Talk’s title: The Devil is in the Details (of the Linking Theory)
Abstract:
An important problem at the intersection between theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics is whether the fine-grained structural analyses posited by generative syntactitians have any relevance to the cognitive processes underlying language processing (Bresnan 1978). In this talk, I overview a line of research recasting such question in a computational framework, specifying a transparent (i.e., interpretable) linking hypothesis between grammatical structure and processing complexity.
Specifically, I present work exploring how a top-down parser for Minimalist grammars (Stabler, 1996; MGs) can explain known contrasts in off-line sentence processing in terms of subtle structural differences. This model is especially suited to probe the relation between syntactic and processing complexity, as it specifies: 1) a formalized theory of syntax in the form of a rich grammar formalism; 2) a sound and complete parser; 3) a linking theory between syntactic assumptions and processing behavior, in the form of metrics measuring memory usage.
As illustrative examples, I discuss how the model is able to account for a variety of off-line processing asymmetries cross-linguistically, how these results allow us to evaluate the predictions made by distinct analyses of syntactic phenomena, and how this puts us in the position to address broader questions about the nature of syntactic representations and fundamental principles in our linguistic theories.
By investigating this model’s performance across a growing array of processing phenomena, this project aims to add support to the psychological plausibility of fine-grained grammatical knowledge contributing to processing cost. It thus highlights the MG parsing model as a valuable, empirically grounded, theoretically insightful reframing of the Derivational Theory of Complexity (Miller and Chomsky, 1963).
