The Nature and Function of Neologism in the Speech of Three Persian-Speaking Groups

Neologism is found in some psychiatric and neurological patients and some normal children but with different features. To identify the nature and find the function of neologism, this study has examined the nonwords in the speech of 3 Persian speaking groups: 2 schizophrenic individuals with positive symptoms (hallucinations, delusions and thought disorder), 2 conduction aphasic patients affected by stroke and 5 normal children, both from a linguistic and psycho-neurolinguistic perspectives. The results along with the issues of previous literature showed there are substantive linguistic, neurological and psychological differences in the neologism of the three mentioned groups. The obtained features of the neologism in the three groups have been classified and briefly defined for the objectives. Classifying the features of neologism in order to identify its nature may help to recognize it, in the case of patients as a symptom of some disorders, and in normal children as a phase of language and cognition development process.