Cognitive constraints on constituent order: Evidence from elicited pantomime

• Published in: Cognition Vol. 129; no. 1; pp. 1 - 17
• Main Authors: Hall, Matthew L., Mayberry, Rachel I., Ferreira, Victor S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.10.2013; Elsevier
• Subjects: Adult; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition; Cognition - physiology; Cognitive Processes; Comprehension; Evidence; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Gesture; Gestures; Humans; Language; Language Processing; Oral Language; Pantomime; Pantomimes; Production; Production and perception of spoken language; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Qualitative Research; Sign Language; SOV; Word Order; Young Adult; Sign language; Word order; SOV; Gesture; Production; Pantomime; Human; Word; Cognition; Verbal production; Experimental study; Language; Speech; Syntax
• ISSN: 0010-0277; 1873-7838; 1873-7838
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2013.05.004

•Participants described simple events (e.g. woman lifts box) in pantomime.•Events were either non-reversible (as above) or reversible (e.g. woman lifts boy).•We analyzed the order in which participants mentioned subject, object, and verb.•Participants used different orders for reversible and non-reversible events.•Results suggest that cognitive constraints on production shape constituent order. To what extent does human cognition influence the structure of human language? Recent experiments using elicited pantomime suggest that the prevalence of Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) order across the world’s languages may arise in part because SOV order is most compatible with how we conceptually represent transitive events (Goldin-Meadow, So, Özyürek, & Mylander, 2008). However, this raises the question as to why non-SOV orders exist. Two recent studies (Meir, Lifshitz, Ilkbasaran, & Padden, 2010; Gibson et al., 2013) suggest that SOV might be suboptimal for describing events in which both the agent and patient are plausible agents (e.g. a woman pushing a boy); we call these “reversible” events. We replicate these findings using elicited pantomime and offer a new interpretation. Meir et al.’s (2010) account is framed largely in terms of constraints on comprehension, while Gibson et al.’s (2013) account involves minimizing the risk of information loss or memory degradation. We offer an alternative hypothesis that is grounded in constraints on production. We consider the implications of these findings for the distribution of constituent order in the world’s spoken languages and for the structure of emerging sign languages.