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Discourse Grammar, the dual process model, and
brain lateralization: some correlations
BERND HEINE, TANIA KUTEVA and GUNTHER KALTENBÖCK
Language and Cognition / Volume 6 / Issue 01 / March 2014, pp 146 - 180
DOI: 10.1017/langcog.2013.3, Published online: 21 January 2014
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1866980813000033
How to cite this article:
BERND HEINE, TANIA KUTEVA and GUNTHER KALTENBÖCK (2014). Discourse
Grammar, the dual process model, and brain lateralization: some correlations .
Language and Cognition, 6, pp 146-180 doi:10.1017/langcog.2013.3
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146
Language and Cognition 6 (2014), 146– 180 . doi:10.1017/langcog.2013.3
© UK Cognitive Linguistics Association, 2014
Discourse Grammar, the dual process model,
and brain lateralization: some correlations *
BERND HEINE
University of Köln
TANIA KUTEVA
University of Düsseldorf
GUNTHER KALTENBÖCK
University of Vienna
( Received 2 August 2013 – Accepted 8 November 2013 –
First published online 20 January 2014 )
Some more recent lines of research converge on claiming that human
cognitive behavior in general and linguistic discourse in particular
cannot reasonably be reduced to one monolithic system of cognitive
activity. What this research suggests, rather, is that this behavior
exhibits a dualistic organization. In the present paper, two frameworks
representing this tradition are contrasted, namely Discourse Grammar
and the dual process model. The former rests on observations on
language structure and language use, while the latter was developed
on the basis of neurolinguistic observations. The two frameworks
[ * ] We wish to express our gratitude to a number of colleagues who have been of help in
writing this paper, providing many critical comments, most of all to Franck Floricic,
but also to Walter Bisang, Laurel Brinton, Claudine Chamoreau, Ulrike Claudi, Bob
Dixon, Wolfgang Dressler, Jack DuBois, Tom Givón, Martin Haspelmath, Jack
Hawkins, Christa König, Haiping Long, Gábor Nagy, Heiko Narrog, Klaus-Uwe
Panther, Seongha Rhee, Diana Sidtis, Kyung-An Song, Danjie Su, Arie Verhagen, as
well as to the participants of the International Conference on Final Particles , held in
Rouen on 27−28 May 2010, to the participants of the conference Beyond Dichotomies ,
held in Budapest on 25−26 October, 2010, to the participants of the conference on
Competing Motivations , held in Leipzig on 23−25 November 2010, as well as to the
participants of the International Conference on Grammaticalization , Rouen, 10−11
May 2012. Finally, we are also grateful to the Korean Ministry of Education, Science,
and Technology for generously having sponsored the research leading to this paper
within its World Class University Program, as well as to Matthias Brenzinger and the
University of Cape Town for having provided an optimal research environment for
part of this research. Address for correspondence: e-mail: bernd.heine@uni-koeln.de .
147
converge on claiming that there is a signifi cant correlation between
linguistic categorization and hemisphere-based brain activity. The
present paper argues that this correlation can be related to contrasting
linguistic functions associated with each of the two hemispheres.
: aphasia , Discourse Grammar , dual process model , formulaic
speech , right hemisphere , thetical
1. Introduction
That human cognitive behavior in general and linguistic discourse in
particular cannot reasonably be reduced to one monolithic system of mental
processing is a hypothesis that has been voiced in several di erent directions
of research. It surfaces in particular in the psychological work on brain
activity by Kahneman (2012), in neurolinguistic research on linguistic
processing by Van Lancker Sidtis ( 2009 ), and in linguistic work on performance
(Clark, 1996 ; Clark & Fox Tree, 2002), on speech act formulas (Pawley, 2009 ),
on discourse organization (Kaltenböck, Heine, and Kuteva, 2011 ; Heine,
Kaltenböck, Kuteva, & Long, 2013 ), or on bilingualism (Maschler, 1994 ).
What all this research suggests is that cognitive processing appears to exhibit
a dualistic organization.
The present paper is restricted to two of the models that have been
proposed, asking the following question: Are there any signifi cant
correlations between the two modes of processing proposed by Van Lancker
Sidtis ( 2009 ) and the two domains of discourse organization distinguished
in the framework of Discourse Grammar (Heine et al., 2013 ; Kaltenböck
et al., 2011 )? Note that the two frameworks were developed on di erent
kinds of data. In Discourse Grammar it is linguistic discontinuities that
provided the basis of analysis, while in the dual process model of Van
Lancker Sidtis ( 2009 ) it is observations on patients with left or right
hemisphere damage that marked the starting point of analysis. While the
fi ndings made within the two frameworks are largely compatible with one
another, the present paper suggests that hemisphere-related brain activation
appears to be infl uenced at least to some extent by the discourse functions
that speech serves.
The paper is organized as follows. An outline of the two frameworks is
presented in Section 2. Section 3 deals with the question of whether
Discourse Grammar is able to shed any light on the relationship between
language structure and neural organization in a similar way to the dual
process model. To this end, two small sets of aphasic speech are analyzed.
Section 4 looks at this issue in a wider perspective by contrasting linguistic
categorization with fi ndings that were made in neurological studies on
brain lateralization. Section 5 is devoted to the nature of and the role
.
148
played by formulaic linguistic expressions in Discourse Grammar. The
conclusion reached in the fi nal Section 6 is that, like the dual process
model, Discourse Grammar can contribute to a better understanding of
certain characteristics associated with the hemispheric lateralization of
the human brain.
2 . The two frameworks
The main purpose of the present paper is to contrast two theoretical
frameworks of linguistic analysis with a view to exploring how certain forms
of linguistic behavior are refl ected in patterns of brain activation. Section 2.1
provides a sketch of Discourse Grammar, while Section 2.2 is devoted to the
dual process model.
2.1 .
Discourse Grammar, as proposed by Kaltenböck et al. ( 2011 ) and Heine
et al. ( 2013 ), is composed of all the linguistic resources that are available
for constructing spoken or written (or signed) texts; an outline of its
architecture is provided in Figure 1 .
1
It is based on the assumption that
there are two domains of discourse organization that need to be distinguished,
referred to respectively as (SG) and
(TG). Discourse Grammar thus di ers from, and must not
be confused with the model of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG;
Hengeveld & Mackenzie, 2008 , 2011 ), which does not make such a
distinction.
2
The relationship between the two domains of Discourse Grammar in
Figure 1 is complex; it is shaped most of all by cooptation, a mechanism
whereby a chunk of SG, such as a clause, a phrase, a word, or any other unit,
is deployed for use in TG (Kaltenböck et al., 2011 , pp. 874−875).
SG is well documented, having been the main or the only subject of
theories of mainstream linguistics. It is based on propositional logic, and it is
organized in terms of parts of speech or constituent types such as sentences,
[ 1 ] Figure 1 raises a number of questions, in particular the following: What justifi cation is
there for assigning Sentence Grammar (SG) and Thetical Grammar (TG) to the same
general domain, namely to Discourse Grammar? Are theticals di erent enough from SG
units to be excluded from the domain of SG? Are theticals similar enough to one another
to justify their analysis as a domain of their own? Is the inventory of categories distin-
guished exhaustive? What is the nature of the boundaries of categories: Are they discrete
or gradient? How do we identify theticals in isolation? The reader is referred to Heine
et al. (2013, Section 4.7) for discussion of these questions.
[ 2 ] Such a distinction was made, however, in the functional grammar model of Dik ( 1997 ),
the precursor of FDG (see Kaltenböck et al., 2011 , p. 852).
149
clauses, phrases, words, and morphemes plus the syntactic and morphological
machinery to relate constituents to one another. The building blocks of
TG are , consisting on the one hand of thetical formulae and
constructions and on the other hand of the ability to coopt information units
of SG and deploy them for structuring discourse.
3
The main categories of
theticals distinguished so far are illustrated in (1).
4
(1) Categories of Thetical Grammar (Heine et al., 2013 ; Kaltenböck et al.,
2011 )
a. He was a man who,
unaccountably
, had few friends. Conceptual thetical
b.
Good morning!
Formula of social
exchange
c. Today’s topic,
ladies and gentlemen
, is astrophysics. Vocative
d.
Hold on
, are we late? Imperative
e.
Damn
, we’ve missed the bus. Interjection
Theticals di er from SG units in a principled way, their defi ning properties
being listed in (2).
5
Note that this defi nition is prototypical rather than being
based on necessary and su cient criteria (see also Kaltenböck et al., 2011 ,
Section 2).
(2) Properties of theticals (Kaltenböck et al., 2011 , p. 853)
a. They are syntactically independent.
b. They are typically set o prosodically from the rest of an utterance.
