On recursive parsing
David J. Lobina · 2017
Abstract The processing of a linguistic expression, when viewed as a complex of (Specifier)-Head-Complement(s) phrases (SHCs), whilst suggestive of a recursive solution—that is, a sentence is a matrix SHC (subject-verb-object) composed of internal SHCs and the completion of the overall task is divisible into smaller but equivalent subtasks—in fact proceeds iteratively. This is here shown by manipulating the memory load of processing SHCs and measuring the reaction times of participants to extraneous tones placed at specific places within a sentence. The results show that there is a decreasing tendency in reaction times across a sentence, this pattern being explained in terms of two different types of uncertainty, a linguistic type and a more perceptual type. The results are discussed in the context of classic results with the tone-monitoring technique and future work along these lines is announced.