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Linear versus hierarchical agreement feature processing in comprehension.

N J Pearlmutter1

  • 1Psychology Dept., Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. pearlmutter@neu.edu

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
|March 21, 2000
PubMed
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Syntactic number tracking during language comprehension is hierarchical, not linear. This study shows that intervening plural nouns cause interference, supporting hierarchical models of memory and language processing.

Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Cognitive Science
  • Computational Linguistics

Background:

  • Understanding how humans process sentence structure and agreement is crucial for cognitive science.
  • Previous models proposed linear or hierarchical memory systems for tracking syntactic features like number.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether syntactic number features are tracked via a linear slot-based or a hierarchical feature-passing memory system during language comprehension.
  • To differentiate between competing models of grammatical number agreement.

Main Methods:

  • Two experiments were conducted using complex noun phrases with varying number features.
  • Participants

Main Results:

Related Experiment Videos

  • Experiment 1 (singular-head subjects) showed equal interference from intervening nouns at different positions, failing to distinguish between models.
  • Experiment 2 (plural-head subjects) demonstrated greater interference from the nearer intervening noun (N2) compared to the farther one (N3).

    • Conclusions:

    • The results support a hierarchical feature-tracking system for syntactic number.
    • Grammatical number information appears to decay over intervening marked elements, consistent with hierarchical processing and markedness theories.