[ 3 ] The term is a cover term for any pairing of form−meaning units
that can be separated from the remainder of an utterance by means of semantic, syntactic,
and/or prosodic criteria − ideally by all three of them. An information unit can be a
word, but it can consist as well of a complex collocation of words (Heine et al., 2013 ).
[ 4 ] Throughout this paper, theticals are printed in bold.
[ 5 ] The term ‘thetical’ must not be confused with that of ‘thetic’ statement (Kuroda, 1972 ;
Lambrecht, 1994 ; Sasse, 1987 , 2006 ; see Kaltenböck et al., 2011 , n. 6).
Discourse Grammar
Sentence Grammar Thetical Grammar ...
Conceptual Imperat- Vocat- Formulae Interject- ...
theticals ives ives of social ions
exchange
Fig. 1. A sketch of the architecture of Discourse Grammar.
.
150
c. Their meaning is non-restrictive.
d. They tend to be positionally mobile.
e. Their internal structure is built on principles of SG but can be
elliptic.
The term ‘non-restrictive’ meaning is taken from Huddleston and Pullum
(2002, p. 1352). Restrictive meaning is a characteristic of SG; it is grounded
in the semantic structure of a sentence or its constituents. Non-restrictive
meaning, by contrast, concerns reasoning processes and inferential mechanisms
grounded in the situation of discourse. To be sure, any act of linguistic
communication requires a situation of discourse, but in the case of SG its
impact is minimal, being restricted to a few factors such as spatial, temporal,
and personal deixis, deontic modality, etc. Such restrictions do not appear to
exist when TG is involved. The situation of discourse consists of a network
of interlocking components, namely the ones listed in (3).
(3) Components of the situation of discourse (Kaltenböck et al., 2011 , p. 861)
Text Organization
Source of Information
Attitudes of the Speaker
Speaker−Hearer Interaction
Discourse Setting
World Knowledge
In accordance with this distinction, units of SG di er from those of TG
(i.e., theticals) in their semantic−pragmatic scope potential: whereas the
former have scope over some constituent of the utterance, theticals may have
wider scope, typically extending over the entire situation of discourse (Heine
et al., 2013 , Section 2.2; Kaltenböck et al., 2011 , p. 861). We may illustrate this
with the English item frankly . It is an adverb of SG, determining the meaning
of the predicate in (4a). In (4b), by contrast, it is a thetical, called a stance
adverbial by Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, and Finegan (1999, p. 133),
a sentence adverb by Brinton and Traugott (2005, p. 139), or a disjunct by
Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik (1985, pp. 648, 613). As a thetical,
it is syntactically detached, typically set o prosodically (marked by commas
in writing), and its meaning is non-restrictive: rather than determining the
meaning of the predicate, it relates to and may have scope over the situation
of discourse, most of all to Speaker−Hearer Interaction.
(4) a. She spoke frankly about herself now and then.
b.
Frankly
, Kris didn’t want to know. (Biber et al., 1999 , p. 132)
It may not be surprising that the meaning of theticals has been described with
reference to notions such as ‘subjectifi cation’ (cf. the component Attitudes of
151
[ 6 ] For the contribution of subcortical structures to the production of overlearned linguistic
material (e.g., recited speech), see Bridges, Van Lancker Sidtis, and Sidtis (2013).
[ 7 ] See also Kasparian (2013, pp. 10−11), who argues that “the idea that the RH [right
hemisphere] would be especially adept at processing unfamiliar/novel expressions
compared to highly conventionalized or familiar expressions is consistent with the Coarse
Coding Hypothesis ” (Beeman, 1998 ).
the Speaker in (3)) or ‘intersubjectifi cation’ (cf. Speaker−Hearer Interaction)
by a number of authors (e.g., Traugott & Dasher, 2002 ; Brinton, 2008 ), or
as being ‘metalingual’ (Maschler, 1994 ), ‘procedural’, ‘metacommunicative’,
‘metatextual’, ‘metapragmatic’, ‘metadiscursive’, or ‘instructional’ (see Heine,
2013 ).
2.2. (2009)
A detailed account of this model is found in various publications of Van
Lancker Sidtis and associates (Sidtis, Canterucci, & Katsnelson, 2009 ;
Van Lancker, 1988 , 1990 , 1997 ; Van Lancker Sidtis, 2004, 2009, 2012; Van
Lancker Sidtis & Postman, 2006 ). Central to this model is the distinction
between (or novel language, or newly created language, or
propositional speech) and (or formulaic expressions
or automatic speech). As these authors argue on the basis of substantial
neurological and linguistic evidence, novel speech is represented in the left
hemisphere, whereas formulaic speech is facilitated by a subcortical right
hemisphere circuit.
6
The dual process model features an analytic mode for the generation of
novel speech and a holistic mode for processing formulaic speech, the
distinction being one between newly created or propositional and fi xed or
non-propositional language, respectively. Unlike the former, the latter is not
newly created from the operation of grammatical rules on lexical items
(Van Lancker Sidtis, 2009 , p. 445). Relying on this distinction, Van Lancker
Sidtis summarizes a range of neurolinguistic fi ndings thus:
The implications of these studies are that novel and formulaic language are
a ected di erently by di erent types of brain damage: Left hemisphere
damage leads to selective impairment of novel language (with relative
preservation of formulaic language), while right hemisphere and/or subcortical
damage lead to selective impairment of formulaic language (sparing novel
language). (Van Lancker Sidtis, 2009 , p. 460)
7
According to Van Lancker Sidtis (2004, 2009, 2012, and other works),
formulaic speech has the characteristics listed in (5) (see also Section 3
below).
.
152
(5) Characteristics of instances of formulaic speech
a. They have stereotyped form, they are fi xed and unitary.
b. They have a set intonation contour.
c. They have conventionalized meaning which is complex and usually
non-literal, rife with nuance and connotations, and which depends
in special ways on social context.
d. People know them intuitively.
Easily identifi ed instances of formulaic speech are swear words, interjections,
pause fi llers ( uh , um ), discourse elements ( well , so ), non-literal lexical
meanings for idioms ( He was at the end of his tether ), and proverbs. The
functional criteria proposed pertain mostly to the repertory of speech formulas,
such as Hello , Right , If you say so , How could you?, Here’s back atcha , and
many others signaling “turn-taking, commentary, and assent, conveying
countless attitudinal stances in conversational interaction” (Kreiman & Sidtis,
2011 ; Van Lancker Sidtis, 2012 , p. 66).
In examining written transcripts of the spontaneous speech of patients
who had su ered left or right hemisphere damage, Van Lancker Sidtis (2009,
p. 452) distinguishes nine types of formulaic speech; we will deal with them
in more detail in Section 3.
That brain lateralization shows positive correlations with two di erent
modes of linguistic processing is an old hypothesis (see Van Lancker Sidtis,
2004 , 2009, p. 460, for detailed discussion). Already in the nineteenth century,
the neurologist Hughlings Jackson (1874) provided examples of preserved
aphasic speech, distinguishing between ‘propositional’ and ‘non-propositional’
(or ‘automatic’) speech associated with left and right hemisphere processing,
respectively. Similar observations were made by subsequent authors. The
neurologist Head ( 1926 ) found that non-propositional speech appears fi rst in
both receptive and expressive aphasia, Bay ( 1964 ) described aphasia as an
inability to propositionalize, and according to the Russian neuropsychologist
Luria ( 1966 ), clinical observations showed that it was speech formulas,
expletives, pause fi llers, proper nouns, sentence stems, and serial speech that
were preserved in aphasic speech.
But the most substantial evidence was presented in the work of Van Lancker
Sidtis (2004, 2009, 2012, and other works), based on the distinction between
novel and formulaic speech. Being extremely rare following right hemisphere
damage, aphasia is almost exclusively associated with left hemisphere damage.
Van Lancker Sidtis carried out a number of case studies to substantiate the
hypothesis that brain lateralization shows positive correlations with two
di erent modes of linguistic processing. In one kind of study she worked with
three patients, where she made the following observations (Van Lancker Sidtis,
2009 , pp. 451−452):
153
− Case 1 involved a patient who had sustained a large right hemisphere
lesion. Although language abilities were intact, his conversational speech
was often pragmatically inappropriate.
− The same observation was made in Case 2, who had su ered right-sided
subcortical damage. This patient complained that she no longer produced
the “little words” in conversational interaction, having di culties with
greeting and leave-taking.
− Case 3 was a left hemisphere damaged patient with the diagnosis of
transcortical sensory aphasia, who spoke fl uently but with numerous
formulaic expressions.
A separate study confi rmed that the rate of formulaic expressions was low
in Case 1 (11%) and Case 2 (16.9%), but high in Case 3 (51.9%), compared to
20.1% in the normal control group (Van Lancker Sidtis, 2009 , p. 454).
