Session 1E: Public Lecture

Language, Memory and Aphasia– As we witness them in our time

Abstract: The lecture will briefly describe the context of the emergence of language in prehistoric times as a means of communication. It will detail the range of diversity of natural languages during the last century. Comments on the emergence of natural memory will be offered and the historical processes leading to the creation of artificial memory will be described. The main focus of the lecture will be the collective aphasia surrounding natural languages in our time and the condition of languages that have existed for centuries or millennia. My examples will be mostly from Indian languages.