Faculty of Speech and Speech-Centers
French and English—the last being his mother-tongue; also that the progressive weakness of his power over the several tongues was in the reverse order of their respective acquirements. This anatomical characteristic, or mechanism, of the speech-areas seems to be general with them.
Another mystery of words in relation to their centers in the brain clings to this clinical fact: When the most usual form of aphasia, for example, is produced by disease, and when the disease yields to medical treatment, the patient recovers his verbs first and his nouns last. Clinical observation has noted that as recovery advances the verbs come first, later the prepositions, and last of all the nouns.
This is mentioned as one of the mysteries of words, and so it seems to be, although Dr. William Hanna Thomson, in his remarkable work on Brain and Personality, says: “The reasons for all this are that verbs are our innermost and, therefore, first learned words, because we know that we see, we hear, etc.;
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