As a psycholinguistics undergraduate student, I was fascinated by the scientific aspects of language development. I was never interested in following the pathway of a speech language pathologist, nor did I end up pursuing psychology professionally. This confused my parents and extended family members immensely. This also lead to several family discussions on how half a B.A. in psychology does not equate to a clinical psychologist. I also minored in Cognitive Science and Global Studies, and attempted a Specialization in Computing before, ironically, the Programming for Internet course ended that short-lived coding dream. I used to know the International Phonetic Alphabet by heart and could create intricate syntax trees from convoluted [clearly run-on] sentences. I could even identify distinctive African clicks, and produce them up until I had an internal mouth gear placed during my awkward adult braces phase. I enjoyed jumbling up French, Spanish, Samoan, and indigenous languages in the pursuit of limited acquisition. Fortunately, my brief academic adventures in random courses and research labs were not trivial experiences to be reduced to quirky entries in my medical school application.
Years later, I remained interested in bilingual English/Spanish memory and language processing. This is one of the books I discovered when looking at bilingual pathology. My goal in this blog is in part to discuss briefly some of these major pathologies we may come to identify in our patients, our friends, or even in ourselves.
This blog will be a place for examining language as both an art-form and a scientific discipline. Expect plenty of wugs, Noam Chomsky references, and learning opportunities.
Even if you're ESL* , we got something for you to supplement your lessons.
*Trying to make ESL happen - reclaiming this as Español Sin Limites for our Medical Spanish students.
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