Behavioral Signatures of Memory Resources for Language: Looking beyond the Lexicon/Grammar Divide

Abstract

Although there is a broad consensus that both the procedural and declarative memory systems play a crucial role in language learning, use, and knowledge, the mapping between linguistic types and memory structures remains underspecified: by default, a dual-route mapping of language systems to memory systems is assumed, with declarative memory handling idiosyncratic lexical knowledge and procedural memory handling rule-governed knowledge of grammar.We experimentally contrast the processing of morphology (case and aspect), syntax (subordination), and lexical semantics (collocations) in a healthy L1 population of Polish, a language rich in form distinctions. We study the processing of these four types under two conditions: a single task condition in which the grammaticality of stimuli was judged and a concurrent task condition in which grammaticality judgments were combined with a digit span task. Dividing attention impedes access to declarative memory while leaving procedural memory unaffected and hence constitutes a test that dissociates which types of linguistic information each long-term memory construct subserves.Our findings confirm the existence of a distinction between lexicon and grammar as a generative, dual-route model would predict, but the distinction is graded, as usage-based models assume: the hypothesized grammar-lexicon opposition appears as a continuum on which grammatical phenomena can be placed as being more or less "ruly" or "idiosyncratic." However, usage-based models, too, need adjusting as not all types of linguistic knowledge are proceduralized to the same extent. This move away from a simple dichotomy fundamentally changes how we think about memory for language, and Divjak and Milin are joint first authors.

Individual Differences in the Turkish Aorist

“…It is often claimed that because L1 is learned implicitly, learning L1 is assumed to rely on implicit learning mechanisms, which are thought to be separate from IQ scores that do not show individual differences (Feldman et al, 1995, Reber et al, 1991. Research shows that L1 learning relies mostly on explicit learning mechanisms (i.e., explicit memory) (Llompart & Dąbrowska, 2020) or lays on a gradient spectrum between explicit and implicit learning mechanisms (Divjak et al, 2022), and that grammar is correlated with nonverbal IQ, as well as collocations, vocabulary, and inflectional morphology (Dąbrowska, 2018;Dąbrowska, Pascual & Gómez-Estern, 2022, Dąbrowska, Pascual, Gómez-Estern & Llompart, in preparation). Secondly, literacy is acquired through schooling where students are instructed to read written materials.…”