Abstract
The syntax of human languages has long been argued to be complex and even unlearnable from the input alone. However, the success of large language models (LLMs) has challenged this idea. I argue for a simple view of syntax, where the syntax of a language is just the set of dependency rules, with no phrase structure or transformation rules-constructs central to Chomsky's transformational grammar. This approach accounts for diverse phenomena in human language processing and explains crosslinguistic word order universals. Moreover, it better explains human data for cases that differentiate these accounts and eliminates the syntax learnability problem. I speculate that LLMs, similar to children, learn the dependency grammar from linguistic patterns, leading to their impressive syntactic competence.
TY - JOUR
T1 - Dependency syntax as the simplest theory of grammar.
A1 - Gibson,Edward,
Y1 - 2026/04/17/
PY - 2025/08/07/received
PY - 2026/02/25/revised
PY - 2026/03/02/accepted
PY - 2026/4/19/medline
PY - 2026/4/19/pubmed
PY - 2026/4/18/entrez
KW - Poverty of the Stimulus
KW - constituency tests
KW - crosslinguistic universals
KW - dependency locality
KW - syntactic islands
KW - syntax
JF - Trends in cognitive sciences
JO - Trends Cogn Sci
N2 - The syntax of human languages has long been argued to be complex and even unlearnable from the input alone. However, the success of large language models (LLMs) has challenged this idea. I argue for a simple view of syntax, where the syntax of a language is just the set of dependency rules, with no phrase structure or transformation rules-constructs central to Chomsky's transformational grammar. This approach accounts for diverse phenomena in human language processing and explains crosslinguistic word order universals. Moreover, it better explains human data for cases that differentiate these accounts and eliminates the syntax learnability problem. I speculate that LLMs, similar to children, learn the dependency grammar from linguistic patterns, leading to their impressive syntactic competence.
SN - 1879-307X
UR - https://www.unboundmedicine.com/prime/citation/42000258/Dependency_syntax_as_the_simplest_theory_of_grammar.
DB - PRIME
DP - Unbound Medicine
ER -