Examining written transcripts of the spontaneous speech of patients who
had su ered left or right hemisphere damage, Van Lancker Sidtis and Postman
( 2006 ) found that persons with left hemisphere damage (LHD) use signifi cantly
more (30%) and persons with right hemisphere damage (RHD) signifi cantly
less formulaic utterances (17%) than normal subjects (25%). This fi nding
compellingly implicates a role of the right hemisphere in the production of
formulaic expressions (Van Lancker Sidtis, 2009 , p. 452).
Further support for the dual process model was found in two speech
samples of aphasic patients (Van Lancker Sidtis, 2009 , pp. 454−457). In the
fi rst, taken from an aphasic subject who recovered some speech over a period
of fi ve treatments from early non-fl uency, 64 percent of the text turned out to
consist of formulaic expressions.
In the second speech sample, taken from a German aphasic patient before
treatment, nearly all the speech products consisted of formulaic language. Of
the thirty-nine information units uttered by the patient in conversation with
a therapist, thirty, that is, 76.9 percent, were formulaic units (Van Lancker
Sidtis, 2009 , pp. 456−457); we will return to these two cases in Section 3.
The reciprocal e ect of lateralization on comprehension was demonstrated
by using the Formulaic and Novel Language Comprehension Test of
Kempler and Van Lancker ( 1996 ). The result was a ‘double dissociation’ to
the e ect that left hemisphere damaged subjects performed poorly on literal
expressions but relatively better on idiomatic and formulaic language, while
right hemisphere damaged patients performed relatively worse on formulaic
and idiomatic language than on novel expressions (Van Lancker Sidtis,
2004 , p. 26).
Support for the dual process model comes from some recent lines of
linguistic research, in particular from Pawley’s ( 2009 ) work on speech act
formulas:
.
154
It appears that competent speakers of a language know many linguistic
entities in two ways: holistically and analytically, and can move between
the two. People are good at generalising, at perceiving patterns, and the
generalising capacity is essential to the learning of general rules. On the
other hand, people have severely limited rapid processing capacity but they
have an enormous memory, which allows them to store and retrieve, or
recognize familiar complex form−meaning pairings. Thus, a realistic account
of the cognitive processes that underpin nativelike command of a language
should accommodate this kind of dual knowledge. (Pawley, 2009 , p. 21)
3. On aphasic speech: two case studies
As the observations made in Section 2.2 suggest, the dual process model
is able to capture signifi cant correlations between linguistic and neural
processing. The study of Discourse Grammar, on the other hand, has so far
been confi ned to linguistic analysis; no relevant information is available on
whether the distinction between the two domains of grammar is associated
with any di erential activation of the brain.
The question that we wish to look into in the present section is how the two
frameworks relate to one another: Are they fundamentally di erent, are they
similar, or are they perhaps underlyingly the same? In looking for an answer
to this question, our focus will be on the speech behavior of persons su ering
left hemisphere damage, and in particular of aphasic persons.
While aphasia may in rare cases be associated with right hemisphere
damage, it is almost exclusively a phenomenon of left hemisphere dysfunction
in the distribution of the middle cerebral artery. Extending over most of each
hemisphere, this artery excludes a narrow strip on the anterior frontal lobe
and another narrow area on the posterior parietal lobe (Van Lancker Sidtis,
2009 ). Accordingly, with the term ‘aphasic speech’ we will refer exclusively to
cases of aphasia caused by left hemisphere damage.
Examining written transcripts of the spontaneous speech of patients who
had su ered left or right hemisphere damage, Van Lancker Sidtis (2009,
p. 452) distinguishes the groups of linguistic units listed in (6), that she classifi es
as formulaic speech (see also Section 2.2 above):
(6) Groups of formulaic speech units (Van Lancker Sidtis, 2009 , p. 452)
a. idioms (e.g., lost my train of thought );
b. conventional expressions ( as a matter of fact );
c. conversational formulaic expressions ( fi rst of all , right );
d. expletives ( damn );
e. sentence stems ( I guess );
f. discourse particles ( well );
155
g. pause fi llers ( uh );
h. numerals; and
i. personally familiar proper nouns.
Most, though not all of these groups relate to our domain of Thetical Grammar
introduced in Section 2.1; note that Van Lancker Sidtis portrays formulaic
speech as serving mainly as social signals, which is also a function of many
theticals (see Section 4, Table 5 ). While it is hard to decide without more
detailed contextual information which of these categories qualify as theticals, it
would seem on the basis of the examples provided by Van Lancker Sidtis that
(6b) through (6g), i.e., six of the nine categories, are largely or entirely restricted
to theticals: conventional expressions (6b), conversational formulaic expressions
(6c), sentence stems (6e), and discourse particles (6f) have the appearance of
formulaic conceptual theticals serving the organization of texts (see Section 5),
be that as discourse markers (e.g., well ) or comment clauses ( I guess ) (Heine,
2013 ). The remaining two are classifi ed in Discourse Grammar as interjections
(Heine et al., 2013 , 4.6), namely expletives (6d) and pause fi llers (6g).
In fact, at least two-thirds of the formulaic expressions discussed by Van
Lancker Sidtis ( 2009 ) can be suspected to belong to TG. But what about the
remaining ones, that is, (6a), (6h), and (6i)?
The answer to this question is complex. According to (6a), idioms qualify
as instances of formulaic speech, but many of them are theticals. For
example, in a constructed sentence such as (7), the idiom lost my train of
thought can be assumed to be an integral part of sentence structure, not to be
prosodically separated from the rest of the utterance, and its meaning is not
non-restrictive, hence it does not qualify as a thetical, it is part of SG. And
much the same applies to the numeral three and the personally familiar proper
noun Jim in the constructed example (7): they are syntactically, prosodically,
and semantically parts of the sentence. Both the numeral three and the phrase
with Jim are licensed by the syntax and semantics of the adverbial clause;
they are part of the intonation contour of the clause. Accordingly, they belong
to SG rather than to TG.
(7) After having spent three hours with Jim I lost my train of thought.
But the situation is di erent, e.g., in the case of personally familiar proper
nouns serving as vocatives, like Jim in the constructed example of (8): vocative
expressions conform to our defi nition of theticals in (2), being syntactically
and prosodically detached and referring to a participant that is located outside
the form and the meaning of the sentence (see (1c) and Figure 1 of Section 2.1).
This means that instances of Van Lancker Sidtis’s category (6i) are theticals
in some of their uses but not in other uses.
(8) This is not the whole story,
Jim
.
.
156
And in much the same way as there are instances of formulaic speech that
are not theticals, there are also theticals that are not instances of formulaic
speech. Take example (9) of spoken English: the information unit please don’t
misunderstand me when I say this would seem to qualify as an instance of novel
speech, suggestive of the analytic mode (Section 2.2). Nevertheless, it is a
conceptual thetical (usually classifi ed as a parenthetical), corresponding to
our defi nition of theticals in (2): it is syntactically and prosodically independent
from the rest of the utterance and its meaning is non-restrictive, that is, it is
not part of the semantic structure of its host clause.
(9) Or are you being <,>
uhm
<,>
please don
’
t misunderstand me
when I say this
<,> over-taught that is to say <,> being asked to attend
<,> more lectures more seminars more tutorials than you can prepare for
(DCPSE: DL-A03-0355)
8
Finally, there are also other di erences in the classifi cation of information
units. We may illustrate this with two examples of aphasic patients, involving
an English-speaking and a German-speaking subject. The fi rst example
concerns the text in (10), taken from spontaneous speech by an aphasic
subject who had recovered some speech from early non-fl uency after fi ve
treatment sessions. In this text, formulaic language is in italics and novel
units are underscored.
9
(10) Uh.. uh good morning.. uh.. um.. me uh I want a.. big big ter // uh
television, alright ? Um, big. Alright ? And uh.. money? Yes. Fine..
um.. big and . uh ... small um.. TV . yes.. uh small um.. Uh.. sky and cricket
and .. uh soccer and movies and news and.. alright? Um.. right. Uh..
Where? Ah! Alright! Boah! nice! Wow! Big! And small! Ho-ho, Jesus!
Uh.. price? What? two thousand.. oh Jesus! hm.. wait. um.. hm hm hm.
yes. alright.. maybe uh. two thousand? Oh, Jesus. Alright. Uh phone and
wait , alright? Uh.. oh, Jesus! Hi! Jane um.. phew.. uh what is the matter?
