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Comprehending Sentences with Long-Distance Dependencies

  • Chapter
Linguistic Structure in Language Processing

Part of the book series: Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics ((SITP,volume 7))

Abstract

In the process of comprehending a sentence, a reader or listener identifies its grammatical constituents and their relationships. The resulting grammatical analysis is eventually combined with lexical information and world knowledge to arrive at the message conveyed by the sentence. We propose that one or more distinct components of the human cognitive system are responsible for identifying the grammatical characteristics of a sentence (see Berwick and Weinberg, 1983, 1984; J. A. Fodor, 1983; J. D. Fodor, 1979; Forster, 1979, for similar views).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA

    Charles Clifton Jr. & Lyn Frazier

Authors
  1. Charles Clifton Jr.
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  2. Lyn Frazier
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department Foreign Languages, University of Rochester, USA

    Greg N. Carlson

  2. Psychology Department, University of Rochester, USA

    Michael K. Tanenhaus

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© 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Clifton, C., Frazier, L. (1989). Comprehending Sentences with Long-Distance Dependencies. In: Carlson, G.N., Tanenhaus, M.K. (eds) Linguistic Structure in Language Processing. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2729-2_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2729-2_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-55608-075-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-2729-2

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