How Sentence Structure Emerges: A Hierarchical Model of English Sentence Recognition

Sentence structure has traditionally been treated as a primary object of recognition, assumed to be directly perceived by readers during sentence processing. This study reconsiders that assumption by modeling sentence structure as a result of incremental recognition rather than its starting point. Predication is first reconceptualized as a process, decomposed into two sequential components, p1 and p2. On this basis, sentence comprehension is modeled as a hierarchical process in which readers initially distinguish modifying elements from core elements and progressively assemble structure through micro-level operations. A thought experiment is employed to visualize this process, demonstrating that sentence structure emerges only after core elements have been identified and integrated. This reconceptualization reframes grammatical structure as an outcome of cognitive processing and offers an alternative explanatory framework for sentence comprehension and pedagogical sequencing.