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5 - Introducing formal grammar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2014

Helmut Schnelle
Affiliation:
Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany
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Summary

Our dynamic perspective

The intention of the first part of this book was to familiarize linguists with an overview of neurocognitive science in the wide sense. This second part looks in the other direction: Linguistics should be introduced to neuroscientists.

For the linguists the first part of this book presented neurocognitive perspectives of brain architecture and brain dynamics. The analyses and descriptions of distributed brain areas of the cortex and sub-cortical areas and nuclei were related to psychological functions supported by the interactive cooperation of brain components. The reality of language form organization in cortical core areas was justified about 150 years ago. Thus language was marked as a central psychological function in the brain. But I also emphasized that, though very important, the organization of linguistic forms in phonology, morphology and syntax must be supplemented by organizations of concrete meanings of perception and action. Form and meaning cooperation require the interaction of form organization with perception–action and feeling-based brain processing. In fact almost any Broca-Wernicke external area can contribute with its specific organization of concrete semantics by processes of perception and action, attention and intention, memorizing, memory recall of autobiographic and systematic knowledge involving data and processing of knowledge data based on reflective competence systems of conceptual planning organization, emotion and feeling, internal body experiences and self-experiences. Normally these meaning organizers, which are usually distant from Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, constitute universes of concrete meaning and background understanding. Both are actively integrated by “neural network binding,” thus constituting the understanding of situation, discourse and thought.

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Language in the Brain , pp. 113 - 131
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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