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Evidence for the representation of non-hierarchical structures in language

Nature Human Behaviour volume 10, pages 579–588 (2026)Cite this article

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Abstract

A long-standing assumption in the language sciences is that the mental representation of language is based on constituents—that is, hierarchical structures rooted in grammar. We provide evidence from English for a more basic kind of linguistic representation involving smaller, linear chunks of structure akin to sequences of parts-of-speech elements—such as verb preposition determiner shared between the strings added to a and defined by the. Across four preregistered phrasal decision experiments (total N = 497), we show that it is possible to prime such linear structures, even in the absence of constituents. In two additional corpus analyses of eye-tracked reading (N = 68) and conversation (N = 358), we establish the external validity of the effect. These results provide evidence of multiword language structures that are not explainable in terms of constituents as traditionally construed. This poses a challenge for accounts of linguistic representation, including generative and constructionist approaches.

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Fig. 1: Different representations of grammatical structure.
Fig. 2: Experimental design.
Fig. 3: Structural priming in the phrasal decision task.
Fig. 4: Priming between ‘parts’ and ‘wholes’.
Fig. 5: Structural priming in eye-tracked reading.
Fig. 6: Structural priming in conversation.
Fig. 7: A possible function for non-constituent structures.

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Data availability

The data and materials are available via OSF at https://osf.io/ymndq/. The Corpus of Contemporary American English is available online (https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/). The CELER corpus is shared by the curators on GitHub (https://github.com/berzak/celer) but requires access to the Penn Treebank-2 (LDC95T7; https://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/LDC95T7) and the BLLIP corpus (LDC2000T43; https://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/LDC2000T43) from the Linguistics Data Consortium. The Switchboard corpus is available from the Linguistics Data Consortium (LDC2009T26; https://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/LDC2009T26).

Code availability

The code is available via OSF at https://osf.io/ymndq/.

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. C. Kallens for help with corpus mining, K. Chan and A. Chen for help with stimulus generation, F. Frinsel for help setting up the in-lab experiment, R. P. Chaves for bringing p-stranding and ellipsis to our attention, E. Westgate for access to the University of Florida participant pool, S. Pfattheicher for supporting Study 3, and R. Fusaroli for guidance on statistical analyses. Study 3 was funded by the Aarhus University Research Foundation through grant no. AUFF-E-2018-7-13 (awarded to S. Pfattheicher), and Study 4 was funded by the research programme Linguistics, Cognitive Science and Semiotics at the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University (awarded to Y.A.N.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Yngwie A. Nielsen & Morten H. Christiansen

  2. Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Yngwie A. Nielsen & Morten H. Christiansen

  3. Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Yngwie A. Nielsen & Morten H. Christiansen

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Conceptualization: Y.A.N. and M.H.C. Methodology: Y.A.N. and M.H.C. Formal analysis: Y.A.N. Investigation: Y.A.N. Writing—original draft: Y.A.N. Writing—review and editing: Y.A.N. and M.H.C.

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Correspondence to Yngwie A. Nielsen.

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Nielsen, Y.A., Christiansen, M.H. Evidence for the representation of non-hierarchical structures in language. Nat Hum Behav 10, 579–588 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02387-z

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