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Integration and Prediction in Head-Final Structures

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Processing and Producing Head-final Structures

Part of the book series: Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics ((SITP,volume 38))

Abstract

I briefly review some of the current theoretical proposals relating to integrative and predictive processes in online sentence comprehension, with particular reference to two phenomena: locality and similarity-based interference. Regarding locality, current research suggests that several of the competing theories of locality may not be alternative explanations but rather orthogonal ones: models such as Dependency Locality Theory and the ACT-R model define “backward-looking” processes (retrieval of previously seen/processed elements) whereas theories such as surprisal specify a complexity metric that relies on “forward-looking” processes (prediction of upcoming material) (Demberg, V., & Keller, F. (2008). Eye-tracting corpora as evidence for theories of syntactic processing complexity. (Submitted to Congnition); Levy. R. (2008). Expectation - based syntactic compression Cognition, 106, 1126–1177). Regarding interference, I present several distinct theories of interference that are on the market, and suggest that their differing predictions need to be empirically investigated. Finally, I point out an unresolved puzzle regarding locality, interference, and nature of memory representations that play a role in sentence comprehension.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Ted Gibson, Florian Jaeger, Roger Levy, Richard L. Lewis, Don Mitchell and Julie Van Dyke for discussions about locality and interference theories over the last few years. I also benefitted from many comments from, among others, Mike Tanenhaus, Florian Jaeger and Jeff Runner. I also thank my students Esther Sommerfeld, Pavel Logačev, Umesh Patil and Titus von der Malsburg for extended discussions regarding the issues presented here. Marisa Ferrara Boston contributed valuable comments to an earlier draft of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistik, Exzellenzbereich Kognitionswissenschaft, Universität Potsdam, D-14476, Potsdam, Germany

    Shravan Vasishth

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  1. Shravan Vasishth
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Correspondence to Shravan Vasishth .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Department of Modern Languages & Culture, Rochester Institute of Technology, 92 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, 14623, New York, USA

    Hiroko Yamashita

  2. Department of Language & Information Sci, The University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 153-8902, Japan

    Yuki Hirose

  3. , Department of East Languages & Cultures, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champai, 707 S. Mathews, Urbana, 61801, Illinois, USA

    Jerome L. Packard

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Vasishth, S. (2010). Integration and Prediction in Head-Final Structures. In: Yamashita, H., Hirose, Y., Packard, J. (eds) Processing and Producing Head-final Structures. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, vol 38. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9213-7_16

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