Investigating Syntactic Structure and Processing in the Auditory Modality

Abstract

AbstractWhen researchers study syntax through speech production and perception experiments, they face new theoretical, practical, and methodological questions. This chapter will inform syntax researchers about the challenges in using prosody in the auditory modality, and provide guidance on practically addressing these challenges. Section 1 describes theoretical questions raised by auditory studies for syntax. Section 2 discusses practical and methodological challenges for auditory research. Section 3 describes how studies using auditory stimuli, varying both pitch accents and prosodic boundaries, inform our understanding of sentence interpretation, which has consequences for the study of syntactic structures. Section 4 reviews recent work on implicit prosody, which suggests that many of the challenges encountered in auditory paradigms are also present in silent reading methods.