Work

5: Grammatical Illusions and Selective Fallibility in Real-Time Language Comprehension

Year: 2011

Type: book-chapter

Abstract: Grammatical constraints impose diverse requirements on the relations between words and phrases in a sentence. Research on the online implementation of grammatical constraints reveals a strikingly uneven profile. The parser shows impressive accuracy in the application of some rather complex constraints, but makes many errors in the implementation of some relatively simple constraints. Just as the study of optical illusions has played an important role in the study of visual perception, the parser's highly selective vulnerability to interference and "grammatical illusions" provides a valuable tool for understanding how speakers encode and navigate complex linguistic representations in real time.

Source: BRILL eBooks

DOI: 10.1163/9781780523750_006

Authors: Colin Phillips, Matthew W. Wagers, Ellen F. Lau

Institutions: University of Maryland, College Park, University of California, Santa Cruz, Tufts University, Harvard University, Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging

Language: English

Topic: Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism

Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health

Awards: CAREER: Integration of Linguistic Knowledge and Language Processing, Structure Generation in Language Comprehension, IGERT: Biological and Computational Foundations of Language Diversity