How hierarchical is language use?

[s.t. bischoff]

Some may find this article of interest...

How hierarchical is language
use?<http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/09/05/rspb.2012.1741.full.pdf+html>
Stefan L. Frank1,*, Rens Bod2 and Morten H. Christiansen3
Proceedings of the Royal Society


It is generally assumed that hierarchical phrase structure plays a central
role in human language. However,
considerations of simplicity and evolutionary continuity suggest that
hierarchical structure should not
be invoked too hastily. Indeed, recent neurophysiological, behavioural and
computational studies show
that sequential sentence structure has considerable explanatory power and
that hierarchical processing
is often not involved. In this paper, we review evidence from the recent
literature supporting the hypothesis
that sequential structure may be fundamental to the comprehension,
production and acquisition of
human language. Moreover, we provide a preliminary sketch outlining a
non-hierarchical model of
language use and discuss its implications and testable predictions. If
linguistic phenomena can be
explained by sequential rather than hierarchical structure, this will have
considerable impact in a wide
range of fields, such as linguistics, ethology, cognitive neuroscience,
psychology and computer science.