The structure of memory meets memory for structure in linguistic cognition

This dissertation is concerned with the problem of how structured linguistic representations interact with the architecture of human memory. Much recent work has attempted to unify real-time linguistic memory with a general content-addressable architecture (Lewis & Vasishth, 2005; McElree, 2006). Because grammatical principles and constraints are strongly relational in nature, and linguistic representation hierarchical, this kind of architecture is not well suited to restricting the search of memory to grammatically-licensed constituents alone. This dissertation investigates under what conditions real-time language comprehension is grammatically accurate…

Contents

1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 THE CHALLENGE OF NAVIGATING STRUCTURE IN REAL-TIME
1.2 GRAMMATICAL FIDELITY, GRAMMATICAL FALLIBILITY
1.3 OUTLINE OF THE DISSERTATION
1.3.1 Chapter 2: Agreement attraction and selective fallibility
1.3.2 Chapter 3: The trouble with subjects
1.3.3 Chapter 4: Active dependency formation and mechanisms for the accurate recognition of grammatical dependencies
2 AGREEMENT ATTRACTION AND SELECTIVE FALLIBILITY BINDING AND ACCESSING FEATURES IN COMPLEX SYNTACTIC OBJECTS, PART I
2.1 INTRODUCTION
2.1.1 Agreement attraction: what’s at stake
2.1.2 Outline of the chapter
2.2 AN OVERVIEW OF AGREEMENT ATTRACTION
2.3 PREVIOUS STUDIES OF AGREEMENT PRODUCTION AND THE HIERARCHICAL NATURE OF ATTRACTION
2.3.1 Hierarchical, not linear distance, matters
2.3.2 The attractor’s ‘structural domain’ matters
2.3.3 Ordering of verb and attractor does not matter
2.4 THE FEATURE PERCOLATION ACCOUNT OF AGREEMENT ATTRACTION
2.5 IMPLICATIONS OF FEATURE PERCOLATION AND OBJECTIONS
2.5.1 Erroneous feature percolation as erroneous rule application
2.5.2 Erroneous feature percolation as uncontrolled spreading activation
2.5.3 Summary of erroneous feature percolation
2.6 THE SIMULTANEITY ACCOUNT OF AGREEMENT ATTRACTION
2.6.1 Simultaneity in planning a complex subject interferes with verb formulation
2.6.2 The relationship between planning order and hierarchy
2.6.3 Disentangling representation and process-based accounts
2.7 ATTRACTION IN COMPREHENSION
2.7.1 The Symmetry Prediction
2.7.2 Pearlmutter, Garnsey, & Bock (1999)
2.7.3 Summary
2.8 TESTING PERCOLATION I: RELATIVE CLAUSE ATTRACTION
2.8.1 Kimball & Aissen (1971), Relative Clause Attraction & Experiment 1-2 Rationale
2.8.2 Experiment 1
2.8.3 Experiment 2
2.8.4 Experiment 3
2.9 TESTING PERCOLATION II: THE GRAMMATICAL-UNGRAMMATICAL ASYMMETRY IN COMPREHENSION
2.9.1 Wagers, Lau, & Phillips (2008) and On-line Comprehension
2.9.2 Controlling for RT correlations among adjacent regions: a mixed-effects models analysis
2.9.3 Experiment 4: Speeded grammaticality tests of complex subject attraction
2.10 CONCLUSIONS
3 THE TROUBLE WITH SUBJECTS BINDING AND ACCESSING FEATURES IN COMPLEX
SYNTACTIC OBJECTS, PART II
3.1 INTRODUCTION
3.2 SEARCHING STRUCTURE WITH UNSTRUCTURED SEARCHES
3.2.1 Content-addressable search
3.2.2 The restricted focus of attention
3.2.3 Implications
3.3 AGREEMENT ATTRACTION IN COMPREHENSION
3.3.1 Intuition
3.3.2 Formalization
3.3.3 Agreement & Case (Experiment 5)
3.3.4 Clause-boundedness
3.3.5 Next to the cabinets
3.3.6 Linking comprehension and production
3.4 INTERFERENCE AND SUBJECTS
3.4.1 Introduction
3.4.2 Van Dyke & Lewis (2003), Van Dyke (2007)
3.4.3 Replicating and extending Van Dyke (Experiment 6)
3.4.4 NPI Licensing v. Reflexive Anaphora
3.5 CONCLUSIONS
4 ACTIVE DEPENDENCY FORMATION AND MECHANISMS FOR THE ACCURATE RECOGNITION OF GRAMMATICAL DEPENDENCIES
4.1 INTRODUCTION
4.2 THE ROLE OF PREDICTABILITY
4.2.1 Forwards v. backward anaphora
4.2.2 Reconsidering agreement attraction
4.3 PROCESSING WH-DEPENDENCY CONSTRUCTIONS
4.3.1 Active dependency formation
4.3.2 Mechanisms of active dependency formation
4.3.3 Similarity-based interference and wh-dependency completion
4.3.4 Three studies
4.4 THE GRAMMAR’S ROLE IN TRIGGERING WH-DEPENDENCY FORMATION
4.4.1 The motivation for active dependency formation and island constraints
4.4.2 The Coordinate Structure Constraint and Active Dependency Formation I (Experiment 7)
4.4.3 Materials and Methods
4.4.4 The Coordinate Structure Constraint and Active Dependency Formation II (Experiment
4.4.5 General discussion of Experiments 7 & 8
4.5 THE FIDELITY OF RETRIEVAL IN WH-DEPENDENCY FORMATION
4.5.1 Introduction
4.5.2 Experiment 9
4.5.3 Experiment 10
4.5.4 Accurately identifying the head of a dependency
4.6 CARRYING INFORMATION FORWARD IN TIME
4.6.1 Lexically-specific features (Experiments 11a, 11b)
4.6.2 Lexical identity (Experiment 12)
4.6.3 FG (Pied-piping) (Experiment 13)
4.6.4 Conclusions
4.7 CONCLUSIONS
5 CONCLUSIONS
5.1 SPECIFIC CONCLUSIONS
5.1.1 Agreement attraction
5.1.2 Wh-dependency formation
5.2 BROADER CONCLUSIONS
6 APPENDICES
7 REFERENCES

Author: Wagers, Matthew

Source: University of Maryland

Download URL 2: Visit Now