Money? Oh, Jesus.. alright.. alright! thank you! see you! Uh salesman ..
uh.. money, yes.. fi ne.. (Van Lancker Sidtis, 2009 , p. 455, Table 1 )
On the basis of a Discourse Grammar approach, the analysis of (10) would
be somewhat di erent from that of Van Lancker Sidtis ( 2009 ). Table 1
provides a quantitative overview of the two contrasting analyses. As Table 1
shows, there are only two Sentence Grammar (SG) units, defi ned as such on
the basis of their propositional structure: I want a big big terevision , interrupted
by uh , and I will phone. By far the largest group of information units classifi ed
[ 8 ] DCPDSE is the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English.
[ 9 ] One unit, big in the second line, is neither italicized nor underscored in the data of Van
Lancker Sidtis (2009, p. 455), hence we leave it unclassifi ed.
157
as belonging to TG are interjections, such as Boah! , Jesus , phew , uh , um , and
Wo w ! (notice that interjections include hesitation markers and pause fi llers in
Discourse Grammar; see Heine et al., 2013 , 4.6). The second largest group
are formulae of social exchange (FSEs), such as Alright , fi ne , good morning ,
Hi! , see you! , thank you! , yes , and fi ne , followed by conceptual theticals ( nice! ,
price? , What?, etc.). There are only two units that we classify as imperatives
( phone and wait and wait ), and one as a vocative ( Jane ).
All other information units must remain unclassifi ed, namely units such as
big , big and , me , money , small , TV , etc. The reason for not classifying them is
that they could be interpreted alternatively as either elliptic SG units or as
stand-alone units of TG. Without a more detailed analysis of the speech and
the grammar of the patient concerned, any analysis of the discourse status of
these units would seem premature.
A comparison of the data in Table 1 suggests that the outcome is similar
between the two frameworks. There is a high correlation between Discourse
Grammar and the dual process model: both TG units (81.6%) and formulaic
speech units (75.5%) are clearly predominant, while SG units and novel
speech form a minority of information units. The divergence is even more
dramatic in Discourse Grammar than in the dual process model: there are
hardly any SG units (1.7%; see below).
But is it also the same units that are classifi ed in the same way in both
frameworks? As Table 2 shows, the answer is essentially in the a rmative:
there is a distinct majority of three-quarters of all information units that are
classifi ed as both TG and formulaic speech units (74.6%) and, conversely, all
SG units that have been identifi ed belong to novel speech (1.7%). The way
the divergence of 7 percent of the units is to be interpreted, where the two
frameworks yield contrasting analyses, is a matter for future research.
1. A contrastive breakdown of information units occurring in the
speech sample of an English-speaking aphasic patient after fi ve treatment
sessions (based on Van Lancker Sidtis, 2009 , p. 455, Table 1)
Discourse Grammar Dual process model
SG units 2 1.7 % Novel speech 27 23.7 %
TG units 93 81.6 % Formulaic speech 86 75.5 %
Conceptual theticals 12
FSEs 25
Vocatives 1
Imperatives 2
Interjections 53
Unclassifi ed 19 16.7 % 1 0.8 %
Total 114 100.0 % 114 100.0 %
.
158
To conclude, on the basis of this limited set of data it would seem that the
aphasic patient concerned, su ering left hemisphere damage, relies primarily
on TG in constructing linguistic discourse, that is, like formulaic speech, TG
appears to involve a strong implication of the right hemisphere.
Similar observations can be made about the speech of the second subject,
a German aphasic patient before undergoing treatment. The text pieces in
(11) are taken from a conversation between a therapist and the patient. To
save space, we are restricted in (11) to the utterances of the latter (see Van
Lancker Sidtis, 2009 , pp. 456−457, for all further information).
10
(11) Utterances of a German-speaking aphasic patient responding to a
therapist (English glosses in parentheses; formulaic units are in italics,
novel units are underscored; Van Lancker Sidtis, 2009 , pp. 456−457)
a. Ja. (yes)
b. Ah Gott ja. (Oh heavens yes)
c. Ja. (yes)
d. Ja. (yes)
e. Hallo, wie geht’s? Danke, gut, tja. ja, und ? (Hello, how are you?
Thank you, good, okay, yeah, and now?)
f. Äh, Haare waschen? Und, rot, ja, ja, och, ja. (Uh, wash hair? And,
red, yeah, yeah, oh, yeah)
g. Nö, äh, ach Gott, und, ein, ehm, und und äh, und, und, Geld, nö, das
ist so gut, das ist, das w.. (Nope, um, oh God, and, a, um, and and,
money, nope, that’s just fi ne, that’s, that)
h. Ja. (yes)
i. Ja, sehr gut. (yes, very good)
The following information units cannot be classifi ed on the basis of the data
available, for the reasons mentioned above: das ist ‘that’s’ , das w.. ‘that’, ein
‘one’, Geld ‘money’, Haare waschen ‘hair wash’, rot ‘red’. Table 3 provides
2. Discourse Grammar and the dual process model compared: utterances
produced by an English-speaking aphasic patient after fi ve treatment sessions
(based on Van Lancker Sidtis, 2009 , p. 455, Table 1)
Units classifi ed as both SG and novel speech 2 1.7 %
Units classifi ed as both TG and formulaic speech 85 74.6 %
Units classifi ed as SG and formulaic speech 0 0
Units classifi ed as TG and novel speech 8 7.0 %
Unclassifi ed 19 16.7 %
Total 114 100.0 %
[ 10 ] The data were kindly provided by Caterina Breitenstein.
159
an overview of the two classifi cations of categories. The results for the German
patient are strikingly similar to those obtained for the English-speaking aphasic
patient: the vast majority of all information units are both TG units (82.5%)
and instances of formulaic speech (77.5%). Accordingly, the contribution of
SG units (2.5%) and novel language units (22.5%) is restricted to a fraction of
the utterances. The di erence between the last two fi gures can be accounted for
by the large number of unclassifi ed units (15%); conceivably, a more detailed
analysis might reveal that they also qualify as SG units.
To conclude, the principles of organization used in Discourse Grammar and
in the dual process model are di erent and, accordingly, the two need to be
distinguished: there are both instances of formulaic speech that are not theticals
and theticals that are not part of formulaic speech. Nevertheless, there are
substantial overlaps in the categories proposed, and the results obtained in
both frameworks turn out to be overall similar and to exhibit some degree of
regularity. As Table 4 shows, regularities concern on the one hand the di erent
languages of the two patients: both the English- and the German-speaking
patient used an extremely low rate of SG units, namely below 3 percent, while
the rate of TG units is extremely high, above 80 percent. Much the same
regularity characterizes the analysis based on the dual process model: the
contribution of novel speech amounts to 22−24 percent in both languages, and
that of formulaic speech between 75 and 78 percent.
Another regularity concerns the two frameworks, which exhibit much the
same di erences for both patients and languages: both percentages of SG
units and novel speech units are low, but the former are consistently lower
(below 3%) than the latter (above 20%) and, accordingly, the fi gures of TG
units are consistently higher than those of formulaic speech.
3. A classifi cation of the information units in (11), produced by a
German-speaking aphasic patient, comparing Discourse Grammar categories
with the categories proposed within the dual process model of Van Lancker Sidtis
(2009, pp. 456−457)
Discourse Grammar The dual process model
SG units total ( das ist so gut ) 1 2.5 % Novel speech 9 22.5 %
TG units total 33 82.5 % Formulaic speech 31 77.5 %
Conceptual theticals ( und ) 6
FSEs ( hallo , danke , gut , ja , nö ,
sehr gut , wie geht’s? )
17
Interjections ( ah , äh , ehm , Gott , tja ) 10
Unclassifi ed ( das ist , das w.. , ein , Geld ,
Haare waschen , rot )
6 15.0 %
Total of information units 40 100 % 40 100 %
.
160
To conclude, there is a signifi cant overlap between the two frameworks of
analysis. What this suggests is the following: the dual process model has been
demonstrated to be able to establish a regular correlation between linguistic
behavior and the neurological distinction between the two cerebral hemispheres.
The same can now also be claimed − at least with reference to the data looked
at in this section − for Discourse Grammar. Note that the correlation is even
more clear-cut in the case of the latter: as Table 4 shows, SG is almost entirely
absent in the speech of these aphasic patients; that is, the speech production
of both patients is essentially restricted to TG.
11
Which theoretical implications this di erence between the two frameworks
has is an issue that is beyond the scope of the present paper and needs to be
addressed in future research. This research will have to be based on a more
detailed study of the discourse organization of aphasic speakers. As we observed
above, we had to leave unclassifi ed a substantial number of the information units
produced by the aphasic patients: without a more comprehensive knowledge of
the way aphasics and other speakers with left or right hemisphere damage
structure their texts, a classifi cation of those units must remain conjectural.
