Title: Speech is special and language is structured

Speaker: David Poeppel (Max-Planck-Institute & New York University)

Time: May 10 2016 (Tue) 13:00-15:00

Venue: R1113, Wangkezhen Building, Peking University

I discuss new studies that focus on general questions about the cognitive science and neural implementation of speech perception and language comprehension. The results suggest (currently) unpopular conclusions about both domains. Based on experiments using fMRI and exploiting the temporal statistics of speech, I argue for the existence of a speech-specific processing stage that implicates a particular neuronal substrate that has the appropriate sensitivity and selectivity for speech. Based on a set of experiments using MEG, I discuss how temporal encoding can form the basis for more abstract, structural processing. The results demonstrate that, during listening to connected speech, cortical activity of different time scales is entrained concurrently to track the time course of linguistic structures at different hierarchical levels. These results demonstrate syntax-driven, internal construction of hierarchical linguistic structure via entrainment of hierarchical cortical dynamics. The conclusions — that speech is special and language structure driven — provide new neurobiological provocations to the prevailing view that speech perception is ‘mere' hearing and that language comprehension is ‘mere' statistics.

Host: Dr. Huan Luo