Long-range sequential dependencies precede complex syntactic production in language acquisition.

ABSTRACT: To convey meaning, human language relies on hierarchically organized, long-range relationships spanning words, phrases, sentences and discourse. As the distances between elements (e.g. phonemes, characters, words) in human language sequences increase, the strength of the long-range relationships between those elements decays following a power law. This power-law relationship has been attributed variously to long-range sequential organization present in human language syntax, semantics and discourse structure. However, non-linguistic behaviours in numerous phylogenetically distant species, ranging from humpback whale song to fruit fly motility, also demonstrate similar long-range statistical dependencies. Therefore, we hypothesized that long-range statistical dependencies in human speech ma

SUBMITTER: Sainburg T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8905171 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature