Electrophysiological Evidence for Sentence Comprehension - Wings
Electrophysiological Evidence for Sentence Comprehension - Wings
Electrophysiological Evidence for Sentence Comprehension - Wings
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into brain functions that are not necessarily language specific in a rather natural way. The<br />
time course of these processes is not fixed – the in<strong>for</strong>mation is processed as soon as it<br />
becomes available. This view is accordance with linguistic theories that take<br />
‘communication-and-cognition perspective’ (e.g. Van Valin & LaPolla, 1997, Dik, 1978,<br />
Bresnan, 2001, Halliday, 2004) However, MUC does not depend on a particular<br />
linguistic (i.e. grammatical) theory in a way ‘syntax-first’ models follow the<br />
developments and revisions in generative tradition. It is very unconvincing <strong>for</strong> a<br />
neurocognitive model to undergo a revision whenever some linguist makes a change in a<br />
linguistic theory whether he bases the change on new linguistic evidence from a far away<br />
<strong>for</strong>est tribe or on elegance of the branching trees in his own syntactic <strong>for</strong>est on his<br />
computer.<br />
1.3. Role and Reference Grammar as a Language <strong>Comprehension</strong> Research Tool<br />
1.3.1. Basic concepts of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG).<br />
It is claimed that the Role and Reference Grammar is a grammatical theory that can be<br />
taken as a language processing model, as well (Van Valin, & LaPolla, 1997, Van Valin,<br />
2003). In this sense RRG has a methodological advantage over the rival theories that<br />
make no such claims: RRG can be empirically tested outside its primary area of interest,<br />
language typology. As a linguistic theory it operates with universally valid and not<br />
language specific notions. These two characteristics – RRG as a language processing<br />
model and RRG operating with universally valid notions that treat similar linguistic traits<br />
in different languages in a similar way – make RRG a good choice <strong>for</strong> a starting point in<br />
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