Linguistic syncopation: Meter-syntax alignment affects sentence comprehension and sensorimotor synchronization

The hierarchical organization of speech rhythm into meter putatively confers cognitive affordances for perception, memory, and motor coordination. Meter also aligns with phrasal structure in systematic ways. In this paper, we show that this alignment affects the robustness of syntactic comprehension and discuss possible underlying mechanisms. In two experiments, we manipulated meter-syntax alignment while sentences with relative clause structures were either read as text (experiment 1, n = 40) or listened to as speech (experiment 2, n = 40). In experiment 2, we also measured the stability with which participants could tap in time with the metrical accents in the sentences they were comprehending. In addition to making more mistakes, sensorimotor synchronization was disrupted when syntactic cues clashed with the metrical context. We suggest that this reflects a tight coordination of top-down linguistic knowledge with the sensorimotor system to optimize comprehension.