L 210 F

I have been interested in biology since my childhood very much.

In grammar school I decided to choose a job that is in connection with this science. I am especially interested in reading about our nervous system and dealing with human speech. For I had a liking for grammar in my former schools, I decided to study linguistics at the university. There are some parts of linguistics that are in connection with biology

( e. g. phonetics ). As I mentioned my interest in human speech derives from my childhood. In elementary school one of my best friends stammered. He often had difficulties communicating with teachers and us too, but he was very clever. He was brought to doctors and psychologists every month. Luckily he has already recovered. Today he is a student at ELTE University and going to become a physisist.

Problems of speech derive from our brain. Last year one of my teachers called my attention to an interesting disease. It is called aphasy. I had not known of this problem before then. He aroused my interest very much, so I decided to read some books of it.

First I found a fascinating book by Lurija. Lurija is a Russian psychologist who deals with aphasic people as well. According to her there are two types of this disease. Sometimes people are born with it, but there are many cases when it gradually evolves during their lives. There are many symptoms of it. The most frequent examples are the following:

There are people who can repeat everything that you say to them, moreover they are able to repeat even very long sentences. But they are incapable of expressing their own thoughts. Sorrowly while repeating your sentence they do not have any ideas what they speak about at that time.

There is another sign of aphasia. Some aphasic people can create sentences and express themselves, but you can gradually notice some kind of quickening in their speech pace, and they might become agressive soon because of losing their control.

There are some aphasic people who mix two or more speech sounds. Some of them can not differenciate grammatical categories so they are not able to understand others’ thoughts. I have heared of a man who can not decide which words he should take the stress on in the sentences and can dot establish where the end of the sentences are.

I found a remarkable example which was the most interesting to me. Some aphasic people can understand many parts of the sentences, but they are not able to understand different
connections between its subjects. So if you say ` my mother’s daughter` they will not know whose mother and whose daughter you speak about. They probably will not understand even the connection between the mother and the daughter.

Doctors and psychologists have been engaged in this sickness for some decades.

Only very few linguists have been dealing with this problem since the 1960s. As far as I know there is only one grammarian in Hungary who exemines aphasy philologically today. He tries to find some regularities in aphasy. This way he could connect his science with medical science and psychology. He has already gave some lectures about this disease at our university as well.

I have also read an interesting article about this problem in another book some weeks ago. Its title is Sound, Sign and Poem edited by Noam Chomsky. The author of the article is Roman
Jacobson, the famous linguist. Jacobson's book examines the disease philologically.

Jacobson mentions some grammarians in his article who dealt with aphasy much earlier, but as far as I know these researches were quite primitive.

Nowadays there are many linguists especially in Western Europe and the US who try to find the origin of this disease. They believe in its philological provenance.

Some aphasic people can live at home. They spend their time in hospital only about once a month. Many of them have to go to hospital just for control. Those whose disease is very deep have to stay always in hospital. They are treated in a part of the neurological ward. Aphasic people are not treated in every hospital, but as far as I know there is an aphasic ward here in Pecs for example.

Today people are much more interested in diseases that are in connection with brain than some decades ago. This fact is exemplified by some books like The Brain written by Robin Cook.
There are even some films that are about similar problems like Coma.

Sorrowly there have been more and more people suffering from diseases especially since atomic disasters. It is only to be hoped that human beings will be able to counteract the growth of such problems with the greatest possible care.