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In:Emotion in Language: Theory – research – application
Edited by Ulrike M. Lüdtke
[Consciousness & Emotion Book Series 10] 2015
► pp. 27–48

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Primal emotions and cultural evolution of language:

Primal affects empower words

Published online: 16 December 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ceb.10.02pan
Biological evidence for evolved-adaptive (genetically-selected) modularity for human brain language processing is almost nonexistent. The historical emergence of human brain language capacity may wholly reflect socio-cultural learning, permitted by evolved cortical expansions and motivated by bottom-up affective states. Abundant evidence supports the existence of many genetically encoded primary-process emotional systems in deep subcortical brain regions that govern wide-ranging attentional and motivational states that guide the emergence of diverse cognitive processes including language. The fundamental affective states of the brain impact secondary-process learning and memory mechanisms through various affectively rich basal-ganglia of the brain. Once language is acquired culturally, emotional states continue to control tertiary-process cognitive elaborations of thinking and language processing, operating through recently evolved neocortical expansions, some unique to humans, which have no more intrinsic capacity for consciousness in humans than in other animals.
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