How Syntax Is Distinguished Or Comparable?

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For this experiment, we are going to use a combination of the p-600 comprehension technique and the new neuroimaging method Fmri. Our goal will be to find how syntax is distinguished or comparable to other linguistic properties. For this experiment, however, we choose to compare syntax with semantics as it is by far the two most related components in speech production and comprehension. Therefore, for this experiment we will give our participants sentences and see how they respond to each stimulus by measuring their brain activity. For this study, we pick the p600 comprehension as our first method as it is capable of being elicited by all types of syntactic phenomena, including grammatical sentences, complex sentences with different thematic and garden path sentences. We realize that although the p-600 comprehension is best in detecting syntactic violations in sentences, it cannot record other cognitive areas that might also become active during language comprehension. Therefore for this study we will also measure Bold signals and record brain activity by using the Fmri multi-voxel wise model In this study, we also decided to use one control group and two experimental groups similar to the idea of a double association test. We will give our participant on the experimental group two distinct stimuli: a senseless sentence and a garden path sentence. Meanwhile, on the control group, we will give our participants only grammatical sentences. Both garden path and senseless sentences are important to this experiment are there are still grammatical sentences, but with issues on context or meaning. Therefore, any stimulation from the p-600 comprehension against these sentences might indicate that the brain possibly favors semantic integrat... ... middle of paper ... ...anguage to be convey, the brain first need to scan all linguistic information and then make an assessment of the stimulus given. After all, the only explanation we can give against possible activated areas to ungrammatical stimulus is that the brain processes all important cues first and then the language properties. Finally, if we find syntax processes to be located both in the temporal and prefrontal regions, then this could suggest that syntax processing is located both Broca’s and Wernicke’s region. This piece of information in particular poses a challenge to previous studies that had both Broca’s and Wernicke’s as the basis for language productions and comprehension. Thus if we find syntax to be distributed around these two regions, we will be challenging not only years of study involving language but also the two most predominant structures involving speech.

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