4. A division of labor
We saw in Section 3 that persons su ering damage of the left cerebral
hemisphere draw primarily on formulaic speech in their organization of
linguistic discourse, as has been demonstrated abundantly by Van Lancker
Sidtis and associates (Sidtis et al., 2009 ; Van Lancker, 1988 , 1990 , 1997 ;
Van Lancker Sidtis, 2004, 2009, 2012; Van Lancker Sidtis & Postman,
2006 ). Furthermore, we saw that there is also substantial overlap between the
concept of formulaic speech and that of Thetical Grammar (TG).
As was mentioned in Section 2.1, utterances designed within the domain
of SG are determined by the syntactic and semantic compositionality of
4. Comparing the results obtained by Discourse Grammar and the dual
process model in the speech of an English-speaking and a German-speaking aphasic
patient (percentages only; data based on Van Lancker Sidtis, 2009 , pp. 456−457)
SG units Novel speech TG units Formulaic speech
English-speaking subject 1.7 % 23.7 % 81.6 % 75.5 %
German-speaking subject 2.5 % 22.5 % 82.5 % 77.5 %
[ 11 ] We are ignoring here the unclassifi ed items in Tables 1 and 3 . But even if it should turn
out that these items are all SG units, this would not alter the overall conclusion that TG
units play an outstanding role in the speech of both aphasic patients.
161
sentences. The meaning of information units of TG, by contrast, is determined
by the situation of discourse − that is, by what may be described as the
pragmatic environment of linguistic communication.
12
To be sure, it is
possible to form utterances by relying on information units of one domain
only. For example, an utterance like I saw Mary yesterday consists of an SG
unit only, whereas Good morning, Mary, how are you? is made up only of TG
units (i.e., two formulae of social exchange and a vocative); but linguistic
communication would be defi cient if either of the two domains were
absent.
TG is made up essentially of fi ve di erent linguistic categories with each
being associated with a specifi c spectrum of communicative functions. As
Table 5 shows, these functions concern specifi c components of the situation
of discourse. Conceptual theticals relate an utterance to the situation of
discourse beyond the structure of a sentence, formulae of social exchange and
vocatives are used to maintain or reinforce social relations, while interjections
concern most of all the internal emotional or mental state of the speaker
or the interaction between speaker and hearer (cf. Ameka, 1992a, 1992b ;
Norrick, 2009 , p. 876), and imperatives are typically used by the speaker to
get the hearer to act (Aikhenvald, 2010 ).
Linguistic categories dedicated to such elementary functions of human
communication are almost entirely restricted to TG. While Sentence Grammar
can be used to express virtually any meaning, it does not dispose of any
dedicated categories for these functions.
We had a number of examples in Section 3 showing that linguistic forms
for these functions can be immediately related to right hemisphere activity.
A paradigm example is provided by the following patient diagnosed with
global aphasia following a stroke that involved frontal, temporal, and parietal
[ 12 ] It goes without saying that, to the extent that they have been coopted from SG, TG units
refl ect the structures inherited from the former.
5. The main functional domains of thetical categories
Category English examples
Component of the situation
of discourse (cf. (3))
Conceptual theticals I think , you know , as it were Text Organization
Formulae of social
exchange
Goodbye , happy birthday , hi ,
never mind , please , sorry
Speaker−Hearer Interaction
Vocatives Ann! , Waiter! Speaker−Hearer Interaction
Imperatives Come! , Give me a drink! , Listen! ,
Watch out!
Speaker−Hearer Interaction
Interjections Damn , hey , ouch , whoopee , wow Attitudes of the Speaker
.
162
areas of the left hemisphere: he was unable to speak, name, or repeat, and his
auditory−verbal language comprehension was severely limited. His linguistic
production was restricted to automatic speech units, i.e., three formulae of
social exchange ( yeah , yes , no ), two interjections (expletives, goddammit , shit ),
and one discourse marker ( well ). Note that these utterances were produced
with good articulation and prosody (Van Lancker & Cummings, 1999 , p. 86).
The claim made in the present section is that speech functions expressed by
categories of TG are exactly the ones that are suggestive of right hemisphere
activation. To this end, we will now look at each of the three components
distinguished in Table 5 in turn.
4.1.
SG is determined by the syntactic and semantic compositionality of sentences.
TG, by contrast, draws on inferential mechanisms that relate information
units beyond their literal meaning to the speaker, the hearer, and to the
situation in which speech operates − in short, TG is anchored in what is
commonly described as pragmatics. For example, we saw in example (4a) that
the meaning of the adverb frankly is determined by its function as an adverb
modifying the predicate of the sentence. As a thetical in (4b), by contrast,
where it is syntactically and prosodically detached, it relates the meaning
of the utterance beyond the sentence to the attitudes and beliefs of the
interlocutors. And if our hypothesis of a positive correlation between the
use of TG and right hemisphere activity is correct, we will expect speakers
su ering right hemisphere damage to have defi cits in locating their speech
appropriately within the situation of discourse and, more generally, in the
world around them. TG is responsible in particular for the following functional
goals:
(a) To design a coherent model of discourse.
(b) To anchor meanings in the situation of discourse rather than in the
structure of sentences.
There is in fact neurolinguistic evidence in support of these two functional
goals: both appear to be centrally associated with right hemisphere activity,
rather than with the left hemisphere.
With reference to (a), there is a body of neurolinguistic observations
suggesting that the left hemisphere is in charge of basic information (word
recognition, syntactic processing). The right hemisphere, by contrast, tends
to be activated to establish cohesive ties in narratives (Bloom, 1994 ; Marini,
Carlomagno, Caltagirone, & Nocentini, 2005 ) and/or when the processing of
higher-level information (integration of parts as a coherent whole), and what
tends to be referred to as the ‘macrostructure’ of discourse, are involved
163
(Robertson et al., 2000 ; see also Sherratt & Bryan, 2012 , pp. 215−216), for
instance the organizing and ordering of discourse structure (Lojek-Osiejuk,
1996 ).
Confronting ten healthy, native English speaking volunteers with written
texts which consisted on the one hand of titled and on the other hand of
untitled paragraphs, St George, Kutas, Martinez, and Sereno (1999,
pp. 1317, 1323) conclude that right hemisphere engagement occurs routinely as
readers attempt to construct a unitary coherent model of a discourse and
discover the producer’s intents. And it is especially the right middle temporal
regions that appear to be important for the integrative processes needed to
achieve global coherence during discourse processing, where ‘integration’
means that multiple pieces of information are integrated across sentences.
Right hemisphere damage following a stroke has been shown to lead to
disturbances in communication skills, and these disturbances include di culty
in preserving the macro-structure and organization of discourse (Hough,
1990 ; Joanette, Goulet, Ska, & Nespoulous, 1989 ). Accordingly, the content
of discourse produced by RHD individuals tends to be characterized by
reduced topic maintenance (Prutting & Kirchner, 1987 ) and to be incoherent,
tangential, and self-oriented (Blake, 2006 ).
13
And a number of authors argue
that cognitive disorders in RHD individuals account for disturbed discourse
skills (Bartels-Tobin & Hinckley, 2005 ; Myers, 1999 ; Penn, 2000 ; Tompkins,
1995 ).
That the integration task is of a di erent kind both between the two
domains of Discourse Grammar and the two hemispheres can possibly be
linked to the hypothesis proposed by Beeman ( 1998 ), according to which
words are each associated with a large and di use semantic fi eld in the
right hemisphere but with a smaller, more focal, semantic fi eld in the left
hemisphere. Blonder et al. (1991, p. 1124) therefore suggest that activation in
the left hemisphere is restricted to the target and its most closely linked
associates, whereas in the right hemisphere many concepts give rise to weak
activation for some time.
With regard to (b), the contribution of the right hemisphere is particularly
evident in the domain of what has been referred to above as pragmatics (e.g.,
Bates, 1976 ; Cutica, Bucciarelli, & Bara, 2006 ; Ferré, Ska, Lajoie, Bleau, &
Joanette, 2011 ): left hemisphere patients typically exhibit primary impairment
in comprehending and appropriately using syntactic and semantic aspects of
language; persons with right hemisphere damage, by contrast, demonstrate great
di culty with pragmatic communication (Joanette, Goulet, & Hannequin, 1990 ;
[ 13 ] In fMRI studies, the role of the right hemisphere in topic maintenance has been con-
fi rmed (e.g., Caplan & Dapretto, 2001 ) even if the evidence from participants after RBD
stroke on this issue is inconclusive (Mackenzie & Brady, 2008 ).
.
164
Molloy, Brownell, & Gardner 1990; Moscovitch, 1983 ; Ozono & Miller, 1996 ;
Weylman, Brownell, Roman, & Gardner, 1989 ).
An impairment of RHD subjects has been referred to as a selective defi cit
in integrating pieces of information by means of inferences derived from the
situational context (Carol, Baum, & Pell, 2001 ; Delis, Wapner, Gardner, &
Moses, 1983 ; Jung-Beeman, Bowden, & Gernsbacher, 2000 ;), and Marini
et al. (2005, p. 53) speculate that the right hemisphere plays a relevant role
in complex linguistic skills such as organizing a mental model for producing
narratives.
Furthermore, patients with right hemisphere damage were found to have
di culty in interpreting indirect requests and commands and to rely on the
literal meanings of conversations rather than pragmatic cues that involve
deriving meaning from contextual information (Foldi, 1987 ; Hirst, LeDoux,
& Stein, 1984 ; Weylman et al., 1989 ).
We observed in Section 3 that Van Lancker Sidtis (2009, pp. 451−452)
found that one of the patients who had sustained a large right hemisphere
lesion was characterized by conversational speech that was often pragmatically
inappropriate, even though his language abilities were intact. Van Lancker
and Cummings (1999, p. 96) observe that while the left hemisphere mediates
most linguistic behaviors, the right hemisphere is important for broader
aspects of communication. Other right hemisphere lesion patients were found
to ignore context and were not able to fi ll in what was not present in the words
(Myers, 1978 ); Shields ( 1991 ) concludes:
It is not surprising that some right hemisphere lesion patients have di culty
utilising and responding to all the extralinguistic or pragmatic aspects of
communication, or that the linguistic domain itself is inadequate in helping
them to derive meaning from on-going events. (Shields, 1991 , p. 386)
The relationship between speech and pragmatics tends to be described in
terms of inferential mechanisms and, in fact, some authors have pointed out
that RHD individuals may lack the ‘mental fl exibility’ for making inferences
(Brownell, Potter, & Bihrle, 1986 ; but see also McDonald & Wales, 1986 ) or
accessing indirect speech acts (Champagne-Lavau & Joanette, 2009 ). Note
further that the right hemisphere has been argued to be relatively more
involved in computing (non-linguistic) situation models that, in speaking,
provide the input to specifying the propositional content of an utterance
(see Menenti, Segaert, & Hagoort, 2012 , for discussion).
4.2. −
Language structure provides a range of means to express interpersonal
functions. But, as pointed out in the introduction to this section, the paradigm
165
tools of expression are reserved for the domain of TG. One of the prominent
functions of TG is to express interpersonal concepts: three of the fi ve
categories of this domain of grammar concern exclusively interpersonal
communication, namely formulae of social exchange, vocatives, and imperatives
(see Table 5 ). It would seem that theticals belonging to these three categories
serve in particular the following functional goals:
(a) To establish and maintain contact with other speech participants.
(b) To create a social environment that is benefi cial to all speech participants
concerned.
(c) To address the hearer and ask him or her for action.
According to the ‘classical’ view surfacing from neurolinguistic analyses, the
left temporal cortex is dominant in speech processing. The right cerebral
hemisphere, by contrast, is more centrally associated with other functions.
And it is in particular the above range of functions that appear to be more
strongly associated with right hemisphere activity.
In accordance with (a), inappropriate social (and emotional) behavior is
predominately associated with right frontal dysfunction (Joseph, 2000 ). People
with right brain damage (RBD) are considered to be socially disconnected
from the world around them (Myers, 1999 ), and they have been found to have
di culties sharing the responsibility to develop and maintain adequately the
exchange with the speaker (Hird & Kirsner, 2003 ). In particular, RHD adults
exhibit di culties in governing verbal exchange since they take little account
of their communicative partner. And they have problems with paralinguistic
means of speaker−hearer interaction such as sending or receiving information
via facial expression (Blonder et al., 1991 ), establishing and maintaining
eye contact (Myers, 1994 ; Tompkins, 1995 ), or spontaneously using gesture
(Tompkins, 1995 ). Note that many patients with acquired right hemisphere
damage demonstrate paralinguistic defi cits, including impairments in prosody
and gesture (Joanette et al., 1990 ).
Furthermore, persons with right hemisphere damage following stroke
have been found to exhibit an impaired turn-taking and appreciation of the
listener’s perspective (Chantraine, Joanette, & Ska, 1998 ; Kaplan, Brownell,
Jacobs, & Gardner, 1990 ; Myers, 1994 ).
That the goal in (b) is distinctly more likely to involve activity in the right
than in the left hemisphere has been pointed out by a number of researchers.
The former hemisphere has been portrayed as providing the social context of
linguistic communication (Berman, Mandelkern, Phan, & Zaidel, 2003 )
and serving successful social communication (Mitchell & Crow, 2005 ). And a
number of studies suggest a predilection for right hemisphere processing of
social and real-world contextual associations for lexical items (Chiarello, 1995 ;
Drews, 1987 ; see also Van Lancker, 1997 ; Van Lancker Sidtis, 2004 ). As has
.
166
been pointed out in some research fi ndings, between 50 percent and 78 percent
of individuals with right hemisphere damage may exhibit di culties in one
or more communication components, leading to inadequate social interactions
(Ferré et al., 2011 ).
Interpersonal, as well as emotional, di culties are among the main defi cits
experienced by patients who have su ered damage of the right hemisphere
early in life or by inheritance (Shields, 1991 ). It therefore comes as no surprise
that for the two aphasic patients that we were concerned with in Section 3,
formulae of social exchange were among the most frequently used speech
units, topped only by interjections ( Tables 1 and 3 ). And as we also saw in
Section 3, one of the patients, having su ered right-sided subcortical damage,
showed defi cits in her command of information units concerning Speaker−
Hearer Interaction, e.g., having di culties with formulae of social exchange,
such as greetings and leave-taking (Van Lancker Sidtis, 2009 , pp. 451−452).
4.3.
The primary function of SG appears to be the structuring and expression of
conceptual information in a propositional format. It relates primarily to what
Jakobson ( 1960 ) calls the referential function, or Lyons (1977, pp. 50−51) the
descriptive (or propositional, or ideational) function of language. But SG
does not really dispose of dedicated tools, i.e., function-specifi c linguistic
constructions, for the expression of emotions.
This is di erent in TG, which disposes of appropriate means for expressing
speaker attitudes in general and emotional states in particular. In the sense
of Jakobson ( 1960 ), there are dedicated categories in TG for the expression of
conative, expressive, and phatic functions. Especially the thetical category of
interjections (which also includes exclamatives; see Heine et al., 2013 , Section
4.6) provides cross-linguistically an ideal tool dedicated to the linguistic
encoding of emotions (see Table 5 ).
That emotional behavior is strongly linked to the right hemisphere is an
old observation in neurological research. Loss of propositional speech was
reported in severely aphasic speech of patients already in the nineteenth
century: these patients were found to be left only with expletives, interjections,
and oaths (Van Lancker & Cummings, 1999 ) − that is, with linguistic expressions
that are all classifi ed as interjections in the framework of Discourse Grammar
(Heine et al., 2013 ).
As has been established in a number of lesion studies, right brain
damage usually results in defi cits in both the linguistic and the non-
linguistic comprehension and production of emotions (e.g., Borod,
Andelman, Obler, Tweedy, & Welkowitz, 1992 ; Borod et al., 1996 ; Borod,
Bloom, & Santschi Haywood, 1998; Borod et al., 2000 ; Borod, Bloom,
167
Brickman, Nakhutina, & Curko, 2002 ; Karow & Connors, 2003 ; Myers, 1999 ;
Sherratt & Bryan, 2012 ; Wager, Phan, Liberzon, & Taylor, 2003 ). This
generalization has received some support from brain-imaging studies,
even though the latter have also shown that the expression of emotion also
implicates left lateralization (Wager et al., 2003 , p. 527).
14
Among the
pragmatic aspects of language associated with the right cerebral hemisphere,
emotions in speech have in fact a prominent place (e.g., Friederici & Alter
2004 ; Mitchell & Crow, 2005 ). This hemisphere is said to be dominant in
the processing of paralinguistic information, and to one’s a ective state
(Beeman & Chiarello, 1998 ; Devinsky, 2000 ). Acknowledging that language
and speech are typically related to the left hemisphere of the brain, Jakobson
(1980, p. 23) adds that there are such verbal elements as interjections and
exclamations that are typically associated with the right hemisphere (see
also Tsur, 2010 , p. 512). Kriendler and Fradis (1968, p. 111) observe that
in all kinds of aphasia, motor articulation was dramatically better during
‘emotional speech’, and Blonder et al. (1991, p. 1116) conclude that the
right hemisphere “houses a lexical representation of emotions”.
Furthermore, as we saw in the texts analyzed in Section 3, produced by
two aphasic patients, interjections were clearly the linguistic units most
frequently produced by both the English-speaking and the German-speaking
subjects su ering left hemisphere damage ( Tables 1 and 3 ).
