The Raven Edgar Allan Poe

Poe's Poetry Summary and Analysis

by Edgar Allan Poe

"The Raven"

Summary:

The unnamed narrator is wearily perusing an old book one bleak December night when he hears a tapping at the door to his room. He tells himself that it is merely a visitor, and he awaits tomorrow because he cannot find release in his sorrow over the death of Lenore. The rustling curtains frighten him, but he decides that it must be some late visitor and, going to the door, he asks for forgiveness from the visitor because he had been napping. However, when he opens the door, he sees and hears nothing except the word "Lenore," an echo of his own words.

Returning to his room, he again hears a tapping and reasons that it was probably the wind outside his window. When he opens the window, however, a raven enters and promptly perches "upon a bust of Pallas" above his door. Its grave appearance amuses the narrator, who asks it for its names. The raven responds, "Nevermore." He does not understand the reply, but the raven says nothing else until the narrator predicts aloud that it will leave him tomorrow like the rest of his friends. Then the bird again says, "Nevermore."

Startled, the narrator says that the raven must have learned this word from some unfortunate owner whose ill luck caused him to repeat the word frequently. Smiling, the narrator sits in front of the ominous raven to ponder about the meaning of its word. The raven continues to stare at him, as the narrator sits in the chair that Lenore will never again occupy. He then feels that angels have approached, and angrily calls the raven an evil prophet. He asks if there is respite in Gilead and if he will again see Lenore in Heaven, but the raven only responds, "Nevermore." In a fury, the narrator demands that the raven go back into the night and leave him alone again, but the raven says, "Nevermore," and it does not leave the bust of Pallas. The narrator feels that his soul will "nevermore" leave the raven's shadow.

Analysis:

"The Raven" is the most famous of Poe's poems, notable for its melodic and dramatic qualities. The meter of the poem is mostly trochaic octameter, with eight stressed-unstressed two-syllable feet per lines. Combined with the predominating ABCBBB end rhyme scheme and the frequent use of internal rhyme, the trochaic octameter and the refrain of "nothing more" and "nevermore" give the poem a musical lilt when read aloud. Poe also emphasizes the "O" sound in words such as "Lenore" and "nevermore" in order to underline the melancholy and lonely sound of the poem and to establish the overall atmosphere. Finally, the repetition of "nevermore" gives a circular sense to the poem and contributes to what Poe termed the unity of effect, where each word and line adds to the larger meaning of the poem.

The unnamed narrator appears in a typically Gothic setting with a lonely apartment, a dying fire, and a "bleak December" night while wearily studying his books in an attempt to distract himself from his troubles. He thinks occasionally of Lenore but is generally able to control his emotions, although the effort required to do so tires him and makes his words equally slow and outwardly pacified. However, over the course of the narrative, the protagonist becomes more and more agitated both in mind and in action, a progression that he demonstrates through his rationalizations and eventually through his increasingly exclamation-ridden monologue. In every stanza near the end, however, his exclamations are punctuated by the calm desolation of the sentence "Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore,'" reflecting the despair of his soul.

Like a number of Poe's poems such as "Ulalume" and "Annabel Lee," "The Raven" refers to an agonized protagonist's memories of a deceased woman. Through poetry, Lenore's premature death is implicitly made aesthetic, and the narrator is unable to free himself of his reliance upon her memory. He asks the raven if there is "balm in Gilead" and therefore spiritual salvation, or if Lenore truly exists in the afterlife, but the raven confirms his worst suspicions by rejecting his supplications. The fear of death or of oblivion informs much of Poe's writing, and "The Raven" is one of his bleakest publications because it provides such a definitively negative answer. By contrast, when Poe uses the name Lenore in a similar situation in the poem "Lenore," the protagonist Guy de Vere concludes that he need not cry in his mourning because he is confident that he will meet Lenore in heaven.

Poe's choice of a raven as the bearer of ill news is appropriate for a number of reasons. Originally, Poe sought only a dumb beast that was capable of producing human-like sounds without understanding the words' meaning, and he claimed that earlier conceptions of "The Raven" included the use of a parrot. In this sense, the raven is important because it allows the narrator to be both the deliverer and interpreter of the sinister message, without the existence of a blatantly supernatural intervention. At the same time, the raven's black feather have traditionally been considered a magical sign of ill omen, and Poe may also be referring to Norse mythology, where the god Odin had two ravens named Hugin and Munin, which respectively meant "thought" and "memory." The narrator is a student and thus follows Hugin, but Munin continually interrupts his thoughts and in this case takes a physical form by landing on the bust of Pallas, which alludes to Athena, the Greek goddess of learning.

Due to the late hour of the poem's setting and to the narrator's mental turmoil, the poem calls the narrator's reliability into question. At first the narrator attempts to give his experiences a rational explanation, but by the end of the poem, he has ceased to give the raven any interpretation beyond that which he invents in his own head. The raven thus serves as a fragment of his soul and as the animal equivalent of Psyche in the poem "Ulalume." Each figure represents its respective character's subconscious that instinctively understands his need to obsess and to mourn. As in "Ulalume," the protagonist is unable to avoid the recollection of his beloved, but whereas Psyche of "Ulalume" sought to prevent the unearthing of painful memories, the raven actively stimulates his thoughts of Lenore, and he effectively causes his own fate through the medium of a non-sentient animal.

The Raven Summary

It's late at night, and late in the year (after midnight on a December evening, to be precise). A man is sitting in his room, half reading, half falling asleep, and trying to forget his lost love, Lenore. Suddenly, he hears someone (or something) knocking at the door.

He calls out, apologizing to the "visitor" he imagines must be outside. Then he opens the door and finds…nothing. This freaks him out a little, and he reassures himself that it is just the wind against the window. So he goes and opens the window, and in flies (you guessed it) a raven.

