Cognitive and Neural Constraints on Timing and Rhythm in Language

In this chapter, we discuss research from behavior, event-related brain potentials, and neural oscillations which suggests that cognitive and neural constraints affect the timing of speech processing and language comprehension. Some of these constraints may even manifest as rhythmic patterns in linguistic behavior. We discuss two types of constraints: First, we review how the unfolding acoustic and abstract context affect the timing of incremental processing on different linguistic levels (e.g., prosody, syntax). Second, we consider context-invariant constraints (e.g., working memory trace decay, period of electrophysiological activity) and how these limit the duration of our processing time windows, thus restricting our segmentation and composition abilities.