A number of neurolinguistic studies suggest in fact that inappropriate
emotional behavior is predominantly associated with right frontal dysfunction
(e.g., Joseph, 2000 ), and Shammi and Stuss ( 1999 ) observe that individuals
with RHD injury, especially when reaching the frontal cortex, do not react
physically to emotions (laughing or smiling).
Both imaging and clinical evidence suggest in fact that the right
hemisphere is highly relevant for the comprehension and production of
emotional features in speech (Bloom, Borod, Obler, & Gerstman, 1992 ;
Borod et al., 1998 ; Devinsky, 2000 ; Rota, 2009 ). Ley ( 1980 ) and Ley and
Bryden ( 1983 ) found that the presentation of emotional words during a
list learning task selectively improved memory of stimuli directed to the
right hemisphere.
Such observations are supported by studies on hemispheric di erentiation
in the activation of prosody. While prosodic processing requires a series
of complex cognitive operations, there is evidence for a specialization of
the right hemisphere for the processing of emotional prosody and of the
[ 14 ] We are ignoring here a more restricted hypothesis according to which the right hemi-
sphere is dominant only for unpleasant and negative emotions (see Borod et al., 2002 ;
Wager et al., 2003 ).
.
168
[ 15 ] While it is unclear what ‘linguistic prosody’ stands for exactly, we assume that what is
implied are prosodic features characteristic of Sentence Grammar speech. On the other
hand, it has also been claimed that both ‘linguistic’ and emotional prosody are managed
by subcortical structures, particularly the basal ganglia (Blonder, Pickering, Heath, Smith, &
Butler, 1995 ; Cancelliere & Kertesz, 1990 ).
left hemisphere for ‘linguistic’ prosody
15
(Ferré et al., 2011 ). Ross et al. ( 1997 )
analyzed the mechanisms underlying a ective–prosodic defi cits following
left and right brain damage by testing the ability of subjects to repeat and
comprehend a ective prosody under progressively reduced verbal–articulatory
conditions. They conclude that reducing verbal–articulatory conditions
robustly improves the performance of left but not right brain damaged
patients, thus supporting the supposition that a ective prosody is strongly
lateralized to the right hemisphere.
4.4.
As the observations made in this section suggest, there are positive correlations
between the functions served by the categories of TG and right hemisphere
activity. However, there is so far still a wide gap between what the linguist
expects to fi nd located somewhere in the brain and what the neurologist
actually observes. Accordingly, the correlations pointed out in the preceding
paragraphs must be taken with care, in particular for the following reasons.
First, exactly which functions are activated where in the brain is an area that
is still largely ill-understood, and this applies crucially to linguistic functions.
For example, language dominance in the left hemisphere is not an absolute
human characteristic. As a study of 188 right-handed subjects by Knecht et al.
( 2000 ) showed, using a functional imaging technique, altogether 92.5 percent
of the subjects turned out to have left hemisphere language dominance, while
7.5 percent had right hemisphere language dominance.
Second, there appears to be widespread consensus that most, if not all,
language components include both left and right hemisphere processes – in
the wording of Beeman and Chiarello ( 1998 , p. 6): “the right hemisphere
and left hemisphere conjointly process language at all levels” (e.g., Hagoort,
Brown, & Swaab, 1996 ; Jung-Beeman, 2005 , p. 513).
And third, the two hemispheres appear to have mutually supportive
functions. For example, when a child has one hemisphere injured or removed
at an early age, the remaining hemisphere may, with minor adjustments, be
able to compensate for the injured or absent hemisphere’s function (Beeman &
Chiarello, 1998 , p. 2). But there appears to be an asymmetry in lateralization −
one that might be directly relevant to the subject matter of this paper. The
right hemisphere exhibits a remarkable capacity to reorganize originally left
169
[ 16 ] Nevertheless, Kurthen et al. ( 1992 ) report that the possibility of a shift of language
functions from the right to the left hemisphere has been described in two originally right
hemisphere language dominant patients with right hemisphere lesions and epileptic foci.
hemisphere functions while there does not appear to be good evidence for
the reverse pattern of reorganization, e.g., after right hemisphere lesions.
16
Helmstaedter, Kurthen, Linke, and Elger (1994, p. 735) suggest that even
if evidence would be found for a left hemisphere reorganization of right
hemisphere functions, this would not be at the expense of originally left
hemisphere functions.
Furthermore, the correlations pointed out earlier in Sections 3 and 4 raise
a number of additional problems. One has already been discussed by Luria
( 1974 ), namely that linguistic performances are distributed in widespread
cortical constellations or assemblies: neither neural distinctions of brain
activity nor the linguistic structures distinguished in this work are as neatly
separated from one another as was implied above. There are complex overlaps
between the two − both between the two hemispheres and between the two
domains of Discourse Grammar. And there is constant and massive interaction
between the two structures, and interaction takes place both between subareas
of the two hemispheres of the brain and of the two linguistic domains. The
nature of this interaction is the subject of ongoing research.
These observations raise the question of whether the generalizations
proposed by us can in fact be accounted for in terms of functional modularity
where specifi c areas of the cortex can be held responsible for particular language-
specifi c functions, or whether such functions should not more profi tably be
analyzed in terms of network-based accounts. According to some lines of
research, there are no signifi cant correlations between particular brain regions
and speech processing. When taking a set of putative ‘speech areas’ of the
brain and looking at the non-linguistic processes that activate them, Price,
Thierry, and Gri ths (2006) found no macro-anatomical structures in the
human brain dedicated to speech. Rather than correlations between brain
structures and speech, these authors suggest, speech-specifi c processing emerges
at the level of functional connectivity among distributed brain regions, each
of which participates in processes that are engaged in both speech and non-
speech tasks (p. 271).
A fi nal problem concerns the question of whether the correlations between
brain lateralization and language-related functions are in fact symmetrical in
the way implied in this paper. Neuroimaging evidence on speech comprehension
suggests, for example, that functional dissociation may not concern the
distinction between right and left hemisphere but rather between a distributed
bilateral domain relating to general perceptual and cognitive processing on
the one hand, and a more specialized left hemisphere domain supporting key
.
170
[ 17 ] Bozic, Tyler, Ives, Randall, & Marslen-Wilson (2010, pp. 17439) suggest that the bilateral
domain appears to be neurobiologically primary, while the more specialized left hemi-
sphere domain is likely to be specifi c to the human brain.
grammatical language functions on the other (Bozic, Tyler, Ives, Randall, &
Marslen-Wilson, 2010 ).
17
In spite of these and other caveats that have been voiced on hypotheses that
assume a clear-cut division of language-related functions in brain lateralization,
the evidence that has become available appears to allow for the following
generalization on the neurological anchoring of Discourse Grammar: in the
same way that SG, that is, ‘regular’ sentence structure, is unlikely to be
activated without the participation of the left hemisphere, it is equally unlikely
that the activation of TG phenomena, such as discourse markers, vocatives,
interjections, or formulae of social exchange, can be achieved without any
participation of the right hemisphere.
5 . Why theticals tend to be formulaic
While there are considerable di erences, we suggested in Section 3 that there
is massive overlap between the two kinds of theoretical concepts examined in
more detail, namely TG within the framework of Discourse Grammar and
formulaic speech within the dual process model. For example, we saw in
Table 2 that 76.3 (= 1.7 plus 74.6) percent of all information units produced
by the English-speaking aphasic patient were classifi ed the same way in the two
frameworks, while only 7.0 percent were classifi ed di erently. The question
that we wish to look into in the present section is what accounts for this overlap.
Formulaic information units are by no means restricted to theticals, they
are also found in SG, as the rich literature on formulaic speech shows
(e.g., Pawley, 1992 , 2009 ; Wray, 2002 , 2009 ). But, as this literature suggests,
such units are distinctly less common in SG than in TG. Accordingly, in
listings of formulaic speech units, theticals usually form a clear majority.
Why should this be so? While we are not able to answer this question, we
wish to contribute some observations that may be instrumental to fi nding
a convincing answer.
It would seem that this answer has to do with the development of theticals.
Only a small portion of them are etymologically opaque; that is, they cannot
be derived from any other linguistic material. And these are almost exclusively
primary interjections, such as ouch! , wow! , or pst! and text-planning units
like uh or am (see Heine et al., 2013 ). All other theticals are historically derived
from SG via a spontaneous operation called cooptation (Section 2.1).