The Raven settles in on a statue above the door, and for some reason, our speaker's first instinct is to talk to it. He asks for its name, just like you usually do with strange birds that fly into your house, right? Amazingly enough, though, the Raven answers back, with a single word: "Nevermore."

Understandably surprised, the man asks more questions. The bird's vocabulary turns out to be pretty limited, though; all it says is "Nevermore." Our narrator catches on to this rather slowly and asks more and more questions, which get more painful and personal. The Raven, though, doesn't change his story, and the poor speaker starts to lose his sanity.

Stanzas I & II Summary

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.

Lines 1-6

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore –
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door –
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door –
Only this and nothing more."

• Poe jumps right in here and begins to create the atmosphere that is so important in this poem.
• In the first two lines, we find out that it's late on a "dreary" night, and that our speaker is reading weird old books and feeling "weak and weary."
• Do you get a feeling for this already? Do you know those nights where you're tired and maybe a little depressed, but you can't quite go to sleep? You turn things over in your mind, and as you do, you start to feel worse? Maybe you're reading a scary book or watching a spooky movie, and suddenly the whole world seems a little dark and scary? That's exactly where Poe wants to put us.
• In line 3, the speaker is just starting to nod off, and then…tap, tap, tap. Just a little noise, but suddenly he's jolted awake, and he's a little nervous.
• He tries to calm himself down, telling himself that "tis some visitor" (6) who has dropped by unexpectedly. But, just like in a horror movie, we know it won't be that easy…

Lines 7-12

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; – vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow – sorrow for the lost Lenore –
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore –
Nameless here for evermore.

• Just as we're wondering whom that visitor might be, as we start to feel the suspense, Poe steps back. He almost starts the poem over again, telling us a little bit more about the speaker and more about that already spooky atmosphere.
• In line 6, we find out that not only is this a dark, late, dreary night, but it's December too. Poe is really piling it on here: dark, late, cold, and "bleak."
• It sure doesn't sound like anything happy is going to pop up here. Even the fire is going out, and the last coals, the " dying embers," are making creepy, ghost-like shadows on the floor (8).
• The room almost starts to feel haunted, and in a way, it is.
• In the next four lines we learn that there's a reason why our speaker is sitting up late, trying to distract himself with these old books.
• He's grieving for a lost woman, someone named Lenore. This woman (His wife? His girlfriend?) is among the angels and has left him behind, alone.
• He hopes for an end to the pain, what he calls "surcease from sorrow" (10), but maybe staying up and reading late in December isn't the best way to get your mind off of a loved one's death.

Stanzas III & IV Summary

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.

Lines 13-18

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me – filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door –
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; –
This it is and nothing more."

• In fact, it seems like the room and its creepy atmosphere might really be getting to our speaker. Even the rustling sound of the curtains seems sad to him (13).
• As he listens, he begins to really freak out, his head filling with "fantastic terrors."
• His heart starts to beat faster too; to calm himself down, he has to tell himself (twice) that the knocking sound he hears is just a visitor.
• The more he says it though, the more we all know that it can't just be that, or at least not the kind of visitor he might be expecting…

Lines 19-24

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you" – here I opened wide the door; – –
Darkness there and nothing more.

• Eventually, he gets a hold of himself: "presently my soul grew stronger" (19).
• He calls out to the visitor he imagines must be there, and apologizes for taking so long.
• He explains that he was almost asleep and wasn't sure if he was just hearing things (20-23). Then, suddenly, he throws open the door and finds…nothing. Just the black night: "Darkness there and nothing more" (24).
• Poe is really keying up the suspense now. Again, it's hard for us not to think of a horror movie, where the nervous main character walks up to a door, slowly turns the knob, and finds nothing. That's always the sure sign that the surprise is coming, and when we least expect it.

Stanzas V & VI Summary

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.

Lines 25-30

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" –
Merely this and nothing more.

• For a while, then, he's almost hypnotized by the darkness.
• He stares out into it, "peering […] fearing" (having fun with the rhymes yet?).
• Now might be about the time that you realize that our narrator isn't in great shape.
• He could close the door and go back to his book or his nap like a normal person, but he's clearly looking for something else. His mind is filled with strange ideas and terrible dreams (26). More than anything, though, he's obsessed with one idea, or, we should say, with one person.
• Suddenly, out of the total dark and quiet, we hear her name, "Lenore."
• Just that name, appearing in an eerie whisper out of nowhere (28). Or at least it seems like it comes from nowhere.
• In the next line, we find out that it is the speaker who has whispered her name, and just an echo that has "murmured back" the word "Lenore."
• For our depressed, grief-stricken narrator, the whole world seems bleak and terrifying, and everything, even the darkness, reminds him of his lost love.

Lines 31-36

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore –
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; –
'Tis the wind and nothing more!"

• Finally, he turns away from the darkness, but it's clear that he isn't comforted at all; in fact, he's feeling worse than ever: "all my soul within me burning" (31).
• This is a story about a guy in a room, but also about the mind: what it can do to us when it's off-kilter and all the feelings and ideas it can create.
• Our speaker, with his burning soul, is going through some rough times here.
• Then he hears the tapping again.
• Like anyone who is near the edge, he tries to get a grip, to come up with a rational explanation. He decides the sound is coming from the window, and he forces himself to go take a look.
• He tells himself to calm down again: "let my heart be still a moment" (35).
• In a final effort to make things seem normal, he tells himself it's just the wind (36).

