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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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