HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Corballis, M. C. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Corballis, M. C.

On Phrase Structure and Brain Responses: A Comment on Bahlmann, Gunter, and Friederici (2006)

University of Auckland

Reprint requests should be sent to Michael C. Corballis, Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand, or via e-mail: m.corballis{at}auckland.ac.nz.

ABSTRACT

Bahlmann et al. (2006) reported an experiment on event-related brain potentials of sequences of syllables obeying two rules, one defined by AⁿBⁿ and the other by (AB)ⁿ, where the As and Bs are different classes of syllables. They interpreted their findings on the assumption that AⁿBⁿ are parsed according a center-embedded phrase-structure grammar. In fact, such sequences are much more likely to be parsed in terms of the repetition of element types, without reference to phrase structure. This raises a general issue about attempting to study syntactic processing independently of semantics.