So-called Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language also builds sentences around a subject-object-verb construction. “Consistent word order appears early in a new sign language,” she says.

So with a verb like “make,” “watch” or “teach,” you can get a simple subject-plus-verb-plus-object sentence structure. Copular verbs express being, seeming or the senses.

The simple sentence is probably the easiest to understand: it consists of only one clause, the basic parts being a subject (usually a noun), a verb and, most often, an object. In rewriting first ...

Our brain links incoming speech sounds to knowledge of grammar, which is abstract in nature. But how does the brain encode abstract sentence structure?