Being organized in terms of clauses and sentences, the internal structure
of information units of SG is essentially compositional, consisting of clausal
171
[ 18 ] According to Wray (2002, p. 9), a formulaic sequence is “a sequence, continuous or
discontinuous, of words or other elements, which is, or appears to be, prefabricated: that
is, stored and retrieved whole from memory at the time of use, rather than being subject
to generation or analysis by the language grammar”.
and phrasal constituents. This also applies to many
: with few exceptions they are the result of cooptation, that is,
they are transferred from SG to TG (see Section 2.1; Kaltenböck et al., 2011 ,
pp. 874−875), and accordingly they inherit the morphosyntactic structure of
their SG source. To be sure, they may be coopted as incomplete pieces, such
as comment clauses ( I think , you know ) or reporting clauses ( he replied , they
say ), which both lack a complement, or question tags ( didn’t he? ), which lack
a verb phrase, but many of them have the propositional structure of their SG
equivalent, as in text example (12):
(12) Because on this theory
and it’s very deeply held
uh good educational
news is by defi nition inadmissible as evidence. (DCPSE: DI-I01, #91;
Kavalova, 2007 , p. 147)
But once they are used recurrently they tend to assume the features of
formulaic information units, becoming regular collocations, gradually losing
their internal compositionality, and changing their analytic meaning into
holistic meanings expressing functions that are grounded in the situation of
discourse rather than in the structure of a sentence. And some of them
develop into what Pawley ( 2009 ) refers to as . Paradigm
instances of such formulas are provided by thetical categories such as the
formulae of social exchange or interjections: they are usually short, taking
the form of what Mackenzie ( 1998 ) and Hengeveld and Mackenzie (2008,
pp. 3−4) call fi xed holophrases, i.e., unanalyzable information units that do
not have any propositional organization or other internal structure − and they
need not: many of them can, and frequently do, form complete utterances
of their own, relying on the situation of discourse for an appropriate
interpretation. Table 6 lists a few examples of such holophrases.
Formulaic theticals constitute a subset of formulaic sequences.
18
They
have been defi ned by Kaltenböck et al. (2011, p. 871) as non-compositional
6. Formulaic theticals of English
Category Examples
Conceptual theticals as it were , for example , if at all , if you will
FSEs Good morning , hello , please , thank you
Vocatives Sir! , Waiter! , Peter!
Imperatives Come on! , Piss o !
Interjections boy , damn , fuck , hell , ouch , pst , um , wow
.
172
information units that are usually short, morphosyntactically unanalyzable
chunks, that tend to be positionally fl exible and express functions that are
mostly procedural, and that relate to the situation of discourse rather than to
sentence syntax.
But why should theticals, more than SG units, have a disposition to turn
into formulaic information units? All available evidence suggests that this has
to do with their discourse functions. While SG contains a wide range of
idioms and other kinds of prefabricated information units, it is essentially
propositional and analytic in structure, consisting of utterances having a
compositionally organized sentence structure. In this way, SG is able to
express virtually any conceptual content in a coherent and consistent form
by combining the lexical and morphological resources of a language in an
unlimited way.
To the extent that TG feeds on SG, it also exhibits the inherited propositional
format and may express complex conceptual information in the form of
parentheticals. But the main task of TG is to respond to the communicative
needs of speakers and hearers by relating speech to the situation of discourse,
in particular to the Attitudes of the Speaker, Speaker−Hearer Interaction, and
Text Organization (see (3) above). Accordingly, TG constitutes the primary
linguistic tool of expression for functions concerning emotions, attitudes, social
relationship, and discourse organization beyond the level of a sentence. While
the list of such functions is large, it is as a rule only a limited catalog of functions
that surface in regular linguistic communication, many involving social
routines, and expressions for such functions tend to be used time and again.
What characterizes these expressions is, fi rst, that they refer to stereotypic
discourse functions involving what one may call participant-stable -
- situations, where the deictics of person, space, and time remain
constant, and hence predictable. Linguistic information on person, tense, and
aspect is therefore usually redundant. And second, these expressions tend to
be used recurrently in day-to-day interaction.
These two observations account for a number of properties that many
theticals exhibit. First, when coopted from SG they are likely to lose their
literal meaning in favor of their new function in discourse. For example,
when English SG expressions involving the items shit or fuck were coopted as
interjections, they lost much of their SG meanings in favor of discourse-
specifi c functions relating to speaker attitudes. Or, when the expression God
be with you! was coopted and subsequently grammaticalized to an information
unit of TG as a formula of social exchange, it became restricted to one particular
discourse function, namely farewell giving, eventually being reduced to Goodbye!
In a similar fashion, an expression such as if you will lost much of its association
with its SG meaning as a conditional protasis clause when it was coopted as a
discourse marker.
173
[ 19 ] Whether this analysis can be reconciled with the observation according to which persons
with right hemisphere damage are impaired in deriving the mental model of a story from
visual information (Marini, 2012 , p. 69) is an issue that is in need of further research.
Second, being used recurrently for some stereotypic discourse function,
these units gradually lose their morphosyntactic compositionality, turning
into fi xed speech act formulas (Pawley, 2009 ) or fi xed holophrases (Hengeveld &
Mackenzie, 2008 , pp. 3−4; Mackenzie, 1998 ) expressing stereotypic functions
grounded in the situation of discourse. And third, due to their frequent use
and high predictabiliy, the units may also be shortened, losing phonetic and/or
morphological size.
To conclude, the fact that the formulaic speech of Van Lancker Sidtis
(2009) exhibits signifi cant overlaps with our category of formulaic theticals
may not be surprising. Both appear to be the product of a process whereby
information units are used recurrently on account of some salient discourse
function and turn into formulaic information units that tend to be frozen,
non-compositional and short expressions. Since such discourse functions
relate in most cases to the situation of discourse, it may also not be surprising
that clearly the majority of these units are theticals; that is, they belong to TG
rather than to SG.
6 . Conclusions
Much of what has been argued for in this paper concerns the contrast between
orthodox sentence grammar and what is commonly referred to as ‘pragmatics’.
Our interest was restricted to manifestations of pragmatics that can be
reconstructed on the basis of the functions that surface in linguistic discourse.
In the framework of Discourse Grammar, these functions are described with
reference to the situation of discourse, the latter consisting of a network of
interlocking components (see Section 2.1, (3)). Like Van Lancker Sidtis and
associates, we argued that there appears to be a signifi cant correlation between
speech phenomena and brain activity: aphasic patients and other persons
with left hemisphere damage tend to draw on linguistic expressions that
relate to the situation of discourse, that is, the pragmatic environment in which
discourse takes place. Persons with right hemisphere damage, by contrast,
may have problems relating their utterances to the social or emotional
dimensions of linguistic interaction.
19
The fi ndings that were presented in Section 4 are in support of the
hypothesis that specifi c speech phenomena characteristic of the domain of
Thetical Grammar exhibit correlations with the neural factor of brain activity
in the right hemisphere. These fi ndings go beyond the ones presented in
Section 3. First, they show that correlations concern not only individuals
.
174
su ering left hemisphere dysfunctions but are also supported by observations
on persons with right hemisphere damage. And second, they demonstrate
that the hypothesis is supported not only by data on formulaic speech, that is,
the regular collocation of linguistic units, but also by the analysis of linguistic
functions. It would seem in fact that the functions that speech serves infl uence
to some extent the way in which a particular part of the brain is activated, but
more research is needed on this issue.
The observations made in the paper suggest on the one hand that the two
frameworks surveyed in Section 2 di er from one another in a number of
ways. First, while the two show roughly the same kind of correlation with
brain lateralization, we saw that there is one divergence: instantaneous
theticals, which are created spontaneously (cf. the examples in (9) or (12)),
belong to Thetical Grammar but have the characteristics of novel speech,
normally associated with Sentence Grammar (Kaltenböck et al., 2011 ).
Second, whereas the dual process model relies on formulaicness as its
central parameter, in the framework of Discourse Grammar it is the
conceptual and linguistic independence of theticals that is the central
parameter. And third, all available linguistic evidence suggests that there
is no discrete boundary separating formulaic from novel speech: the
former appears to be generally the result of a diachronic process whereby
free and fully compositional information units may gradually develop into
prefabricated collocations and eventually into frozen combinations of
formulaic speech. Accordingly, depending on which stage of development
is at stake, the unit concerned may relate more closely to the one or the
other end of the process (Wray, 2002 , 2009 ).
On the other hand, the dual process model is to quite some extent
compatible with our concept of Discourse Grammar, agreeing with it in the
following main characteristics: fi rst, both assume that linguistic behavior is
channeled via two, to some extent distinct, lines of cognitive activity. Second,
there is a substantial correlation between novel speech and SG on the one
hand and formulaic speech and TG on the other: novel speech units are
mostly found in SG while formulaic speech is overwhelmingly located in TG.
And fi nally, in addition to linguistic evidence, both frameworks are supported
by neurological evidence, involving the same kind of di erential activation of
the two hemispheres of the human brain.
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