Stanzas VII & VIII Summary

Line 37-42

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door –
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door – Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

• Here it comes! You knew from the title that there was a raven in here somewhere. Now, in the first two lines of this stanza, it shows up. And not just any raven, but a really impressive, capital-R kind of Raven. A "stately" (that just means royal-looking) raven, one that makes the speaker think of older, nobler times, "the saintly days of yore" (38).
• This important-looking raven just prances in through the window. He doesn't even stop to say hi or to make a gesture of greeting (that's an "obeisance") to our speaker (39).
• He acts like an aristocrat ("with the mien of lord or lady") and doesn't waste any time making himself right at home. (40). In fact, he heads straight for that chamber door we've heard so much about and sits above it, on a statue.
• That statue is actually pretty important, and Poe definitely wants us to notice it, so let's take a moment to check it out.
• He describes it as a "bust" which is a statue that goes from the head to the middle of the torso. It's a statue of Pallas, another name for the ancient Greek goddess Athena. She is known primarily as a goddess of Wisdom.
• When a major symbol like this shows up, we know to be on our guard. It's a lot different from the speaker saying, "the raven perched upon my crappy old lamp," or something like that. Poe might be trying to get us to think about whether this bird is wise or not, whether it's a thinking thing or just a mimic.

Lines 43-48

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore –
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

• At first, our speaker seems rather amused by his unexpected visitor.
• Poe gets a little fancy when he describes the raven, so we'll break it down: "Then this ebony [really black] bird beguiling [distracting him, capturing his attention] my sad fancy [imagination] into smiling,/By the grave [serious] and stern [serious again] decorum [proper way of acting] of the countenance (look on its face) it wore" (43-44).
• Fancy words aside, you might recognize this feeling. You're feeling down about something, and suddenly the sight of something strikes you as funny, and pulls you out of your funk a little.
• Our speaker really gets into this feeling of amusement, talking to the raven as if it were some noble person.
• He also goes out of his way to throw in some flourishes. The bit in line 45 refers to the way that a cowardly (craven) knight would sometimes have his head (crest) shaven to humiliate him. "Plutonian," in line 47, refers to the Greek god Pluto, who rules the Underworld. The adjective is meant to make us think about dark, scary, hellish things, like this particular dark, dreary night.
• If you're keeping score, that's two Greek god references in seven lines. We're starting to feel like our speaker might be a touch on the pompous side.
• All he really wants to know is the Raven's name.
• Of course the really big deal in this stanza doesn't come until the last line. The speaker runs his mouth with this jokey question and then, amazingly, the Raven answers him. He only speaks a single word: "Nevermore" (48).

Stanzas IX & X Summary

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.

Lines 49-54

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning – little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door –
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."

• The speaker is more than a little surprised to hear this bird talk (49), but he doesn't really see how "Nevermore" answers his question (50). He underlines this by pointing out that no one before him has ever had a bird (or even an animal) named "Nevermore" sitting on a statue in his room. Pretty tough to argue with him there.
• We're pretty sure this bird-named-Nevermore thing is a joke, but we'll admit that maybe it's not laugh-out-loud funny.

Lines 55-60

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered – not a feather then he fluttered –
Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before –
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said "Nevermore."

• After that one word, the bird clams up and refuses to say any more (55).
• There's something mysterious and powerful about that word, though, and the speaker has the feeling that it contains the bird's whole soul (56).
• The bird keeps quiet, and the speaker, now maybe a little bit annoyed, slips back into his depressed mode. Now he sees the bird not as a welcome, amusing visitor, but just one more in the long line of friends who have abandoned him.
• So, he keeps talking to himself, reminding himself that, "Other friends have flown before" (58). He is sure that the bird will disappear by tomorrow, leaving him as alone and hopeless as ever (59).
• Then the bird gives him his favorite line again: "Nevermore."

Stanzas XI & XII Summary

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.

Lines 61-66

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore –
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of 'Never – nevermore.'"

• This time the answer is a little bit spookier. He said the bird was going to leave and the bird said, "Nevermore."
• That actually makes sense. It's "aptly spoken," as the speaker says. Again, he's a little freaked out, and again he looks for a plausible explanation.
• He tells himself that this bird only knows one word ("his only stock and store") and uses it for every situation. He even tells himself a little story about how the raven might have learned the word.
• He imagines that the bird had a really, really depressed former owner, whose life was such a mess that all he could say was "Nevermore."

Lines 67-72

But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore –
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

• For some reason he's still fascinated by the bird, and he repeats line 43, about how it beguiles his fancy. So he pulls up a chair, sits in front of the bird, and really lets his imagination go to work.
• He seems like an obsessive guy, and he's already pretty into this raven.
• He sinks into the chair and tries to think what this scary, ancient-looking bird could mean with this one word.
• Even though he guesses that it's just a random word the bird has learned, something still intrigues him; he can't quite let this go.

Stanzas XIII & XIV Summary

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.

Lines 73-78

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

• He sits and thinks, and sits and thinks, in silence, "not one syllable expressing" (73).
• He imagines the "fiery eyes" of the bird burning through into his "bosom's core" (74).
• We think it's safe to say that our narrator is a melodramatic kind of guy. So he does some more thinking and guessing (or "divining" as he rather pompously calls it).
• Poe gives us some details of the room here and, as always, they are rich and luxurious (like the velvet cushion and a little scary (even the lamp-light seems to "gloat") (76).
• For some reason, the light and the cushion push him back to his old obsession. He remembers that Lenore will never sit on this cushion again (78), and that she's really gone forever.

Lines 79-84

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee – by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite – respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

• Now things start to get a little weird. In his grief, our speaker imagines the air filling with perfume from an invisible censer (a globe that holds burning incense).
• To top that off, he imagines angels ("seraphim") swinging that censer. He even hears their footsteps on the carpet (80).
• Now that he's gone around the bend, he starts to yell at himself, calling himself a "wretch."
• He tells himself that this imaginary perfume thickening the air was sent from God to help him forget Lenore. He compares this perfume to nepenthe, a mythological drink that was supposed to comfort grieving people.
• He tells himself to "quaff" (that just means drink) this potion and forget Lenore.
• Just as we start to really wonder what he's raving about, the raven cuts him off by saying "Nevermore" (84).

