THE EMPERORS PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

We discuss and debunk five common assumptions about the interrelation of semantics, syntax, and frequency during sentence processing. In the course of this, we explore the implications of the view that syntax i s assigned as the last stage of comprehension rather than the first: S tatistically based perceptual strategies propose an initial semantic r epresentation, which then constrains the assignment of syntactic repre sentations. This view accounts for a variety of facts, as well as sugg esting some surprising new ones.