Dr. Peter Gordon
The comprehension of complex sentences has played a central role in developing theories of how language is situated within cognition more generally. Two broad cognitive factors have been identified in the comprehension of complex sentences: the interaction of language comprehension with memory and the manner in which information is packaged in cooperative exchanges. Relative clauses in English illustrate both of these factors. Those that have a missing argument in object position are more difficult to comprehend than their counterparts with a missing argument in subject position. When a subject is extracted only one NP at a time is encountered before integration with a verb can begin. When an object is extracted two NPs must be held in memory before either can be integrated with a verb. Observations such as this are central to theories that emphasize the constraints that human memory places on language comprehension. However, theories that emphasize the role of information packaging in language processing provide ready explanations of many of the phenomena associated with these types of complex sentences. This talk will present online measures of the comprehension of complex sentences in English and Korean that separate the contributions to language comprehension of memory and information packaging and which provide evidence about how human memory constrains language processing. Visit our website: http://www.cogsci.jhu.edu (menu header: Events)
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