By splitting complex legal sentences into smaller segments, Hung et al. were able to more better determine
the correct syntactic structure and reduce ambiguity.
In discussing his results, Herman states that they demonstrate the ability of dolphins to respond correctly to semantically reversible sentences, offering «the first substantial evidence of
syntactic processing of a string of lexical items by animals» (CSBD 199) 12 Evidence for such
syntactic processing is found in the dolphins»
correct responses to sentences having modifiers to direct and / or indirect objects: reversal errors were extremely rare.