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Processing cost and its consequences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2016

William O'Grady*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822. ogrady@hawaii.edu

Abstract

I focus on two challenges that processing-based theories of language must confront: the need to explain why language has the particular properties that it does, and the need to explain why processing pressures are manifested in the particular way that they are. I discuss these matters with reference to two illustrative phenomena: proximity effects in word order and a constraint on contraction.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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