Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Working Memory and Language
- Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Working Memory and Language
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- About the Editors
- About the Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Overview of the Handbook
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Models and Measures
- Part III Linguistic Theories and Frameworks
- 13 Have Grammars Been Shaped by Working Memory and If So, How?
- 14 Branching and Working Memory
- 15 Working Memory and Natural Syntax
- 16 The Role of Working Memory in Shaping Syntactic Dependency Structures
- 17 Working Memory in the Modular Cognition Framework
- 18 Short-Term and Working Memory Capacity and the Language Device
- Part IV First Language Processing
- Part V Bilingual Acquisition and Processing
- Part VI Language Disorders, Interventions, and Instruction
- Part VII Conclusion
- Index
- References
15 - Working Memory and Natural Syntax
from Part III - Linguistic Theories and Frameworks
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 July 2022
Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Working Memory and Language
- Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Working Memory and Language
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- About the Editors
- About the Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Overview of the Handbook
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Models and Measures
- Part III Linguistic Theories and Frameworks
- 13 Have Grammars Been Shaped by Working Memory and If So, How?
- 14 Branching and Working Memory
- 15 Working Memory and Natural Syntax
- 16 The Role of Working Memory in Shaping Syntactic Dependency Structures
- 17 Working Memory in the Modular Cognition Framework
- 18 Short-Term and Working Memory Capacity and the Language Device
- Part IV First Language Processing
- Part V Bilingual Acquisition and Processing
- Part VI Language Disorders, Interventions, and Instruction
- Part VII Conclusion
- Index
- References
Summary
Research on working memory and language has followed two quite divergent paths. The first line of inquiry examines questions relating to the components and organization of working memory – whether there are specialized buffers, the nature of the link to long-term memory, and so on. For the most part, studies of this type have little to say about the workings of language per se – why it has the particular types of relative clauses or patterns of verbal agreement that it does, for example. These issues fall under the purview of a different line of research, which seeks to trace various fundamental properties of language to the cognitive processes involved in the storage and manipulation of information – working memory, broadly construed. The goal of the latter research program, which I will try to advance here, is to establish that general properties of working memory, however they are ultimately integrated into a theoretical model, can contribute to a deeper understanding of the human language faculty. I will focus here on three phenomena that help illustrate this point – a restriction on the interpretation of reflexive pronouns, a curious prohibition on phonological contraction in a type of wh question, and a baffling constraint commonly known as the ‘that-trace effect.’ A careful examination of their properties reveals a previously unsuspected finding: they are shaped by the need to minimize processing cost, a key factor in our understanding of working memory as well.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Handbook of Working Memory and Language , pp. 322 - 342Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022
References
Alexopoulou, T., & Keller, F. 2007. Locality, cyclicity and resumption: At the interface between the grammar and the human sentence processor. Language, 83, 110–160.Google Scholar
Aoshima, S., Phillips, C., & Weinberg, A. 2002. Active filler effects and reanalysis: A study of Japanese wh-scrambling constructions. University of Maryland Working Papers in Linguistics, 12, 1–24.Google Scholar
Archangeli, D., & Pulleyblank, D. 2015. Phonology without universal grammar. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, article 1229.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bresnan, J. 1977. Variables in the theory of transformations. In Culicover, P., Wasow, T. & Akmajian, A. (Eds.), Formal syntax (pp. 157–196). Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bruening, B. 2006. Differences between the wh-scope-marking and wh-copy constructions in Passamaquoddy. Linguistic Inquiry, 37, 25–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caplan, D., & Waters, G. 2013. Memory mechanisms supporting syntactic computation. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20, 243–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carpenter, P., Miake, A., & Just, M. 1994. Working memory constraints in comprehension: Evidence from individual differences, aphasia, and aging. In Gernsbacher, M. (Ed.), Handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 1075–1122). Academic Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. 1956. Three models for the description of language. Institute of Radio Engineers Transactions on Information Theory, 2(3), 113–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N., & Miller, G. 1963. Introduction to the formal analysis of natural languages. In Luce, R., Bush, R., & Galanter, E. (Eds.), Handbook of mathematical psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 269–321). Wiley.Google Scholar
Cinque, G. 2020. The syntax of relative clauses: A unified analysis. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clifton, C., & Frazier, L. 1989. Comprehending sentences with long-distance dependencies. In Carlson, G. & Tanenhaus, M. (Eds.), Linguistic structure in language processing (pp. 273–317). Kluwer.Google Scholar
