Video & Slides: Lessons learned while searching for syntax in the brain

This is a talk at the University of Michigan offering some small measured optimism on mapping between language and neurobiology. It includes some of the newest work modeling fMRI data with CCG, reports brand new data from Tzu-Yun Tung on the interaction between memory load and prediction, and discusses some of Rachel Weissler’s observations about the relationship between social and syntactic factors during processing.

Abstract:

“[T]here is absolutely no mapping to date that we understand in even the most vague sense.” So writes David Poeppel in 2012 about the connection between Linguistics and neurobiology. I discuss our attempts to meet this challenge in the domain of syntax and give some reasons to be (slightly) optimistic. This optimism is underwritten by the hard lessons learned over the last decade of research by ourselves and others that have forced us to (i) confront that the term “syntax” does not neatly map to neurobiology, (ii) reconcile apparently competing theoretical frameworks for memory and prediction, and (iii) carefully tease apart the multifaceted linguistic causes of neural effects that we measure in the lab.