Stanzas XV & XVI Summary

Lines 85-90

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil! –
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted –
On this home by Horror haunted – tell me truly, I implore –
Is there – is there balm in Gilead? – tell me – tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

• Now the speaker starts to get seriously worked up and starts full-out yelling at the bird, calling him a "Prophet" and a "thing of evil" (85).
• Well, actually he backs off on the evil thing a little, moving back and forth between assuming that this bird has come straight from Satan (the "Tempter") or that it has just been blown in at random by a storm (86).
• The next line emphasizes the strangeness of the bird, who is all alone, but seems unshaken ("desolate yet all undaunted").
• It also reminds us of how completely miserable our speaker is, stuck in a "desert land enchanted" alone in a "home by Horror haunted" (88). All he really wants is a little bit of hope, some possibility of comfort.
• So he asks the bird a typically pompous, bookwormish question: "Is there balm in Gilead?" (89) It's a Biblical reference, basically meaning, is there hope in my future, a possibility of comfort, peace, etc?
• Predictably, the bird shoots him down with "Nevermore."

Lines 91-96

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil – prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us – by that God we both adore –
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore –
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

• Our speaker seems to be pretty slow to catch on, or maybe he's starting to enjoy the torture the bird is inflicting on him. In any case, he keeps pumping this dry well, asking the bird another question, this one a little more to the point.
• He asks, in the name of God, if he will one day get to embrace his beloved Lenore again, in "the distant Aidenn" (i.e., Eden, or Heaven).
• The bird says, of course, "Nevermore."

Stanzas XVII & XVIII Summary

Lines 97-102

"Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting –
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

• Finally, he completely loses it. That last "Nevermore" is the final straw, and he jumps up and tells the bird to get lost (97).
• He directs it to get back to the storm and the evil night it came from (98).
• He tells it not to leave any trace, not even a feather ("black plume"), and to take its lies elsewhere and leave him to his loneliness.
• He tells the raven to get off the statue, to take his beak out of his heart, and, basically, to go to hell. To which the Raven says, "Nevermore." This bird is here to stay.

Lines 102-108

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted – nevermore!

• All of a sudden, we switch to the present tense. This isn't a story from the past, it's right now, and the raven is still there.
• He has turned into a kind of statue himself, a glowing, scary demon statue, whose shadow is cast across the floor. That shadow has trapped the speaker, imprisoned his soul.
• We start out hearing a story about a talking raven on a dark night, and we end up watching a man descend into his own personal hell.

The Raven Symbolism, Imagery & Wordplay

There’s more to a poem than meets the eye.

Language and the brain

Language and the brain

    Many people assume the physical basis of language lies in the lips, the tongue, or the ear.  But deaf and mute people can also possess language fully.  People who have no capacity to use their vocal cords may still be able to comprehend language and use its written forms.  And human sign language, which is based on visible gesture rather than the creation of sound waves, is an infinitely creative system just like spoken forms of language.  But the basis of sign language is not in the hand, just as spoken language is not based in the lips or tongue.  There are many examples of aphasics who lose both the ability to write as well as to express themselves using sign-language, yet they never lose manual dexterity in other tasks, such as sipping with a straw or tying their shoes. 

    Language is brain stuff--not tongue, lip, ear, or hand stuff. The language organ is the mind. More specifically, the language faculty seems to be located in certain areas of the left hemispheric cortex in most healthy adults.  A special branch of linguistics, called neurolinguistics, studies the physical structure of the brain as it relates to language production and comprehension.  

Structure of the human brain. The human brain displays a number of physiological and structural characteristics that must be understood before beginning a discussion of the brain as language organ.  First, the cerebrum, consisting of a cortex (the outer layer) and a subcortex, is also divided into two hemispheres joined by a membrane called the corpus callosum.  There are a few points which must be made about the functioning of these two cerebral hemispheres.         

    1) In all humans, the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body; the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body. This arrangement--calledcontralateral neural control is not limited to humans but is also present in all vertibrates--fish, frogs, lizards, birds and mammals. On the other hand, in invertibrates such as worms, the right hemisphere controls the right side, the left hemisphere controls the left side. The contralateral arrangement of neural control thus might be due to an ancient evolutionary change which occurred in the earliest vertibrates over half a billion years ago. The earliest vertibrate must have undergone a 180° turn of the brain stem on the spinal chord so that the pathways from brain to body side became crossed. The probability that such a primordial twist did occur is also born out by the fact that invertibrates have their main nerve pathways on their bellies and their circulatory organs on their backs, while all vertibrates have their heart in front and their spinal chord in back--just as one would expect if the 180° twist of the brain stem vis-a-vis the body did take place.

    2.) Another crucial feature of brain physiology is that each hemisphere has somewhat unique functions (unlike other paired organs such as the lungs, kidneys, breasts or testicles which have identical functions). In other words, hemisphere function is asymmetrical. This is most strikingly the case in humans, where the right hemisphere--in addition to controlling the left side of the body--also controls spatial acuity, while the left hemisphere--in addition to controlling the right side of the body-- controls abstract reasoning and physical tasks which require a step-by-step progression. It is important to note that in adults, the left hemisphere also controls language; even in most left-handed patients, lateralization of language skills in the left hemisphere is completed by the age of puberty.

    Now, why should specialized human skills such as language and abstract reasoning have developed in the left hemisphere instead of the right? Why didn't these skills develop equally in both hemispheres. The answer seems to combine the principle of functional economy with increased specialization. In nature, specialization for particular tasks often leads to physical asymmetry of the body--witness the lobster's claws--where limbs or other of the body differentiate to perform a larger variety of tasks with greater sophistication (the same might be said to have happened in human society with the rise of different trades and the division of labor).

    Because of this specialization, one hemisphere--in most individuals for some reason it is the right hemisphere--came to control matters relating to 3D spatial acuity--the awareness of position in space in all directions simultaneously. Thus, in modern humans, artistic ability tends to be centered in various areas of the right hemisphere.

