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Schizophrenia and the Structure of Language: The Linguist’s View
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@MISC{A_schizophreniaand,
author = {Michael A. Covington A and Lorina Naçi A and Jonathan T. Mcclain A and Bess Sirmon Fjordbak A and James Semple B and C John Brown B},
title = {Schizophrenia and the Structure of Language: The Linguist’s View },
year = {}
}
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Abstract
Patients with schizophrenia often display unusual language impairments. This is a wide-ranging critical review of the literature on language in schizophrenia since the 19th century. We survey schizophrenic language level by level, from phonetics through phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. There are at least two kinds of impairment (perhaps not fully distinct): thought disorder, or failure to maintain a discourse plan, and schizophasia, comprising var-ious dysphasia-like impairments such as clanging, neologism, and unintelligible ut-terances. Thought disorder appears to be primarily a disruption of executive function and pragmatics, perhaps with impairment of the syntax-semantics interface; schizopha-sia involves disruption at other levels. Phonetics is also often abnormal (manifesting as flat intonation or unusual voice quality), but phonological structure, morphology, and syntax are normal or nearly so (some syntactic impairments have been demon-strated). Access to the lexicon is clearly impaired, manifesting as stilted speech, word approximation, and neologism. Clanging (glossomania) is straightforwardly explainable as distraction by self-monitoring. Recent research has begun to relate schizophrenia, which is partly genetic, to the genetic endowment that makes human language possible.
Keyphrases
linguist view executive function thought disorder unusual language impairment flat intonation syntactic impairment schizopha-sia involves disruption discourse plan recent research var-ious dysphasia-like impairment unusual voice quality unintelligible ut-terances human language survey schizophrenic language level syntax-semantics interface genetic endowment wide-ranging critical review word approximation phonological structure 19th century
