ABSTRACT

Syntax famously consists of abstract hierarchical representations. Less famously, most theories of syntax also assume a higher level of abstract representation: one that abstracts over the hierarchical representations. The existence of such representations would imply that, under certain circumstances, speakers should be able to produce syntactic structures they have never been exposed to. We test this prediction directly. In particular, different types of relative clauses have different surface word orders. These may be represented in two ways: with many individual representations, or with one general representation. If the latter, then learning one type of relative clause amounts to learning them all. We teach participants a novel grammar for only some relative clause types (e.g. just subject relative clauses) and test their knowledge of other types (e.g. object relative clauses). Across experiments, participants consistently produced untrained types, providing the first experimental evidence for this higher level of abstract syntactic knowledge.

摘要

众所周知，语法由抽象的分层表示组成。不那么出名的是，大多数语法理论还假设了更高级别的抽象表示：抽象表示层次结构的一种。这种表示的存在意味着，在某些情况下，说话者应该能够产生他们从未接触过的句法结构。我们直接测试这个预测。特别是，不同类型的关系从句有不同的表层词序。这些可以用两种方式表示：用许多单独的表示，或用一种一般表示。如果是后者，那么学习一种关系从句就等于把它们都学好了。我们只针对某些关系从句类型（例如 只是主语关系从句）并测试他们对其他类型的知识（例如宾语关系从句）。在整个实验中，参与者始终生成未经训练的类型，为这种更高级别的抽象句法知识提供了第一个实验证据。