Dr. Erich Jarvis

There are some that argue against it, but for those that support it, the idea there is

you are born with a set of innate sounds you can produce of phonemes, and you narrow that down because not all languages use all of them.

And so you narrow down the ones you use to string the phonemes together in the words that you learn, and you maintain those phonemes as an adult.

And here comes along another language that's using those phonemes or in different combinations you're not used to,

And therefore, it's like starting from first principles.

But if you already have them in multiple languages that you're using, then it makes it easier to use them in another third or fourth language.

So it's not like your brain has maintained greater plasticity.

It's your brain has maintained greater ability to produce different sounds that then allows you to learn another language faster.

Absolutely.

So we call this difference semantic communication, communication with meaning, and effective communication, communication

that has more of an emotional feeling content to it.

I believe, you know, based upon imaging work and work we see in birds, when birds are communicating semantic information in their sounds, which is not too often, but it happens, versus effective communication, sing because I'm trying to attract the mate, my courtship song, or defend my territory, it's the same brain circuits.

It's the same speech-like or song circuits are being used in different ways.

There's several other points here I think it's important for those listening out there to hear, is that when I say also this effective and semantic communication being used by similar brain circuits, it also matters the side of the brain.

In birds and in humans, there's left-right dominance for learned communication, learned sound communication.

So the left in us humans is more dominant for speech.

but the right has a more balanced for singing or processing musical sounds as opposed to processing speech.

Both get used for both reasons.

And so when people say your right brain is your artistic brain and your left brain is your thinking brain, this is what they're referring to.

And so that's another distinction.