An Empirical Evaluation of Sentence Processing Models: Center Embeddings in Hindi

Data from Hindi center-embedding constructions (CECs) are used to evaluate three sentence processing models: Joshi’s Embedded Pushdown Automaton (EPDA), Gibson’s Syntactic Prediction Locality Theory (SPLT), and Lewis’ Interference and Confusability Theory (ICT). The SPLT and ICT (but not the EPDA) are found to correctly predict several processing facts about Hindi. However, the experimental results also reveal a problem for these two current, wide-coverage theories: neither model appears to be able to account for differences in reading time observed at noun phrases in Hindi CECs. A sentence processing model is proposed in an accompanying article (see (Vasishth & Kruijff 2001) in this volume) that can in principle be integrated with the ICT to provide a unified account of processing difficulty in the languages investigated.This research was funded by the Department of Linguistics and the Department of Computer and Information Science, OSU

Honorification Revisited

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