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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
There And Gone Again: Syntactic Structure In Memory, Caroline Andrews
There And Gone Again: Syntactic Structure In Memory, Caroline Andrews
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation addresses the relationship between hierarchical syntactic structure and memory in language processing of individual sentences. Hierarchical syntactic structure is a key part of human languages and language processing but its integration with memory has been uneasy ever since Sachs (1967) demonstrated that the syntactic structure of individual sentences is lost in explicit sentence recall tasks much faster than other linguistic information (lexical, semantic, etc.). Nonetheless, psycholinguists have continued to draw on memory in syntactic processing theories, in part due to (i) the explanatory power that memory can give to sentence processing hypotheses, and (ii) the conflicting results that …
Person-Based Prominence In Ojibwe, Christopher Hammerly
Person-Based Prominence In Ojibwe, Christopher Hammerly
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation develops a formal and psycholinguistic theory of person-based prominence effects, the finding that certain categories of person such as "first" and "second" (the "local" persons) are privileged by the grammar. The thesis takes on three questions: (i) What are the possible categories related to person? (ii) What are the possible prominence relationships between these categories? And (iii) how is prominence information used to parse and interpret linguistic input in real time? The empirical through-line is understanding obviation — a “spotlighting” system, found most prominently in the Algonquian family of languages, that splits the (ani- mate) third persons into …
Computing Agreement In A Mixed System, Sakshi Bhatia
Computing Agreement In A Mixed System, Sakshi Bhatia
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation develops a comprehensive response to the question of how agreement is computed in Hindi-Urdu – a language with a mixed agreement system where the verb can agree with a subject or an object depending on the structural context. This dissertation covers new empirical and theoretical ground in two domains. First, I identify three kinds of atypical agreement patterns which are not accounted for under traditional approaches Hindi-Urdu agreement -- verb agreement with the nominal component of Noun-Verb complex predicates, long distance agreement of embedding Adjective-Verb predicates with embedded infinitive clause objects, and copular agreement in identity copula structures. …
When Errors Aren't: How Comprehenders Selectively Violate Binding Theory, Shayne Sloggett
When Errors Aren't: How Comprehenders Selectively Violate Binding Theory, Shayne Sloggett
Doctoral Dissertations
It has been claimed that comprehenders use the Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1986) to restrict the search for a reflexive’s antecedent in early stages of comprehension (Dillon, Mishler, Sloggett, & Phillips, 2013; Sturt, 2003; Nicol & Swinney, 1989) However, recent findings challenge this view, demonstrating that comprehenders occasionally access antecedents on the basis of their match with a reflexive’s morphosyntactic features (Chen, Jäger, & Vasishth, 2012; Patil, Lewis, & Vasishth, 2016, Parker, & Phillips, 2017). In this dissertation, I investigate the source of this ’grammatical fallibility’ in the real-time application of Principle A of the Binding Theory. Specifically, I ask whether …
The Form And Acquisition Of Free Relatives, Michael Clauss
The Form And Acquisition Of Free Relatives, Michael Clauss
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation examines the syntax of Free Relatives (FRs) in English at different stages of first language acquisition. The goal is to provide a theory of Free Relatives that explains phenomena in adult and child FRs, is feasibly learnable by a child, and reflects principles expressed in theories of Universal Grammar based on the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1993, 1995, 2005). The central empirical concern is the difference between the distribution of Wh expressions in FRs vs. Wh questions in English, the difference in grammaticality between Charles wondered dish what Sebastian made and *Charles ate what dish Sebastian made (*Wh-NP). To …