Abstract
Being able to track dependencies between syntactic elements separated by other constituents is crucial for language acquisition and processing (e.g., in subject-noun/verb agreement). Although long assumed to require language-specific machinery, research on statistical learning has suggested that domain-general mechanisms may support the acquisition of non-adjacent dependencies. In this study, we investigated whether individuals with specific language impairment (SLI)—who have problems with long-distance dependencies in language—also have problems with statistical learning of non-adjacent relations. The results confirmed this hypothesis, indicating that statistical learning may subserve the acquisition and processing of long-distance dependencies in natural language.
Highlights
In order to correctly interpret a sentence, a language user must often keep track of syntactic dependencies that span across many unrelated words
A list of each participant’s performance in terms of hit and falsealarm rates is provided in the Table A14
We found that group difference in β were not significant in any one of the three variability conditions [t(38) = −0.70, p = 0.46 in X = 2; t(38) = 0.80, p = 0.43 in X = 12, t(38) = 1.43, p = 0.16 in X = 24]
Summary
In order to correctly interpret a sentence, a language user must often keep track of syntactic dependencies that span across many unrelated words. More complex relationships among surface forms are found in long-distance relationships between antecedents and gaps, such as in wh-questions (e.g., Who did you see __?), anaphoric reference (e.g., John went to the store where he bought some milk) and embedded clauses (e.g., The buildings that the architect built were tall; where the subscripts indicate dependency relations) Such discontinuous dependencies are considered to be a fundamental and unique property of human language (Tallerman et al, 2009). The presence of such non-adjacent relationships in language was a major stumbling block (cf Chomsky, 1959) for early associationist approaches to syntax (e.g., Skinner, 1957) Does this mean that non-adjacent dependencies cannot be acquired by domain-general means?
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