Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
9952978 | Brain and Cognition | 2018 | 12 Pages |
Abstract
Formulaic language forms about one-fourth of everyday talk. Formulaic (fixed expressions) and novel (grammatical language) differ in important characteristics. The features of idioms, slang, expletives, proverbs, aphorisms, conversational speech formulas, and other fixed expressions include ranges of length, flexible cohesion, memory storage, nonliteral and situation meaning, and affective content. Neurolinguistic observations in persons with focal brain damage or progressive neurological disease suggest that producing formulaic expressions can be achieved by interactions between the right hemisphere and subcortical structures. The known functional characteristics of these structures form a compatible substrate for production of formulaic expressions. Functional imaging using a performance-based analysis supported a right hemisphere involvement in producing conversational speech formulas, while indicating that the pause fillers, uh and um, engage the left hemisphere and function like lexical items. Together these findings support a dual-process model of language, whereby formulaic and grammatical language are modulated by different cerebral structures.
Keywords
Related Topics
Life Sciences
Neuroscience
Cognitive Neuroscience
Authors
Diana Van Lancker Sidtis, John J. Sidtis,