Locality and Parsing Complexity

Author: Konieczny L.

Source: Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, Volume 29, Number 6, November 2000 , pp. 627-645(19)

Publisher: Springer

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Abstract:

Two experiments, an off-line acceptability judgment study and an on-line self-paced reading experiment, were conducted to tackle the question of locality-based preferences in sentence processing. The material consisted of German verb-final sentences containing a relative clause that was either host adjacent or extraposed. While the off-line data seem to reflect locality based integration cost, the on-line data revealed a highly different picture. It is argued that, in the present constructions at least, locality is relevant for production rather than perception. In perception, heads can be anticipated through incremental integration of their arguments.

Keywords: word-order; extraposition; anticipation; locality; parsiyol

Language: English

Document Type: Regular paper

Affiliations: 1: Center for Cognitive Science Institute of Computer Science and Social Research, Freiburg University Friedrichstr. 50 D-79098 Freiburg, Germany and SFB “Resource-adaptive Cognitive Processes” Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany. lars@cognition.iig.uni-freiburg.de

Publication date: 2000-11-01