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The Emperor's Psycholinguistics

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Abstract

We discuss and debunk five common assumptions about the interrelation of semantics, syntax, and frequency during sentence processing. In the course of this, we explore the implications of the view that syntax is assigned as the last stage of comprehension rather than the first: Statistically based perceptual strategies propose an initial semantic representation, which then constrains the assignment of syntactic representations. This view accounts for a variety of facts, as well as suggesting some surprising new ones.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, 85721-0068

    Thomas G. Bever

  2. Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, Japan

    Montserrat Sanz

  3. Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey

    David J. Townsend

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  2. Montserrat Sanz
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Bever, T.G., Sanz, M. & Townsend, D.J. The Emperor's Psycholinguistics. J Psycholinguist Res 27, 261–284 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023206317518

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