The chapter focuses on cognitive strategies to assist with overcoming working memory difficulties, as told from the perspectives of dyslexic learners. These techniques range from using memory palaces, saying it out loud, highlighting keywords and using image association, using sense of smell as memory activator, using multisensory methods, using mnemonics, using repetition, writing things down, and using chunking, categorising, and organising of information. As in previous chapters, the strategies are introduced by using a clear step-by-step approach to each method. Some of the strategies are also highlighted by being punctuated with student quotes emphasising the benefits of a method.

Many general linguistic theories and language processing frameworks have assumed that language processing is largely a chunking procedure and that it is underpinned and constrained by our memory limitations. Despite this general consensus, the distinction between short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) limitations as they relate to language processing has remained elusive. To resolve this issue, we propose an integrated memory- and chunking-based metric of parsing complexity, in which STM limitations of 7 ± 2 (Miller, 1956a) are relevant to the Momentary Chunk Number (MCN), while WM limitations of 4 ± 1 (Cowan, 2001) are relevant to the Mean Momentary Chunk Number (MMCN). Examples of concrete calculations of our new metric are presented vis-à-vis Liu’s MDD metric and Hawkins’ IC-to-word Ratio metric. Related methodology issues are also discussed. We conclude the paper by echoing some recently repeated calls -(O'Grady, 2012 & 2017; Gómez-Rodríguez et al., 2019; Wen, 2019) to include STM and WM limitations as part and parcel of the language device (LD; cf. Chomsky, 1957) in that their impacts are ubiquitous and permeating in all essential linguistic domains ranging from phonology to grammar, discourse comprehension and production.

The multicomponent model of working memory developed during the period when psycholinguistics was dominated by Chomsky’s transformational grammar and its potential implications. The original model had assumed a limited capacity attentional control system, the central executive, aided by temporary verbal storage from the phonological loop and visuospatial storage from the visuospatial sketchpad. Over the decades, each component of the model has been systematically explored by language studies, which have repeatedly resulted in challenges to earlier versions of the model and led to the addition of the fourth component of the episodic buffer and the recent incorporation of the concept of binding. Overall, the multicomponent model was developed using a different approach than Popper’s emphasis on falsification, and the model continues to evolve and has proven successful both in accounting for a broad range of data and in its application to the understanding of a wide array of language phenomena and populations. L11

A number of scholars have argued for the need to postulate principles of rule combination in morphological theory; according to such principles, two rules may combine to produce a more complex rule. Several kinds of evidence motivate the postulation of such principles, which afford new and revelatory explanations for a range of familiar morphological phenomena. Central to these explanations is a set of four characteristics (component independence, phonological transparency, semantic transparency, and domain subsectiveness) that combined rules possess by default but from which they may also deviate. This set of characteristics has both synchronic and diachronic significance. Synchronically, they elucidate the nature of potentiation, the relation between two affixes A and B such that stems created by means of A extend the domain of stems to which B may subsequently attach (Aronoff , Williams ). Diachronically, they illuminate the nature of affix telescoping, the diachronic correspondence of a sequence of two affixes at one stage in a language’s history to a single affix at a later stage (Booij , Haspelmath ). The evidence discussed here lends additional strength to the conclusion that principles of rule combination are a necessary addition to morphological theory.

The entrainment of neural oscillations to attributes of signals provides a key principle by which one can evaluate how the brain interfaces with structures of motor speech. For many authors, frequency-specific entrainment of delta (< 3 Hz) and theta (4–10 Hz ) oscillations to groups and syllable-size energy modulations define processing frames. However, there is little agreement on the type of information that is processed in the frames. A review is provided of diverging views on the role of entrainment and controversial claims that oscillations entrain to non-sensory units like words and phrases. A critical experiment is presented showing that, whereas theta oscillations entrain to acoustic attributes even in sequences of tones, delta entrains specifically to signature marks of chunking in speech stimuli regardless of whether the stimuli are meaningful utterances or meaningless series of syllables. By this evidence, delta waves do not entrain primarily to putative syntactic units but more generally to chunks of articulated sounds, which is consistent with a body of evidence demonstrating that chunking is a domain-general principle involved in processing motor sequences.

