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Slideshow

William Matchin

Portrait of Dr. Matchin in black shirt
Peabody 115
Dr. William Matchin
Communication Sciences and Disorders
University of South Carolina

Guest Lecture with Dr. William Matchin, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of South Carolina.

Title: The cortical organization of syntax



Abstract: Syntax, the structure of sentences, enables humans to express an infinite range of meanings through finite means. A prominent model of syntax in the brain proposes the localization of Merge to the posterior portion of Broca’s area, the pars opercularis (Friederici, 2017). I will demonstrate that this proposal is inadequate both empirically and conceptually, advocating for an alternative framework recently advanced by Matchin & Hickok (2019). Our framework attributes distinct contributions to two key regions strongly implicated in syntactic processes: hierarchical lexical-syntactic structure in the posterior superior temporal sulcus/middle temporal gyrus, and morpho-syntactic linearization in the anterior portion of Broca’s area, the pars triangularis. This model explains a variety of sentence comprehension and production deficits in aphasia, including the classic distinction between agrammatism (omission of functional elements and reduction of syntactic complexity) and paragrammatism (syntactic errors).

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