Cowan, N. 2015. George Miller’s magical number of immediate memory in retrospect: Observations on the faltering progress of science. Psychological Review, 122, 536–541.Google Scholar
Crain, S., Goro, T., & Thornton, R. 2006. Language acquisition is language change. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 35, 31–49.Google Scholar
Culicover, P. 1993. Evidence against ECP accounts of the that-t effect. Linguistic Inquiry, 24, 557–561.Google Scholar
Gardner, H. 1985. The mind’s new science: A history of the cognitive revolution. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Gathercole, S. 2008. Working memory. In Roediger, H. (Ed.), Cognitive psychology of memory (pp. 33–52). Elsevier.Google Scholar
Getz, H. 2019. Acquiring wanna: Beyond universal grammar. Language Acquisition, 26, 119–143.Google Scholar
Gibson, E. 1998. Linguistic complexity: Locality of syntactic dependencies. Cognition, 68, 1–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goodall, G. 2004. On the syntax and processing of wh-questions in Spanish. In Chand, V., Kelleher, A., Rodrígues, A., & Schmeiser, B. (Eds.), Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp. 101–114). Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. 2004. Efficiency and complexity in grammars. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hofmeister, P., & Sag, I. 2010. Cognitive constraints and island effects. Language, 86, 366–415.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. 2007. A parallel architecture perspective on language processing. Brain Research, 1146, 2–22.Google Scholar
Kluender, R. 1998. On the distinction between strong and weak islands: A processing perspective. In Culicover, P. & McNally, L. (Eds.), The limits of syntax (Syntax and Semantics 29), 241–279. Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kluender, R., & Kutas, M. 1993. Subjacency as a processing phenomenon. Language and Cognitive Processes, 8, 573–633.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, R., Vasishth, S., & Van Dyke, J. 2006. Computational principles of working memory in sentence comprehension. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 447–454.Google Scholar
Lutken, C. J., Legendre, G., & Omaki, A. 2020. Syntactic creativity errors in children’s wh-questions. Cognitive Science, 44(7), e12849.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. 2015. Introduction. In MacWhinney, B. & O’Grady, W. (Eds.), The handbook of language emergence (pp. 1–31). Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
McDaniel, D. 1989. Partial and multiple wh-movement. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 7, 565–604.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDaniel, D., Chiu, B., & Maxfield, T. 1995. Parameters for wh-movement types: Evidence from child English. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 13, 709–753.Google Scholar
Miller, G. 1956. Human memory and the storage of information. Transactions on Information Theory, 2(3), 129–137.Google Scholar
Miller, G., & Chomsky, N. 1963. Finitary models of language users. In Luce, R., Bush, R., & Galanter, E. (Eds.), Handbook of mathematical psychology (Vol. 2, 419–491. Wiley.Google Scholar
O’Grady, W. 2015. Anaphora and the case for emergentism. In MacWhinney, B. & O’Grady, W. (Eds.), The handbook of language emergence, 100–122. Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
O’Grady, W. 2021. Natural syntax: An emergentist primer. http://ling.hawaii.edu/william-ogrady/ and researchgate.netGoogle Scholar
Pearl, L., & Sprouse, J. 2013. Syntactic islands and learning biases: Combining experimental syntax and computational modeling to investigate the language acquisition problem. Language Acquisition, 20, 23–68.Google Scholar
Perlmutter, D. 1968. Deep and surface constraints in syntax (Doctoral dissertation, Department of Linguistics, MIT).Google Scholar
Phillips, C. 2013. On the nature of island constraints I: Language processing and reductionist accounts. In Sprouse, J. & Hornstein, N. (Eds.), Experimental syntax and island effects (pp. 64–108). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Phillips, C., Kazanina, N., & Abada, S. 2005. ERP effects of the processing of syntactic long-distance dependencies. Cognitive Brain Research, 22, 407–428.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pickering, M. 2000. No evidence for traces in sentence comprehension. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 47–48.Google Scholar
Schwering, S. & MacDonald, M. 2020. Verbal working memory as emergent from language comprehension and production. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, Article 68. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.00068Google Scholar
Sprouse, J., Wagers, M., & Phillips, C. 2012. A test of the relation between working memory capacity and syntactic island effects. Language, 88, 82–123.Google Scholar
Thornton, R. 1990. Adventures in long-distance moving: The acquisition of complex wh-questions (Doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut).Google Scholar
Traxler, M., & Pickering, M. 1996. Plausibility and the processing of unbounded dependencies: An eye-tracking study. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 454–475.Google Scholar
Wagers, M., & Phillips, C. 2009. Multiple dependencies and the role of the grammar in real-time comprehension. Journal of Linguistics, 45, 395–433.Google Scholar
Warren, P., Speer, S., & Schafer, A. 2003. Wanna-contraction and prosodic disambiguation in US and NZ English. Wellington Working Papers in Linguistics, 15, 31–49.Google Scholar
Yngve, V. 1960. A model and an hypothesis for language structure. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 104, 444–466.Google Scholar
Yngve, V. 1998. Clues from the Depth Hypothesis: A reply to Geoffrey Sampsons’ review. Computational Linguistics, 24, 633–640.Google Scholar