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Grammar and Cognition: Dualistic models of language structure and language processing
Edited by Alexander Haselow and Gunther Kaltenböck
[Human Cognitive Processing 70] 2020
► pp. 91–132

Chapter 3
Language activity in the light of cerebral hemisphere differences

Towards a pragma-syntactic account of human grammar

| Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia
| University of Lyon 2 | Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage
This chapter explores in a theoretical manner the potential correlations, previously suggested by Heine et al. (2015), between hemispheric specialization in neurolinguistics and a dual organization of discourse. The dual processing of language is represented here by the pragma-syntax, the level at which grammatical units manifest shared mental representations in discursive memory and generate inferences. While it is widely accepted that the left hemisphere of the brain is of utmost importance for morphosyntactic structuring of discourse, we will argue that the right hemisphere is crucial in processing operations at the pragma-syntactic level. Following a review of the questions surrounding hemispheric specialization, and of the language phenomena it can affect, we will present the pragma-syntactic model of human grammar. This paper will then suggest how it can effectively describe the phenomena whose comprehension has been previously reported in a number of studies as being dependent on the intact activity of the right brain, notably: irony, indirect speech acts and connectives.
Keywords: hemispheric asymmetry, pragma-syntax, language processing, right hemisphere, discursive memory, pragmatic inferences, discourse deficits
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Hemispheric asymmetry in humans
  • 3.Hemispheric asymmetry in language processing
  • 4.The Fribourg pragma-syntax
    • 4.1Macro-syntactic approaches in French linguistics
    • 4.2The Fribourg model: Discourse and articulations
    • 4.3Morphosyntactic domain
    • 4.4Pragma-syntactic domain
      • 4.4.1Enunciation
      • 4.4.2Discursive memory
      • 4.4.3Macro-syntactic routines
      • 4.4.4Model of the world vs model of communicative actions
  • 5.Linking pragma-syntax with hemispheric asymmetry
    • 5.1On the necessity to find an appropriate equilibrium between both operational domains
    • 5.2Effects on discursive memory: Primary cues vs meta-enunciative cues
      • 5.2.1LH dysfunction and impaired access to verbal content of clauses
      • 5.2.2RH dysfunction and impaired access to metacommunicative cues
        • 5.2.2.1Irony
        • 5.2.2.2Indirect speech acts
        • 5.2.2.3Connectives
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 November 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.70.03gur
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