Universal Language Network Involving 45 Languages Discovered; Study Says

In a recently concluded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study led by neuroscientists from Harvard University and MIT, experts evaluated the claim of the universality of language concerning core features in neural architecture.

Studying the Neural Architecture of Language

(Photo: Kaique Rocha from Pexels)

Across the globe, there are roughly 7,000 spoken and signed languages. These are distributed over more than a hundred language families, groups of language descending from a common ancestral language, known as a protolanguage, which varies in size.

Specific properties of these languages have been believed to be universal, including their communicative efficiency and productivity. On the other hand, language is the only animal communication system manifesting in numerous forms.

The world's languages showcase the diversity, with variations from sound inventories, the complexity of derivational and functional morphology, how lexical categories carve the conceptual space, and rules governing how words combine into phrases and sentences.

To fully understand the nature of the cognitive and neural mechanisms at play in learning and processing such diverse languages, experts have to go beyond the limited set of languages commonly used in psycho-linguistic and neuro-linguistic studies.

In order to make the research more inclusive, Dr. Saima Malik-Moraleda and her MIT and Harvard University colleagues analyzed whether there are shared brain responses across 45 languages in 12 language families. These include Afro-Asiatic, Austro-Asiatic, Dravidian, Austronesian, Indo-European, Japonic, Koreanic, Atlantic-Congo, Sino-Tibetan, Uralic, Turkic, and Basque.

In the study published in Nature Neuroscience, titled "An investigation across 45 languages and 12 language families reveals a universal language network." the team examined brain responses in one or two native speakers who listed excerpts of 'Alice in Wonderland translated into their native languages.

All native languages activated large areas of the brain's left frontal, temporal, and parietal cortex. The responses of this language-related network showed strong activation in the left hemisphere of the participant's brain compared to the right as they listened to various stories in their native languages.

The study also showed that the network was more responsive when participants listened to their native languages than performing spatial working memory or arithmetic tasks, suggesting that the common network seen was selective for processing language, Sci-News reports.

The study's authors wrote that the findings are the first step in examining the deeper neural processing of various languages and will require larger groups of native speakers for each language to be fully understood.

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Understanding Language Families

Some languages are related because they originate from common ancestry and have shared lineages. According to National Geographic, the language that generated other languages in its family is known as a protolanguage.

On the other hand, some languages do not originate from a protolanguage. These are called language isolates which include Basque, a language only spoken by some southwestern Europeans, and Piraha, spoken by the Piraha people in the Brazilian Amazon.

Languages such as Italian, Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French belong to the "romance languages" family. These languages evolved from Latin, a language used in ancient Rome. However, Latin evolved from the Indo-European language, a protolanguage that originates most of the languages spoken today in Europe and Asia.