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Talk the Talk

137: Are Trees Real? (with Yngwie Nielsen and Morten Christiansen)

May 1, 20261h 1m · 11,027 words

Show notes

What goes on in our minds when we construct an utterance? Linguists often use syntax trees to represent the structure of sentences, but are they psychologically real? Yngwie Nielsen and Dr Morten Christiansen have found evidence for something else: we can recognise patterns in strings of words, even when they don't form coherent "treelets". They're giving us a walkthrough of their latest work.

Highlighted moments

we can't claim to show that there are no trees but we can claim to show that there is more than just trees

Transcript

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