Explaining how language behaves in real time

What is it about?

This was a peer commentary on a keynte artcle by Philips and Eherenhofer that pointed out its failure to refer to three alternative theoretical frameworks each of which integrate representational and processing accounts to explain language development, namely O'Grady's emergentism, Caroll's Autonomous Induction Theory and Sharwood Smith & Truscott MOGUL (now 'MCF') framework. The keynote article only superficially acknowledges the need to incorportate crucial processing components such as memory and appears to seriously overestimate the power of theoretical descriptions of linguistic representations to be used unadapted as explanations of processing and acquaition in real time without appreciating that such account explicitly designed to ignore the real time processing dimension. In short, they underestimate the importance of what Poeppel has called the 'mapping problem'.

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Why is it important?

It alerts people to the necessary limitations of abstract linguistic theory to describe how linguistic changes over time and how it is used from moment to moment during language performance. It does plays a crucial role but it cannot be used as a simple substitute for real time based explanations precisely because it abstarts away from temporospatial reality.