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Language and Cognition

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 15, 2026

Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks
08:32

Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks

Published on: September 5, 2019

Cognitive systems struggling for word order.

Alan Langus1, Marina Nespor

  • 1International School of Advanced Studies-SISSA, Via Beirut 2-4, 34014 Trieste, Italy.

Cognitive Psychology
|March 2, 2010
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Human language diversity may stem from cognitive preferences. Experiments suggest Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) word order emerges in spontaneous communication, while grammar computation favors Verb-Object (VO) structures.

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Last Updated: Jun 15, 2026

Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks
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Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Cognitive Science
  • Linguistic Typology

Background:

  • Grammatical diversity in world languages is significant.
  • Two dominant word orders are Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) and Subject-Verb-Object (SVO).
  • The cognitive underpinnings of these word orders are not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the cognitive bases for SOV and SVO word orders.
  • To explore the relationship between cognitive preferences and language structure.
  • To determine if spontaneous communication aligns with grammatical computation preferences.

Main Methods:

  • Conducted two gesture-production experiments and one gesture comprehension experiment.
  • Analyzed word order preferences in participants with diverse native languages (Italian, Turkish).
  • Performed a fourth experiment on comprehending prosodically flat words in native languages.

Main Results:

  • Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) emerged as the preferred constituent configuration in gesture experiments, irrespective of native language.
  • Improvised communication appears independent of the computational grammar system.
  • The computational grammar system demonstrates a preference for Verb-Object (VO) orders.

Conclusions:

  • Cognitive biases may drive the emergence of grammatical diversity, particularly SOV order in spontaneous communication.
  • Grammatical computation exhibits a distinct preference for Verb-Object (VO) structures.
  • The study highlights a potential divergence between cognitive preferences in improvised communication and formal grammatical processing.