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Reference
Bock, J. K. & Cutting, J. C. (1992). Regulating mental energy:
Performance units in language production. Journal of Memory and
Language, 31, 99-127.
Abstract
One of the classic puzzles of language is posed by the phenomenon of
discontinuous dependency, in which the form of an element at one point
in an utterance depends on the form of a noncontiguous controlling
element. How do speakers use the information carried by the controller
to implement the correct form of the dependent element? We contrasted
two accounts of this process that differ in their assumptions about the
organization of language formulation. The serial account, patterned after
an augmented-transition-network model of the parsing of discontinuous
dependencies, suggests that the controller is held in working memory
until the point in the string at which the dependent appears. A second
hypothesis, derived from a hierarchical model of language production,
predicts that controllers and dependents within the same clause are
specified concurrently, even when they are eventually separated in the
utterance. Using a procedure to elicit verb-agreement errors in speech,
we found that agreement errors were more frequent after phrases than
after clauses that separated the verb from its head noun, reversing the
direction of a related effect in language comprehension. When length
varied, longer phrases led to more errors; longer clauses did not.
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Last Modified: 31 July 1998
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