The declarative/procedural model and the shallow structure hypothesis

Abstract

Clahsen and Felser (CF) have written a beautiful and important paper. I applaud their integrative empirical approach, and believe that their theoretical account is largely correct, if not in some of its specific claims, at least in its broader assumptions. CF directly compare their shallow structure hypothesis (SSH) with a model that my colleagues and I have proposed for aspects of the neurocognition of first and second language: the “declarative/procedural” (DP) model. Although some of CF's discussion accurately depicts the DP model and its relation to the data, they also make a few critical errors.Here, I first summarize the DP model in both first language (L1) and adult-learned second language (L2), in order to be able to contrast it with the SSH, and then address the relevant problems in CF. For further details on the DP model and L1, see Ullman (2001a, 2001c, 2004) and Ullman et al. (1997). For the model as it applies to L2, see Ullman (2001b, 2005).