Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-27gpq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T18:16:54.500Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Commentary on Clahsen and Felser

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2006

Matthew J. Traxler
Affiliation:
University of California at Davis

Extract

In this article, the authors lay out an impressive body of evidence that supports two main claims. First, they favor the continuity hypothesis, according to which children's parsing mechanisms are essentially the same as adults'. Parsing strategies change little over time, and those changes that occur are attributed to differences in lexical processing efficiency and working memory capacity. Second, they suggest that there are substantial differences in the parsing strategies adopted by native speakers and adult learners of second languages.

Type
Commentaries
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Caplan D., Hildebrandt N., & Waters G. S. 1994. Interaction of verb selectional restrictions, noun animacy, and syntactic form in sentence processing. Language and Cognitive Processes, 9, 549585.Google Scholar
Caplan D., & Waters G. S. 1990. Short term memory and language comprehension: A critical review of the neuropsychological literature. In G. Vallar & T. Shallice (Eds.), Neuropsychological impairments of short-term memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Caplan D., & Waters G. S. 1995. Aphasic disorders of syntactic comprehension and working memory capacity. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 12, 637649.Google Scholar
Caplan D., & Waters G. S. 1999. Verbal working memory and sentence comprehension. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 77126.Google Scholar
Engle R. W. 2002. Working memory capacity as executive attention. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 1923.Google Scholar
Ferreira F., Bailey K., & Ferraro V. 2002. Good enough representations in language comprehension. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 1115.Google Scholar
King J., & Just M. A. 1991. Individual differences in syntactic parsing: The role of working memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 580602.Google Scholar
La Pointe L. B., & Engle R. W. 1990. Simple and complex word spans as measures of working memory capacity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, Cognition, 16, 11181133.Google Scholar
MacDonald M. C., Just M. A., & Carpenter P. A. 1992. Working memory constraints on the processing of syntactic ambiguity. Cognitive Psychology, 24, 5698.Google Scholar
Pearlmutter N. J., & MacDonald M. E. 1995. Individual differences and probabilistic constraints in syntactic ambiguity resolution. Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 521542.Google Scholar
Rochon E., Waters G. S., & Caplan D. 1994. Sentence comprehension in patients with Alzheimer's disease. Brain and Language, 46, 329349.Google Scholar
Townsend D. J., & Bever T. G. 1999. Sentence comprehension. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Traxler M. J. 2002. Plausibility and subcategorization preference in children's processing of temporarily ambiguous sentences: Evidence from self-paced reading. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55A, 7596.Google Scholar
Traxler M. J. (in press). Plausibility and verb subcategorization preference in temporarily ambiguous sentences. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research.
Traxler M. J., Morris R. K., & Seely R. E. 2002. Processing subject and object relative clauses: Evidence from eye-movements. Journal of Memory and Language, 47, 6990.Google Scholar
Traxler M. J., Williams R. S., Blozis S. A., & Morris R. K. 2005. Working memory, animacy, and verb class in the processing of relative clauses. Manuscript submitted for publication.Google Scholar
Wanner E., & Maratsos M. 1978. An ATN approach to comprehension. In M. Halle, J. Bresnan, & G. A. Miller (Eds.), Linguistic theory and psychological reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Waters G. S., & Caplan D. 1992. The capacity theory of sentence comprehension: Critique of Just and Carpenter. Psychological Review, 103, 761772.Google Scholar
Waters G. S., & Caplan D. 1996a. The measurement of verbal working memory capacity and its relation to reading comprehension. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 49, 5179.Google Scholar
Waters G. S., & Caplan D. 1996b. Processing resource capacity and the comprehension of garden path sentences. Memory and Cognition, 24, 342355.Google Scholar
Waters G. S., & Caplan D. 1997. Working memory and on-line sentence comprehension in patients with Alzheimer's disease. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 26, 377400.Google Scholar
Waters G. S., & Caplan D. 2003. The reliability and stability of verbal working memory measures Behavior Research Methods, Instruments and Computers, 35, 550564.Google Scholar
Waters G. S., Caplan D., & Rochon E. 1995. Processing capacity and sentence comprehension in patients with Alzheimer's disease. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 12, 1308.Google Scholar