Functional Cerebral Asymmetry and Principles of Analysis of Lexical and Grammatical Material

This article deals with the role of functional cerebral asymmetry in the analysis of lexical and grammatical material. The author examined healthy test subjects with various types of cerebral organization of speech activity; i.e., with speech lateralization in the left and right hemispheres and bilateral speech lateralization. The test subjects with speech lateralization in the left hemisphere and bilateral lateralization are shown to prefer the formal-grammatical principle of the classification of both lexemes (distinguishing antonyms and synonyms) and grammatical constructions (distinguishing active and passive sentences). The test subjects with speech lateralization in the right hemisphere fail to follow the formal-grammatical principle of the classification of either lexemes (synonyms disappear) or grammatical constructions (active and passive sentences are united). The data obtained show that the linguistic abilities are determined by the functional specialization of the hemispheres.