The Isolability of Syntactic Processing

In this chapter we explore a controversial hypothesis about the nature of the syntactic processing system. The hypothesis, roughly stated, is that some of the procedures that create grammatical patterns in sentences are in an important sense indifferent to the content of the symbols they manipulate, in somewhat the same way that the procedures for long multiplication are indifferent to the numbers involved in the computation. The purpose of this exploration is to uncover the linguistic or cognitive bases of a phenomenon noted by many, including Edward Sapir, who described it in this way: All languages evince a curious instinct for the development of one or more particular grammatical processes at the expense of others, tending always to lose sight of any explicit functional value that the process may have had in the first instance, delighting, it would seem, in the sheer play of its means of expression .... This feeling for form as such, freely expanding along predetermined lines and greatly inhibited in certain directions by the lack of controlling types of patterning, should be more clearly understood than it seems to be... these submerged and powerfully controlling impulses to definite form operate as such, regardless of the need for expressing particular concepts or of giving consistent external shape to particular groups of concepts (1921, pp. 60–61).