    The left hemisphere, on the other hand, came to control patterns that progress step-by-step in a single dimension, such as our sense of time progression, or the logical steps required in performing feats of manual dexterity such as the process of fashioning a stone axe. This connects with right-handedness. Most humans are born with a lopsided preference for performing skills of manual dexterity with the right hand--the hand controlled by the left hemisphere.  The left hand holds an object in space while the right hand mainpulates that object to perform tasks which require a step-by-step progression. Obviously, this is a better arrangement than if both hands were equally clumsy at performing complex, multi-step tasks, or if both sides of the brain were equally mediocre at thinking abstractly or at processing information about one's three-dimensional surroundings. So human hemispheric asymmetry seems to have developed to serve very practical purposes. 

    (By the way, left-handedness seems to be the result of inheritance of two copies of a gene which does not impart strong right-hand preference. The right-handed gene is dominant--in 25% of the population has no copy of this gene, presumably 12.5% percent of these non-handed individuals develop a righthandedness anyway, and 12.5% develop a tendency toward left handedness. At any rate, being left-handed doesn't seem to have any special effect on language acquistion or learning or on anything else innate to humans.)

    This general pattern of cognitive asymmetry was probably well established in our hominid ancestors before the language faculty developed. So why did humans evolve in such a way that the language faculty normally localized in the left hemisphere?  Why not in the right?  Clearly, the reason is that language, like fashioning a stone axe, is also a linear process: sounds and words are uttered one after another in a definite progression, not in multiple directions simultaneously. In the modern human, the feature of monolineal progression seems naturally to ally language with other left brain skills such as the ability to perform complex work tasks, or abstract step-by-step feats of logic, mathematics, or reasoning. Even among natural left-handers (in about 12.5 % of any human population, language skills are localized in the cortex of the left hemisphere in all but about 2.5% of the cases.  Some of these are individuals who received damage to the left hemisphere in childhood which, presumably, prevented language from localizing there; however, we don't know why language localizes in the right hemisphere of the brain in about one in fifty healthy adults. Like right or left handedness, it seems to correlate with nothing else in particular.

    How do we know that the left hemisphere controls language in most adults. There is a great deal of physical evidence for the left hemisphere as the language center in the majority of healthy adults.

    1) Tests have demonstrated increased neural activity in parts of the left hemisphere when subjects are using language.  (PET scans--Positron Emission Tomography, where patient injects mildly radioactive substance, which is absorbed more quickly by the more active areas of the brain). The same type of tests have demonstrated that artistic endeavor draws normally more heavily on the neurons of the right hemispheric cortex.

    2) In instances when the corpus callosum is severed by deliberate surgery to ease epileptic seizures, the subject cannot verbalize about object visible only in the left field of vision or held in the left hand.) Remember that in some individuals there seems to be language only in the right brain;  in a few individuals, there seems to be a separate language center in each hemisphere.)

    3.) Another clue has to do with the evidence from studies of brain damage. A person with a stroke in the right hemisphere loses control over parts of the left side of the body, sometimes also suffers a dimunition of artistic abilities. But language skills are not impaired even if the left side of the mouth is crippled, the brain can handle language as before. A person with a stroke in the left hemisphere loses control of the right side of the body; also, 70% of adult patients with damage to the left hemisphere will experience at least some language loss which is not due only to the lack of control of the muscles on the right side of the mouth--communication of any sort is disrupted in a variety of ways that are not connected with the voluntary muscles of the vocal apparatus. The cognitive loss of language is called aphasia, and we will discuss various types of aphasia in great detail tomorrow; only 1% of adults with damage to the right hemisphere experience any permanent language loss.

    Aphasics can blow out candles and suck on straws, even sing and whistle, but they cannot produce normal, creative speech in either written, spoken, or gestural form.  Sign language users also store their linguistic ability in the left hemisphere. If this hemisphere is damaged, they cannot sign properly, even though they may continue to be able to use their hands for such things as playing the drums, giving someone a massage, or other non-linguistic hand movements. Injury to the right hemisphere of deaf persons produces the opposite effect.

Experiments on healthy individuals with both hemispheres intact.

    4.) In 1949 it was discovered that if sodium amytal is injected into the left carotid artery, which services blood to the left hemisphere, language skills are temporarily disrupted.  If the entire left hemisphere is put to sleep, a person can think but cannot talk.

    5.) If an electrical charge is sent to certain areas of the left hemisphere (exactly which areas we will discuss tomorrow), the patient has difficulty talking or involuntarily utters a vowel-like cry  (although the production of specific speech sounds has never been induced by electrical charge). An electrical charges to the right hemisphere produces no such effect.

    6.) Musical notes and tones are best perceived through the left ear (which is connected to the spacial-acuity-controlling right hemisphere. In contrast, the right ear better perceives and processes the sounds of language, even linguistic tones (any form with meaning); the right ear takes sound directly to the left hemisphere language center.

    7.) When repeating after someone, most individuals have a harder time tapping with the fingers of the right hand than with the left hand. /Perform this experiment in class./

    8.) The language centers in the left hemisphere of humans actually make the left hemisphere bulge out slightly in comparison to the same areas of the right hemisphere. This is easily seen without the aid of the microscope. For this reason, some neurolinguists have called humans the lopsided ape.  Some paleontologists claim to have found evidence for this left-hemispheric bulging in Homo neanderthalus and Homo erectus skulls.

    Other primates also possess a left perisylvian area of the brain, but it doesn't seem to be involved in their communication.  Animal communication seems in fact to be controlled by the subcortical areas of the animal brain, much like human vocalizations other than language--laughter, sobbing, crying, as well as involuntary, word-like exclamations which do form part of language--are controlled in humans in the subcortex, a phylogenetically older portion of the brain that is involved with emotions and reflex responses.

