to be able to reach the level of ultimate attainment in the second language, learners need to acquire not only the grammar of the l2 but also the language processing mechanisms involved in the comprehension of sentences in real time. contrary to its importance, very little is known yet about online l2 processing. this study examines whether advanced iranian learners of english reactivate disloc...

This paper provides a new account for why online processing of filler-gap relative clause dependencies is more difficult in cases where filler-gap interacts with object control than in cases involving subject control, as reported by Frazier et al. (1983). Frazier et al. (1983) argued for a Recent Filler heuristic in which the parser expects to discharge the most recent filler at every gap site....

This study investigates how filler-gap relations are processed on-line in Chinese, in constructions where the relation is driven by the gap rather than by the filler. The specific issue is whether there is an Active Gap Strategy analogous to the Active Filler Strategy that has been well-documented by data from English, Italian and other languages. Results of a self-paced word-by-word reading ex...

In the tradition of transformational grammar, the term ‘(grammatical) construction’ has been a theoretical taboo at least since the 1980s. It was then that Chomsky argued that transformations like ‘passive’ and ‘raising’, common in earlier versions of transformational grammar, should be eliminated in favor of general conditions on structures that would allow a single operation – ‘Move NP’ – to ...

In this study I examine the relationship between syntactic working memory and intermediate gap positions in longdistance filler-gap dependencies. An “intermediate” gap position is a structural position, distinct from verbal argument positions, which is available to the filler at a clause edge between its surface dislocated position and its original canonical position. I will use anterior negati...

Various noncanonical sentence constructions are derived from basic sentence structures by a phrase displacement called Movement. The moved phrase (filler) leaves a silent copy at the extracted position (gap) and is reactivated when the hearer/reader passes over the gap. Consequently, memory operations are assumed to occur to establish the filler-gap link. For languages that have a relatively fr...

Accounts of the role of Broca's area in sentence comprehension range from specific syntactic operations to domain-general processes. The present study was designed to tease apart these two general accounts by measuring the BOLD response to two syntactically distinct long-distance dependencies that invoke abstractly similar predictive processes: backward anaphora and filler-gap dependencies. Pre...

This study examined the processing of Japanese wh-questions with preposed (scrambled) vs. in-situ (canonical SOV word order) wh-objects, and of yes/no-questions with scrambled vs. in-situ demonstrative objects. Questions with scrambled objects elicited bilateral slow anterior negative potentials between filler and gap. Scrambled demonstratives elicited P600 effects following the filler and (L)A...

Analyses of filler-gap dependencies usually involve complex syntactic rules or heuristics; however recent results suggest that filler-gap comprehension begins earlier than seemingly simpler constructions such as ditransitives or passives. Therefore, this work models filler-gap acquisition as a byproduct of learning word orderings (e.g. SVO vs OSV), which must be done at a very young age anyway ...

In this paper, I argue that the retrieval of filler-phrases in syntactic filler-gap dependencies is facilitated by encoding more information in the filler-phrase. Three self-paced reading experiments provide the evidence for this memory facilitation hypothesis: reading times decrease when more explicit whphrases and indefinites occur as fillers in three different syntactic constructions. Crucia...