Neurolinguistics

Syllables – A Myth of Universality in Linguistics

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Neurodiversity Crowd 2

Stripped to its very basics, rules of English phonetics can seem pretty universal among speakers. We can all distinguish between consonants like b and m, we can all hear the difference between a whisper and a shout, and we can all divide speech into syllables, even if it might require clapping our hands a bit.

Except that last part might not be as universal as you might think.

I was 8 years old when we were taught syllables in school. While all the other kids would clap along and split words like pea/nut and foot/ball, I wouldn’t. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t hear what they heard. I couldn’t hear syllables. At age 27, I … ↪

Grammar and lexicon distinction in a neurocognitive context

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image002

The ProGram project (Information Prominence and Grammar in the brain) was an interdisciplinary project at University of Copenhagen. I did my PhD as a part of that project. We carried out research based on a linguistic theory and a neurocognitive model. The project was a collaboration between three different faculties at the University of Copenhagen with Kasper Boye as the PI and Jesper Mogensen and Hartwig Siebner the co-PIs.

The linguistic theory, also known as the GRAM theory, places itself between the extremes of generative and construction grammar and defines grammar as being “less important” and always conveying secondary information. Lexicon, on the contrary, can carry the main point of an utterance. For instance, in the expression The … ↪