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26 - Syntax and the brain

from Part VI - Syntax and the external interfaces

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2013

Marcel den Dikken
Affiliation:
City University of New York
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Summary

Marr argued that a complete description of any information processing device, including the human brain, necessarily involves three levels of description: the computational level, the algorithmic level, and the implementational level. The goal of this chapter is to illustrate the close, but often unstated, relationship between syntactic theory and brain-based studies of sentence processing (both electrophysiological and neuroimaging). The chapter provides a primer for syntacticians on some of the driving questions underlying brain-based studies of sentence processing, as well as some of the primary results of those investigations. Syntactic theories are primarily concerned with properties of the full syntactic representation of a sentence. When it comes to non-invasively studying brain responses to cognitive stimuli, there really are only two widely available options: electrophysiological responses or hemodynamic responses. The syntactic theory allows syntacticians may be well positioned to become central players in the progress toward a cognitive neuroscience of syntax.
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

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