The role of semantic and syntactic features in dependency interference effects
Date
2022
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The processing of long-distance dependencies has been one of the primary means of investigating the linguistic components involved in working memory mechanisms behind the maintenance of wh fillers and retrieval of the stored filler at the gap site. This thesis investigates how semantic and syntactic features of the filler and an intervening element interact and have an impact on dependency formations. Specifically, this thesis explores the extent to which semantic and syntactic features can modulate the interference effects in dependency formations. First, I examine the effect of NP types concerning the filler and the intervening noun to probe how different semantic information of NP types interacts with contextual information in the processing of filler-gap dependencies. In three experiments, I found that semantic information on different NP types of an intervening noun plays a role in interferences during dependency formations and the semantic property of NP types is a crucial factor determining the susceptibility to contextual information. Secondly, I use the processing of subject-verb agreement dependencies involving the filler-gap dependency to probe how syntactic information, in terms of the argument status of a filler-gap dependency and an intervening element, modulates the difficulty of dependency formations. The processing of subject-verb agreement serves as a tool to explore the difficulty of dependency formations, which can elicit a temporary illusion of grammaticality/ungrammaticality. Two experimental studies reveal that the argument status of a filler-gap dependency can also modulate the processing of subject-verb agreement. I propose two stages of subject-verb agreement formation, which consider the argument status of both the filler and intervening noun in the memory encoding and retrieval process.
Description
Keywords
Wh fillers, Dependency interference, Gap site