Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T22:55:40.376Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Memory limitations and chunking are variable and cannot explain language structure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2016

Maryellen C. MacDonald
Maryellen C. MacDonald*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706. mcmacdonald@wisc.eduhttp://lcnl.wisc.edu/people/mcm/
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Both the Now-or-Never bottleneck and the chunking mechanisms hypothesized to cope with it are more variable than Christiansen & Chater (C&C) suggest. These constructs are, therefore, too weak to support C&C's claims for the nature of language. Key aspects of the hierarchical nature of language instead arise from the nature of sequencing of subgoals during utterance planning in language production.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 39 , 2016 , e84
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acheson, D. J. & MacDonald, M. C. (2011) The rhymes that the reader perused confused the meaning: Phonological effects on on-line sentence comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language 65:193–207.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cattell, J. M. (1886) The time it takes to see and name objects. Mind 11:63–65.Google Scholar
Ferreira, F. & Swets, B. (2002) How incremental is language production? Evidence from the production of utterances requiring the computation of arithmetic sums. Journal of Memory and Language 46(1):57–84.Google Scholar
Hsiao, Y., Gao, Y. & MacDonald, M. C. (2014) Agent-patient similarity affects sentence structure in language production: Evidence from subject omissions in Mandarin. Frontiers in Psychology 5:1015.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lashley, K. S. (1951) The problem of serial order in behavior. In: Cerebral mechanisms in behavior: The Hixon Symposium, ed. Jeffress, L. A., pp. 112–46. Wiley.Google Scholar
Levy, R., Bicknell, K., Slattery, T. & Rayner, K. (2009) Eye movement evidence that readers maintain and act on uncertainty about past linguistic input. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106:21086–90.Google Scholar
MacDonald, M. C. (1994) Probabilistic constraints and syntactic ambiguity resolution. Language and Cognitive Processes 9:157–201.Google Scholar
MacDonald, M. C. (2013) How language production shapes language form and comprehension. Frontiers in Psychology 4:226. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00226.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morrill, T. H., Dilley, L. C., McAuley, J. D. & Pitt, M. A. (2014) Distal rhythm influences whether or not listeners hear a word in continuous speech: Support for a perceptual grouping hypothesis. Cognition 131:69–74.Google Scholar
Smith, M. & Wheeldon, L. (2004) Horizontal information flow in spoken sentence production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 30:675–686.Google Scholar
Van Dyke, J. A. & Johns, C. L. (2012) Memory Interference as a determinant of language comprehension. Language and Linguistics Compass 6:193–11.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wagner, V., Jescheniak, J. D. & Schriefers, H. (2010) On the flexibility of grammatical advance planning during sentence production: Effects of cognitive load on multiple lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 36:423–40.Google Scholar
Warren, R. M. (1970) Perceptual restoration of missing speech sounds. Science 167(3917):392–93.Google Scholar
Warren, R. M. & Sherman, G. L. (1974) Phonemic restorations based on subsequent context. Perception and Psychophysics 16:150–56.Google Scholar