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Abstract:
Background
: Are the words and rules of language subserved by distinct systems
(Pinker, 1991) or a single system (Elman et al., 1996)? Double
dissociations in English morphology suggest that the mental lexicon
of words is part of a temporal lobe declarative memory system for
facts, whereas grammatical rules are processed by a
frontal/basal-ganglia procedural memory system for motor skills:
Temporal lobe damage and trouble remembering words or facts (in
posterior aphasia or Alzheimer's disease) lead to greater
difficulty producing past tenses of irregular (
dug
) than regular (
looked
) verbs; frontal/basal-ganglia lesions'and trouble with grammar or
motor skills (in anterior aphasia or Parkinsonês disease)
yield the opposite pattern (Ullman et al., 1997).
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