The context-based selection of semantic representations is presented as an essential issue in understanding the interpretation of speech meaning. Clinical findings serve to illustrate the role of the thalamus, the basal ganglia, and the cerebellum in processing subtle context-related differences in meaning. The paucity of findings relating to spoken language is emphasized along with the need to specify neuropragmatic principles of context-based activations of semantic and episodic representations.With a view on developing such principles, several relevant findings are reviewed relating to cortico-thalamic interactions and the pivotal role of the motor thalamus in integrating multisensory information from basal-ganglia circuits and the cerebellum. The on-line selection of semantic and episodic representations is also discussed in terms of experiments on the role of the hippocampus and frontal circuits suggesting some parallels with navigation, but the on-line processing of speech requires a chunking of action-related sequences which appears to involve the basal ganglia and critical cortico-thalamic loops.

In this chapter we attempt to separate the communal and the individual levels of language representation and explore how linguistic regularities emerge at each of them. We sample one communal and ten individual corpora of language use from the same ELF environment and examine to what extent syntactic structure, priming and chunking influence linguistic choice in each corpus by looking at the variation between contracted and full forms (it is/it’s). We find clear differences in how these three factors work across the corpora and attempt to interpret them in relation to the properties of individual languages, language change and the role of ELF.

In the introduction I argue that it is difficult to understand how language is acquired, processed or used by examining single words. We immediately run into problems of implausible cognitive processing loads of constructing language word by word and inescapable ambiguity any text must be creating. Thus phraseological approaches to language seem to give more promise. This book focuses on one approach, known as the idiom principle, proposed by John Sinclair. The approach is applied to second language learners of English who are often claimed to be restricted in their ability to operate on the idiom principle. The introduction situates this topic in a broader context of current interests in linguistic and psycholinguistic inquiry and explains how it is related to such concepts as chunking, statistical learning, implicit and explicit processing, ad hoc concepts and L2 or LX user.

All aspects of linguistic knowledge are ultimately based on speakers’ experience with lexical expressions, but of course, knowledge of language, notably, grammar, exceeds their memory of particular lexical tokens. It is a standard assumption of the usage-based approach that grammar involves a taxonomic network of constructions ranging from prefabricated strings of lexical expressions to highly abstract schemas. Chapter 4 describes the taxonomic organization of constructions and their development in L1 acquisition and language change. It includes a detailed discussion of current research on statistical grammar learning in infancy, the acquisition of constructions during the preschool years and two case studies on the rise of constructional schemas in language history.

There is an ongoing debate about the analysis of argument structure in a usage-based construction grammar. Some scholars have argued that argument structure is licensed by fully abstract schemas, but other researchers have claimed that argument structure is primarily determined by particular verbs. Chapter 7 argues that this controversy is easily resolved if we analyze argument structure in the framework of a network model in which verbs and constructions are interconnected by probabilistic links. For instance, the two constructions of the dative alternation occur with an overlapping set of verbs that are statistically biased to be used in one or the other constructions. The statistical biases can be analyzed as filler-slot associations that are shaped by two factors: (1) general conceptual processes of event semantics and (2) speakers’ experience with particular verbs and constructions. The analysis is supported by evidence from research on sentence processing and the extension of argument schemas to novel verbs in L1 acquisition and language change.

Constituent structure is commonly represented in phrase structure trees, which one might analyze as some kind of network. However, while phrase structure graphs are useful to explain certain aspects of syntactic structure, they are not fully compatible with the dynamic network approach, as these graphs are built from primitive concepts. Challenging the traditional approach, Chapter 9 outlines a dynamic network analysis of constituency in which the hierarchical organization of linguistic structure is emergent from the interaction of several domain-general processes, including conceptualization, automatization, analogy and abstraction, which together account for both the syntactic generalizations that have been in the focus of formal syntax and the many idiosyncracies that reflect the influence of speakers’ experience with particular constructions. The proposed analysis casts a fresh light on syntactic constituency and has far-reaching implications for the theory of phrase structure and the analysis of word order correlations.

All linguistic elements, e.g., words, phrases and clauses, occur in sequential order. The sequential arrangement of linguistic elements is motivated by conceptual and pragmatic factors, but the strength of sequential relations is primarily determined by automatization or chunking. Since automatization is a gradual process driven by frequency of occurrence, sequential relations vary on a continuum. Moreover, since language unfolds in time, sequential relations have an inherent forward orientation, which is reflected in the fact that listeners are able to “predict” upcoming elements in the unfolding speech stream. Chapter 5 considers the effect of automatization and chunking on the development of linguistic structure and the cognitive organization of grammar. The chapter is divided into two parts. The first part is concerned with research on lexical prefabs and the organization of morphological network models, and the second part considers sequential aspects of constructional schemas and the gradience of constituency.