Towards a New Functional Anatomy of Language: A Proposal for a Special Issue of Cognition, circa 2001

Conclusions   Michael UllmanGeorgetown University The contribution of brain memory circuits to language Our use of language depends upon two capacities: a mental lexicon of memorized words, and a mental grammar of rules that underlie the sequential and hierarchical composition of lexical forms into predictably structured larger words, phrases, and sentences.   The Declarative/Procedural model posits that the lexicon/grammar distinction in language is tied to the distinction between two well-studied brain memory systems.  On this view, the memorization and use of at least simple words (those with non-compositional — that is, arbitrary —  form-meaning pairings) depends upon an associative memory of distributed representations that is subserved by temporal-lobe circuits previously implicated in the learning and use of fact and event knowledge.  This “declarative memory” system appears to be specialized for learning arbitrarily-related information (i.e., for associative binding).  In contrast, the acquisition and use of aspects of symbol-manipulating grammatical are subserved by frontal/basal-ganglia circuits previously implicated in the implicit (non-conscious) learning and expression of motor and cognitive “skills” (e.g., from simple motor acts to skilled game playing).  This “procedural” system may be specialized for computing sequences.   This novel view of...
Source: Talking Brains - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Source Type: blogs