Traces in the Brain: Neural Evidence for Syntactic Movement in English and Chinese

Yuhan Huang; Zhengwu Ma; Yuqi Jin; Beth Chan; Zheng Shen; Jackie Yan-Ki Lai; John Hale; Jixing Li

Traces in the Brain: Neural Evidence for Syntactic Movement in English and Chinese

Yuhan Huang, Zhengwu Ma, Yuqi Jin, Beth Chan, Zheng Shen, Jackie Yan-Ki Lai, John T. Hale, Jixing Li

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Abstract

Syntactic movement is a core concept in generative linguistics to account for word-order variation and long-distance dependencies, but its psychological and neurobiological status remains debated. Here, we test the neural reality of movement in English and Chinese by correlating brain activity during naturalistic listening with syntactic node counts, traces and word embeddings derived from X-bar style tree annotations. We find that deep structure significantly predicts neural responses in English but not in Chinese, providing partial support for movement-based accounts while revealing clear cross-linguistic differences.

Anthology ID:: 2026.findings-acl.1027
Volume:: Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
Month:: July
Year:: 2026
Address:: San Diego, California, United States
Editors:: Maria Liakata, Viviane P. Moreira, Jiajun Zhang, David Jurgens
Venue:: Findings
SIG:
Publisher:: Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:: 20529–20543
Language:
URL:: https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.1027/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):: Yuhan Huang, Zhengwu Ma, Yuqi Jin, Beth Chan, Zheng Shen, Jackie Yan-Ki Lai, John T. Hale, and Jixing Li. 2026. Traces in the Brain: Neural Evidence for Syntactic Movement in English and Chinese. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026, pages 20529–20543, San Diego, California, United States. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):: Traces in the Brain: Neural Evidence for Syntactic Movement in English and Chinese (Huang et al., Findings 2026)
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PDF:: https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.1027.pdf
Checklist:: 2026.findings-acl.1027.checklist.pdf

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@inproceedings{huang-etal-2026-traces,
    title = "Traces in the Brain: Neural Evidence for Syntactic Movement in {E}nglish and {C}hinese",
    author = "Huang, Yuhan  and
      Ma, Zhengwu  and
      Jin, Yuqi  and
      Chan, Beth  and
      Shen, Zheng  and
      Lai, Jackie Yan-Ki  and
      Hale, John T.  and
      Li, Jixing",
    editor = "Liakata, Maria  and
      Moreira, Viviane P.  and
      Zhang, Jiajun  and
      Jurgens, David",
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    month = jul,
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    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.1027/",
    pages = "20529--20543",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-395-1",
    abstract = "Syntactic movement is a core concept in generative linguistics to account for word-order variation and long-distance dependencies, but its psychological and neurobiological status remains debated. Here, we test the neural reality of movement in English and Chinese by correlating brain activity during naturalistic listening with syntactic node counts, traces and word embeddings derived from X-bar style tree annotations. We find that deep structure significantly predicts neural responses in English but not in Chinese, providing partial support for movement-based accounts while revealing clear cross-linguistic differences."
}

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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Traces in the Brain: Neural Evidence for Syntactic Movement in English and Chinese
%A Huang, Yuhan
%A Ma, Zhengwu
%A Jin, Yuqi
%A Chan, Beth
%A Shen, Zheng
%A Lai, Jackie Yan-Ki
%A Hale, John T.
%A Li, Jixing
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-395-1
%F huang-etal-2026-traces
%X Syntactic movement is a core concept in generative linguistics to account for word-order variation and long-distance dependencies, but its psychological and neurobiological status remains debated. Here, we test the neural reality of movement in English and Chinese by correlating brain activity during naturalistic listening with syntactic node counts, traces and word embeddings derived from X-bar style tree annotations. We find that deep structure significantly predicts neural responses in English but not in Chinese, providing partial support for movement-based accounts while revealing clear cross-linguistic differences.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.1027/
%P 20529-20543

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Markdown (Informal)

[Traces in the Brain: Neural Evidence for Syntactic Movement in English and Chinese](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.1027/) (Huang et al., Findings 2026)

Traces in the Brain: Neural Evidence for Syntactic Movement in English and Chinese (Huang et al., Findings 2026)

ACL

Yuhan Huang, Zhengwu Ma, Yuqi Jin, Beth Chan, Zheng Shen, Jackie Yan-Ki Lai, John T. Hale, and Jixing Li. 2026. Traces in the Brain: Neural Evidence for Syntactic Movement in English and Chinese. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026, pages 20529–20543, San Diego, California, United States. Association for Computational Linguistics.