    Tourette's syndrome, which produces random and involuntary emotive reflex responses, including vocalizations This type of disorder, which often affects language use, is caused by a disfunction in the subcortex. There is no filter which prevents the slightest stimulus from producing a vocal response, sometimes of an inappropriate manner using abusive language or expletives. These words are involuntary and often the affected individual is not even aware of uttering them (like "um" in many individuals) and only realizes it when video is played back. 

    This syndrome is not so much a language disorder per se as a disorder of the filters on the adult emotional reflex system--a kind of expletive hiccup. True language is housed in the cortex of the left hemisphere, not in the subcortical area that controls involuntary responses.

What can language disorders tell us about the brain's language areas?

    Certain types of brain damage can affect language production without actually eliminating language from the brain. A stroke that damages the muscles of the vocal apparatus may leave the abstract cognitive structure of language intact--as witnessed by the fact that right hemisphere stroke victims often understand language perfectly well and write it perfectly with their right hand--although their speech may be slurred due to lack of muscle control. We have also seen that certain disorders involving the subcortex--the seat of involuntary emotional response--may have linguistic side effects, such as in some cases of Tourette's syndrome.

    But what happens when the areas of the brain which control language are affected directly, and the individual's abstract command of language is affected? We will see that language disorders can shed a great deal of light on the enigma of the human language instinct.

SLI.  One rare language disorder seems to be inborn rather than the result of damage to a previously normal brain. I have said that children are born with a natural instinct to acquire language, the so-called LAD; however, a tiny minority of babies are born with an apparent defect in this LAD. 

    Certain families appear to have a hereditary language acquisition disorder, labeled specific language impairment, or SLI.  Children born with this disorder usually have normal intelligence, perhaps even high intelligence, but as children they are never able to acquire language naturally and effortlessly. They are born with their window of opportunity already closed to natural language acquisition. These children grow up without succeeding in acquiring any consistent grammatical patterns. Thus, they never command any language well--even their native language. As children and then as adults, their speech in their native language is a catalog of random grammatical errors, such as: It's a flying birds, they are. These boy eat two cookie. John is work in the factory. These errors are random, not the set patterns of an alternate dialect:  the next conversation the same SLI-afflicted individual might say This boys eats two cookies.  These sentences, in fact, were uttered by a British teenager who is at the top of his class in mathematics; he is highly intelligent, just grammar blind.    SLI sufferers are incapable of perfecting their skills through being taught, just as some people are incapable of being taught how to draw well or how to see certain colors. This is the best proof we have that the language instinct most children are born with is a skill quite distinct from general intelligence.

    Because SLI occurs in families and seems to have no environmental cause whatsoever, it is assumed to be caused by some hereditary factor--probably a mutant, recessive gene that interferes with or impairs the LAD. The precise gene which causes SLI has yet to be located.

SUMMARY

    Let's sum up three important facts about language and brain.

    First, humans are born with the innate capacity to acquire the extremely complex, creative system of communication that we call language. We are born with a language instinct, which Chomsky calls the LAD (language acquisition device).  This language aptitude is completely different from inborn reflex responses to stimuli as laughter, sneezing, or crying.  The language instinct seems to be a uniquely human genetic endowment:  nearly all children exposed to language naturally acquire language almost as if by magic.  Only in rare cases are children born without this magical ability to absorb abstract syntactic patterns from their environment.  These children are said to suffer from Specific Language Impairment, or SLI.  It is thought that SLI is caused by a mutant gene which disrupts the LAD. 

    The LAD itself, of course, is probably the result of the complex interaction of many genes--not just one--and the malfunction of some single key gene simply short-circuits the system. For example, a faulty carburetor wire may prevent an engine from running, but the engine is more than a single carburetor wire. Many thousands of genes contribute to the makeup of the human brain--more than to any other single aspect of the human body. To isolate the specific set of genes that act as the blueprint for the language organ is something no one has even begun to do.

    Second, the natural ability for acquiring language normally diminished rapidly somewhere around the age of puberty. There is a critical age for acquiring fluent native language. This phenomenon seems to be connected with the lateralization of language in the left hemisphere of most individuals--the hemisphere associated with monolinear cognition (such as abstract reasoning and step-by step physical tasks) and not the right hemisphere, which is associated with 3D spatial acuity, artistic and musical ability.  Unlike adults, children seem to be able to employ both hemispheres to acquire language. In other words, one might say that children acquire language three-dimensionally while adults must learn it two dimensionally.

    Third and finally, in most adults the language organ is the perisylvian area of the left hemispheric cortex. Yesterday we discussed the extensive catalog of evidence that shows language is usually housed in this specific area of the brain. Only the human species uses this area for communication.  The signals of animal systems of communication seem to be controlled by the subcortex, the area which in humans controls similar inborn response signals such as laughter, crying, fear, desire, etc.

Aphasia

    We know which specific areas of the left hemisphere are involved in the production and processing of particular aspects of language.  And we know this primarily from the study of patients who have had damage to certain parts of the left hemispheric cortex. Damage to this area produces a condition calledaphasia, or speech impairment (also called dysphasia in Britain). The study of language loss in a once normal brain is called aphasiology.  

    Aphasia is caused by damage to the language centers of the left hemisphere in the region of the sylvian fissure. Nearly 98% of aphasia cases can be traced to damage in the perisylvian area of the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex. Remember, however, that in the occasional individual language is localized elsewhere; and in children language is not yet fully localized.

    Strokes cause 85% of all aphasia cases; other causes include cerebral tumors and lesions. One in 200 people experiences aphasia, with males more at risk. Gradual recovery is possible in 40% of adult cases; pre-pubescent children are much more likely to recover from aphasia, with the language faculty localizing in another, unaffected area of the brain, usually the perisylvian cortex of the right hemisphere.  Generally, the more extensive the injury, the greater the likelihood of permanent damage.

