan ma timotlepanitacah.

🇬🇧 All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

The Orientalesque language family

Would you have got that? Of course not.

Primarily, the bonds that underpin my philology are neurological. It is neurology that has kept the Orientalesque languages firmly tied for tens of thousands of years. It’s to do with the way you native language permits your very neurology to function. Next level up, Buzz-Concepts are there controlling the psycholinguistic dynamic of how you relate the signs of your language to each other and back to the world. But on the most basic level, all-important language classification, which has such profound geopolitical consequences as we have seen, critically holds much to be plugged by these unfortunately ground-down neurolinguists.