Working Memory in Sentence Comprehension: Processing Hindi Center Embeddings

The first-ever investigation of sentence processing in Hindi, Working Memory in Sentence Comprehension studies the predictions of three existing, wide-coverage sentence processing models. In experiments that apply these models to Hindi, Shravan Vasishth develops a new sentence processing model that builds on existing theories and overcomes their empirical problems. Advancing the understanding of human parsing processes, this book is a landmark in cross-linguistic research, presenting a challenging set of sentence processing facts that will impact future theories.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- List of Tables -- List of Figures -- List of Algorithms -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- 1 Introduction -- 1.1 Self-center embeddings and sentence processing -- 1.2 Self-center embeddings in Hindi -- 1.2.1 Some syntactic properties of self-center embeddings -- 1.2.2 Semantics/pragmatics: Differential Object Marking in Hindi -- 1.3 Case-marked objects are specific, but conversationally implicate definiteness -- 1.4 Bare singular NPs really are indefinites -- 1.4.1 Dayal's arguments against treating bare singular NPs as indefinites -- 1.4.2 Alternative explanations for the Hindi facts -- 2 Three models of sentence processing -- 2.1 Hawkins' Early Immediate Constituents (1994, 1998) -- 2.2 Gibson's Dependency Locality Theory (2000) -- 2.3 Lewis' Retrieval Interference Theory -- 2.3.1 Retrieval Interference Theory, 2001 (RIT-01) -- 2.3.2 Retrieval Interference Theory, 2002 (RIT-02) -- 3 The effect of identical case marking -- 3.1 Experiment 1 -- 3.1.1 Method and Procedure -- 3.1.2 Results -- 3.1.3 Discussion -- 3.2 Experiment 2 -- 3.2.1 Method -- 3.2.2 Results -- 3.2.3 Discussion -- 3.3 Experiment 3 -- 3.3.1 M…