[dlwh]

Not a neuroscientist, but I do do NLP, and I only lightly skimmed the paper.

This doesn't really speak to UG.

First, you can believe in the structures they purport to show without accepting the existence of UG, by appealing to the existence of general mechanisms in the brain for assembling hierarchical structures, which is equally validated by this experiment.

Second, they looked at two languages with sentences of up to ~7 syllables each with at most two constituents (Noun Phrase Verb Phrase). You can't show any evidence for any hierarchy of interest in 7 syllables. They demonstrated that phrases exist and phrase boundaries exist, but it's entirely possible to have "flat' grammars without interesting hierarchy, especially in simple sentences. If they want to show interesting hierarchy, they should conduct experiments with more interesting structure (say, some internal PPs and some limited center embedding) and show something that correlates with multiple levels of the "stack" getting popped, or something.

It's still interesting work, but as usual oversold by the university press office.

[mindcrime]

First, you can believe in the structures they purport to show without accepting the existence of UG, by appealing to the existence of general mechanisms in the brain for assembling hierarchical structures, which is equally validated by this experiment.

That was kinda my impression as well, but I don't want to say much more as I'm so far from an expert on this and I'll probably just make an idiot out of myself. Still, as you say, it is interesting work in its own right.