    But we have seen that language is a complex of interacting components--consonants and vowels, nouns and verbs, content words and function words, syntax and semantics.  Could it be that these components are housed in particular sub-areas of the left hemisperic perisylvian cortex?  We haven't pinpointed whether nouns are stored separately from verbs, or where the fricative sounds are stored.  There is no conclusive proof for that type of specialization of brain tissue.  But there is compelling evidence to believe that two special aspects of language structure are processed by different sub-areas of the language center.  We know this because damage to specific areas of the peresylvian area produces two basic types of aphasia.

    Each of these two types of language loss is associated with damage to a particular sub-region of the perisylvian area of the left hemispheric cortex. 

    (1861) Paul Broca discovered Broca's area (located in the frontal portion of the left perisylvian area) which seems to be involved in grammatical processing. (While parsing sentences such as fat people eat accumulates, there is a measurable burst of neural activity in Broca's area when the last word is spoken.) Broca's area seems to process the grammatical structure rather than select the specific units of meaning.  It seems to be involved in the function aspect rather than the content areas of language)

    Broca's aphasia involves difficulty in speaking.  For this reason it is also known as emissive aphasia. Broca's aphasics can comprehend but have great difficulty replying in any grammatically coherent way.  They tend to utter only isolated content words on their own. Grammatical and syntactic connectedness is lost.  Speech is a labored, irregular series of content words with no grammatical morphemes or sentence structure. (Read example) Grammar rules as well as function morphemes are lost. Broca's aphasia is also known as agrammatic aphasia. Grammar is destroyed; the lexicon more or less preserved intact.

    (1875) Karl Wernicke:  Wernicke's area (in the lower posterior part of the perisylvian region) controls comprehension, as well as the selection of content words.  When this area is specifically damaged, a very different type of aphasia usually results, one in which the grammar and function words are preserved, but the content is mostly destroyed. 

    Since Wernicke's aphasia involves difficulty in comprehension, in extracting meaning from a context, it is also known as receptive aphasia. Wernicke's aphasics easily initiate long-winded, fluent nonsense, but don't seem able to respond specifically to their interlocutor (unlike Broca's aphasics, who can understand but the have difficulty replying). Wernicke's aphasics often talk incessantly and tend to utter whole volumes of grammatically correct nonsense with relatively few content words or with jibberish words like "thingamajig"  or "whatchamacallit" instead of true content words. (Read example.)  Because Wernicke's aphasia patients can utter whole monologs of such contentless grammatical babble, hardly letting their interlocutor get a word in edgewise, their affliction is also known as jargon aphasia.

    The normal human mind uses both areas in unison when speaking. Apparently, normal adults use the neurons of Wernicke's area to select sounds or listemes.  We use the neurons of Broca's area to combine these units according to the abstract rules of phonology and syntax--the elements in language which have function but no specific meaning-- to produce utterances.

Review:

Broca's aphasia--emissive aphasia--agrammatic aphasia: difficulty in encoding, in building up a context, difficulty in using the grammatical matrix of phrase structure, difficulty in using the elements and patterns of language without concrete meaning.  Broca's area apparently houses the elements of language that have function but no specific meaning--the syntactic rules and phonological patterns, as well as the function words--that is, the grammatical glue which holds the context together.

Wernicke's aphasia--receptive aphasia--jargon aphasia: difficulty in decoding, in breaking down a context into smaller units, as well as in selecting and using the elements of language with concrete meaning.  Wernicke's area apparently houses the elements of language that have specific meaning--the content words, the lexemes--that is,  the storehouse of prefabricated, meaningful elements which a speaker selects when filling in a context.

    Let's review what these two areas--Broca's and Wernicke's seem to be telling us about the way language is stored in the brain.  Language obviously consists of these two aspects working together in unison:

    1) a very large but finite number of elements with specific form and meaning (morphemes, words, phrases--the lexicon, or set of listemes, on the other hand--). These ready-made elements seems to be stored in Wernicke's area.

    2) a fairly small number of patterns with virtually no limit on the specific meaning they can express (the phonology and syntax--the grammar of language, the abstract blueprint by which the prefabricated units of Wernicke's area are combined). These abstract patterns seem to be stored in Broca's area.

    Roman Jakobson, a Russian born linguist who made extensive studies of aphasia in the 1950's, noted that both types of the aphasic lose language in the exact reverse order that language is acquired by a child-- -s of plays, the genitive 's, then finally plural s.  This is true of the sound pattern, as well.  In instances of gradual, progressive degeneration of the language centers of the left hemisphere, the aphasic's loss of phonology is the mirror image of the acquisition of elements in childhood.

    These two areas have been implicated even more broadly with the human abilities to deal with signs. Roman Jakobson also noted that normal language function involves an interaction of two different associative properties of meaning: association by contiguity and association by similarity. (Perform a word test with the word knife.) Jakobson conducted aphasia studies in the 50's and 60's which revealed that each of the two basic types of linguistic aphasia--Broca's emissive, or agrammatic, aphasia and Wernicke's receptive, or jargon, aphasia-- also affects a specific one of these two aspects of linguistic association in a predictible way. 

    Broca's aphasia (emissive, agrammatic) also involves contiguity disorder. We have seen how Broca's aphasics have difficulty in building up a context. Jakobson showed that Broca's aphasics also lose their general ability to communicate in terms of spatial and temporal contiguity:

    1.) The Broca's aphasic can name synonyms and antonyms but not contiguous concepts:  champagne, wine, but not cork, tipsy, hangover.  knife-->dagger, sword, but not fork, spoon, table, to eat with.

    2.) Broca's aphasics also evince an inability to comprehend metonymy, synecdoche, tropes based on contiguity.

