The main topic of our research team is the relationship between languages and thinking. It is a typical interdisciplinary research which includes humane studies, such as philosophy, linguistics, phonetics, Korean and Chinese languages, as well as prac ...
The main topic of our research team is the relationship between languages and thinking. It is a typical interdisciplinary research which includes humane studies, such as philosophy, linguistics, phonetics, Korean and Chinese languages, as well as practical engineering science, such as acoustics, information technologies and medical science. The feature of linguistic phenomena could be one of the reasons why we have made such a broad plan.
Language seem to be the complicated phenomena comprised not only in social and mental elements but also in physical and physiological elements. We have been dealing with language from the two different approaches. On the one hand, we investigate into grammar and meaning, the mental and cognitive aspect of human language, to clarify their relationship with thinking. On the other hand, we inquire into phonetics and letters, the physical and physiological aspect of human language to examine the physiological information-organizing mechanism operating prior to our cognition.
Our team, thus, consists in the linguistic team which deals with grammar and meaning, the mental and cognitive aspect of human language, and the central analytic team which deals with phonetics and letters, the physical and physiological aspect of human language. The tasks for the central analytic team are: 1. clarifying the physiological information-organizing principle through both the physical analysis of human voice and the physiological analysis of human vocalizing faculties; 2. explaining the visual information-organizing principle through examining the visual information-organizing mechanism operating when letters are cognized; and 3. the comparative analysis of the brains's operating areas activated while meaning is understood. The tasks for the linguistic team are: 1. examining the similarities and differences in the ways in describing the world outside through the basic descriptive word, to be, in various languages; 2. looking into the differentiating aspects of the basic lexicons in various languages; 3. clarifying the relationship between the meaningful and the meaningless areas through examining necessary conditions to make a sentence meaningful; 4. clearing up the differences in the idea of time through examining the tense system in various languages; and additionally 5. clarifying the relationship between language and logic in Greek and Sanskrit.
The main linguistic areas we have examined through the two approaches are Korean, Chinese, Greek and Sanskrit. We are aiming at clarifying how different the way of thinking in these linguistic areas is. During the three years, we have experienced trial and errors and revised some tasks which are over-estimated. In the central analytic team, for example, clarifying the visual information-organizing principle and the brain recolonizing mechanism in understanding a word have re-programmed to examining the word supremacy effect and the features of brain operating areas while the Korean language is recognized respectively.
Our research, so far, has been clarifying that the Korean script seems to be endowed with one of the most excellent phonetic systems; that there is a common cognizing process in the early stage of recognizing letters; that, different from the other linguistic areas, the cognizing process of the Korean language involves in the excessive activities in our brain's space recognizing areas. From the differences in the descriptive ways, some philosophical problems which have been examined seriously in Greece and India cannot be established as philosophical subjects in China and Korea. Ontological problems in the former countries have hardly been taken seriously in the latter countries. Although there seems to be no psychological idea of time, there are various ways of the differentiating aspects of lexicons in the letter countries, especially in the Korean language.