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Abstract
Early studies reported preserved formulaic language in left hemisphere damaged subjects and reduced incidence of formulaic expressions in the conversational speech of stroke patients with right hemispheric damage. Clinical observations suggest a possible role also of subcortical nuclei. This study examined formulaic language in the spontaneous speech of stroke patients with left, right, or subcortical damage. Four subjects were interviewed and their speech samples compared to normal speakers. Raters classified formulaic expressions as speech formulae, fillers, sentence stems, and proper nouns. Results demonstrated that brain damage affected novel and formulaic language competence differently, with a significantly smaller proportion of formulaic expressions in subjects with right or subcortical damage compared to left hemisphere damaged or healthy speakers. These findings converge with previous studies that support the proposal of a right hemisphere/subcortical circuit in the management of formulaic expressions, based on a dual‐process model of language incorporating novel and formulaic language use.
Notes
Notes
1. Sentence‐stems (SS) were examined because they were identified as formulaic by Pawley and Syder (Citation1983) and they were observed as preserved in survey studies of severe aphasia (Code, Citation1989; Blanken and Marini, Citation1997).
2. Proper nouns were examined because of their unique linguistic status and their preserved comprehension (Van Lancker and Klein, Citation1990) and production (Code, Citation1989) in severe aphasia.
3. The terms ‘Subjects 1–4’ and ‘Patients 1–4’ are used interchangeably in this paper.
4. These expressions can have either formulaic or propositional function. When ‘I think’ or ‘I guess’ is use solely to initiate an utterance, it is included in our approach as a formulaic item—a sentence stem (SS). When ‘I think’ is used propositionally to express a particular cognitive stance, it is not counted as formulaic.