    3.) All understanding of word building, connecting morphemes to build words, is lost.  The Broca's aphasic can say jewel but cannot build such derivates asjeweler, jewelry; or he can sayemploy but not employer, employee.. He shows an inability to combine or break down linguistic units.  Compound words such asThanksgiving are perceived as indivisible wholes.  Broca's aphasics cannot pronounce new or unfamiliar words: big, give, but not gib. Cannot form the plural ofwug or any other plural. If the word exists only as a ready-made unit, it cannot be built up out of smaller units. Linguistic expression is limited to selection of ready-made units; all contiguity-based relations are impaired--content is retained but context is lost.

    Wernicke's aphasia (receptive, jargon aphasia), on the other hand, involves similarity disorder. We have seen that for Wernicke aphasics, conversation is easily initiated but lacks content. Connective words such as conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions remain, but selection of content words is impaired; content words tend to be absent or replaced by general terms such as thing, stuff, whatchamacalit.

    Wernicke's aphasics also lose their ability to perform language skills based on association by similarity. They cannot form or comprehend metaphors andsimiles and compensate by using associations based on contiguity.

    1.) Wernicke's aphasics cannot produce synonyms or antonyms: Instead, the patient will name things contextually associated with an object. When asked to define the word knife, a Wernicke's aphasic might say to eat with or knife, or even knife and fork; he would not say dagger, sword, or anything similar.  When asked to repeat the word glass he might say window, or something contiguous with glass.

    2.) Wernicke's aphasics evince an inability to use or comprehend metaphor, simile--tropes based on association by similarity.

    3) Linguistic expression is limited to contiguity-based relations--context is retained while content is lost; all skills based on the recognitions of similarity or dissimilarity are impaired and replaced by expressions of contiguity.

    Jakobson was the first to note that Broca's and Wernicke's area seem to control these different and complementary associative properties of meaning.  In the conversation of a normal individual, both regions of the brain work in unison (healthy people even have a hard time separating out what associations are based on similarity and which are based on contiguity).  But in aphasic patients, either context and contiguity (Broca's) or the content and similarity (Wernicke's) tend to be impaired (though each individual aphasic has a different combination of these impairments). If Broca's and Wernicke's regions are both severely damaged--in other words, if the entire linguistically relevant perisylvian area of the brain is damaged--the patient loses all language ability; he experiences aphasia universalis, or the total loss of language.

    Recent studies have shown that Broca's and Wernicke's areas are actually contiguous portions of the brain--part of a single area-- rather than separate areas (the connection is hidden by the convolutions of the brain). Some recent neurolinguists have called the band of linguistically relevant neural tissue which contains Broca's and Wernicke's areas the perisylvian area.

    This perisylvian area, apparently, is the language organ in humans. Other animals lack this area, although monkeys and other primates show a small development of the area of their brain that is analogous to Broca's area, this area does not seem to play a role in their communicative skills. In humans, the perisylvian area seems to be the seat of the language skills in most adults. It is here that language skills are normally localized as the brain matures.

    It is not possible to say precisely that Broca's and Wernicke's areas have the same language functions in all adults; sometimes language skills seem to be localized in slightly different areas of the adult brain. Broca's area does not always control grammar in the same way that the liver always produces bile and the pancreas always produces pancreatic juice. Unlike the liver, pancreas, and other organs, the developing brain seems to have a property called plasticity, which allows functions to be localized in a variety of possible places as the brain matures. This is why damage to Broca's area does not always cause the typical agrammatic aphasia; and damage to Wernicke's area does not always cause the typical jargon and babbling symptoms of Wernicke's aphasia.

    There is also some evidence that sub-areas of Broca's area or sub-areas of Wernicke's area may store aspects of language as specific as the comprehension of nouns and verbs or the ability to break a sentence down into words, on the one hand, and the word into individual morphemes or phonemes, on the other. And yet in every individual the ability to communicate seems to involve an interaction of one part of the cortex which controls selection and another part which controls the combination of selected units. These areas, in turn, are connected by a dense set of neurons and so are really extensions of one another. The complex interaction of these neurons gives us our complete language faculty.

The semiotic organization of the brain

    Jakobson's aphasia studies has implications for the study of the structure of human sign systems in general (semiotics).  Language is only one of the human manifestations of semiotic (sign-sensitive) behavior.  The dual aspects of similarity/selection and contiguity/combination, seen so clearly in the functioning and imparement of language, actually appear as primal forces in all forms of human expression, not just language.

    

    James Frazer (The Golden Bough)-- describes two types of magic rites:  charms based on similarity-- sympathetic or imitative magic  vs. contagious magic.

    Different genres of literature rely to varying degrees on the two types of associations. Most poetry relies more on similarity and less on connected context; most types of prose, on the other hand, relies more heavily on contiguity, on a connected context.

    Similarity and contiguity often alternate as dominant forces of expression in art and literature.  romanticism vs. realism; impressionism. vs. cubism.

In other words, all of our meaning-based systems, not only language, seem to involve a constant interplay of Wernicke-based similarity relations, on the one hand, and Broca-based contiguity relations, on the other.

Conclusion. And so, our course began with a discussion of language and mind and it ends with a discussion of language and the brain. It would seem that the perisylvian area of the left hemisphere is indeed not only the primary organ of language; it also seems to underlie a broader range of cognitive powers that make humans unique. Speech may consist of sound vibrations or visual symbols superficially not unlike the signs of animal communication, but language--the abstract system that underlies the production of speech--is a property of the uniquely human aspect of the mind. Language is brain stuff.  And it seems that the human brain--among that of all other species--is uniquely constructed to manipulate complex sign systems such as language, art, and other representational behavior.  We are born with the capacity to acquire language in childhood because of the genetically planned structure of our brains. This property of the brain has been called the language instinct. Bees seek nectar, birds build nests, spiders spin webs. We humans create language.

    This language instinct is undoubtedly why we humans have become--along with such enormously successful creatures as earthworms and algae--one of the most influential species ever to inhabit the earth.

    There is much left to discover in the field of linguistics and especially neurolinguistics, so keep your ears--that is, your perisylvian area--attuned for new revelations.