Js. Bowers et al., Distinguishing language from thought: Experimental evidence that syntax islexically rather than conceptually represented, PSYCHOL SCI, 10(4), 1999, pp. 310-315
It is generally assumed that syntax is represented linguistically rather th
an conceptually, consistent with the move general view that language and th
ought are coded separately This claim is widely defended on? logical ground
s, but it has received little experimental support. in the present study, w
e asked Spanish and English speakers to make semantic and syntactic categor
izations Sor pictures and their corresponding names. Consistent with past r
esults, latencies to semantically categorize pictures and words were simila
r The new finding is that participants were faster to make syntactic decisi
ons for words compared with pictures, suggesting that syntactic features su
ch as grammatical gender and the count-mass distinction are more closely li
nked to lexical than conceptual representations.