This paper proposes a new theory of the relationship between the sentence processing mechanism and the available computational resources. This theory -- the Syntactic Prediction Locality Theory (SPLT) -- has two components: an integration cost component and a component for the memory cost associated with keeping track of obligatory syntactic requirements. Memory cost is

Many theories have been proposed to explain difficulty with center embedded constructions, most attributing the problem to some kind of limited capacity short-term memory. However, these theories have developed for the most part independently of more traditional memory research, which has focused on uncovering general principles such as chunking and interference. This article attempts to gain some unification with this research by suggesting that an interesting range of core sentence processing phenomena can be explained as interference effects in a sharply limited syntactic working memory. These include difficult and acceptable embeddings, as well as certain limitations on ambiguity resolution, length effects in garden path structures, and the requirement for locality in syntactic structure. The theory takes the form of an architecture for parsing which can index no more than two constituents under the same syntactic relation. A limitation of two or three items shows up in a variety o...

We present a detailed process theory of the moment-by-moment working-memory retrievals and associated control structure that subserve sentence comprehension. The theory is derived from the application of independently motivated principles of memory and cognitive skill to the specialized task of sentence parsing. The resulting theory construes sentence processing as a series of skilled associative memory retrievals modulated by similarity-based interference and fluctuating activation. The cognitive principles are formalized in computational form in the Adaptive Control of Thought–Rational (ACT–R) architecture, and our process model is realized in ACT–R. We present the results of 6 sets of simulations: 5 simulation sets provide quantitative accounts of the effects of length and structural interference on both unambiguous and garden-path structures. A final simulation set provides a graded taxonomy of double center embeddings ranging from relatively easy to extremely difficult. The explanation of center-embedding difficulty is a novel one that derives from the model’s complete reliance on discriminating retrieval cues in the absence of an explicit representation of serial order information. All fits were obtained with only 1 free scaling parameter fixed across the simulations; all other parameters were ACT–R defaults. The modeling results support the hypothesis that fluctuating activation and similarity-based interference are the key factors shaping working memory in sentence processing. We contrast the theory and empirical predictions with several related accounts of sentence-processing complexity.

ing away from irrelevant details is a theoretical virtue, but the kinds of abstractions that module geography makes can lead to incorrect inferences from data. That such a possibility exists is clearly demonstrated by the working memory research of Just & Carpenter (1992). Briefly, Just and Carpenter have argued that some garden path effects that were previously interpreted in terms of a syntactically encapsulated module can instead be explained by individual differences in working memory capacity. Such an explanation is not considered in a theoretical framework that systematically ignores the role of memory structures in parsing. This point should be taken regardless of whether one is convinced by the current body of empirical support for this particular model---the fact remains that such an explanation could in principle account for the data, and these alternative explanations are only discovered by developing functionally complete architectures. The next few sections describes what ...

This paper presents three self-paced, word-by-word reading experiments that test for the existence of on-line syntactic storage costs in English. To investigate this issue, we compared reading times for sentence regions in which storage costs varied, keeping other factors constant. Experiment 1 manipulated the number of verbs needed to form a grammatical sentence. Experiment 2 investigated whether filler-gap dependencies incur storage costs, and Experiment 3 investigated whether prepositional phrase arguments of verbs incur storage costs. The results of all three experiments demonstrate the role of online storage costs in sentence comprehension. Taken together with other results in the literature, the results also support a theory of sentence comprehension which includes empty categories mediating filler-gap dependencies. 2

What precisely is the universal nature of the human syntactic parser, such that it copes easily with some embedded structures, yet fails so dramatically on others (e.g., classic double center-embeddings)? A theory is proposed in the form of an architecture for parsing based on two simple ideas. The first is that human short-term memory is an indexing structure which can give rise to interference effects (storage limitations) when contents overlap with respect to the indices. For parsing, the contents are syntactic structures, and the indices are potential structural relations. The second idea is that the capacity of STM is the minimum capacity required to support the basic functions of parsing. The theory successfully accounts for the contrasts between over 50 difficult and acceptable constructions from English, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish. The theory has independent psychological and computational motivation, and is a functional part of a broader cognitive ...

Children's mastery of relative clauses has been a recurrent issue in psycho-linguistic literature. The results obtained are, however, fairly inconsistent and different theoretical claims have been made. Children's acquisition has been explained either with reference to syntactic complexity and processing constraints on structural configurations, or with reference to discourse strategies and communicative function. An analysis that takes into account the interaction between syntax, semantics and pragmatics, can offer a very regular description of children's production of relative clauses. The constraints we find on premature grammars can be traced back to previous cognitive development. I will present data on Swedish relative clause production in natural discourse. There are two bilingual learner groups and their results will be compared to that of a monolingual Swedish learner. The results could best be explained within an integrated view of language development (Berman (1984), which c...