Summing Up

Abstract

The most elemental proposal is that language is made up of at least two different modes, grossly bifurcated as familiar and grammatical language. Collocations are high in meaning content and are formed on standard grammatical constructions. Grammatical competence is established early while full and reliable mastery of the fixed, familiar expressions in the native language accumulates more slowly, probably well into adolescence. The chapter shows that psychological familiarity can be established through frequent exposure or through personal relevance, which arises from attentional mechanisms initiating arousal and affect. Some familiar language is bilaterally processed in cerebral hemispheres; some subsets may be more favorably stored by and recruited from the right hemisphere, given the mutually compatible characteristics. Closer examination of the variegated subsets within the familiar language classes, utilizing linguistic, psychological, and neurological observations, may lead to multi-process models, to more authentically represent the heterogeneous nature of language in mind and brain.