Processing Complexity and Filler-Gap Dependencies across Grammars  

Oleh:

Hawkins, John A.

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Language (ada di JSTOR) vol. 75 no. 2 (1999), page 244-285.
Fulltext: Vol. 75, No. 2, pp. 244-285.pdf (979.8KB)

Isi artikel

This article examines crosslinguistic variation in FILLER-GAP DEPENDENCIES (wH-questions and relative clauses) from a processing perspective, and integrates research findings from psycholin- guistics, language typology and generative grammar. Numerous implicational universals and hier- archies are proposed that receive a natural explanation in terms of processing and complexity. Filler-gap domains are complex in proportion to their size and in proportion to the amount of simultaneous syntactic and semantic processing that is required in addition to gap identification. They are simplified by making the gap easier to identify and process, or by avoiding a gap structure altogether. When grammatical variation is viewed from this perspective many descriptive insights and implicational patterns can be motivated that have either been stipulated or that have gone unnoticed hitherto. This approach provides an alternative to the assumption of innate parame- terized subjacency constraints in this area.*

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