Doctoral Dissertation Research: The interaction of discourse status and memory retrieval in real time language processing

本论文研究项目探讨了人类如何阅读和理解句子的认知基础。更具体地说，该项目将通过研究话语环境中不同类型的语言信息如何被表示和处理来推进语义学和语用学的语言理论。这项实验调查的结果将使我们了解工作记忆与语言和心理语言学之间的相互作用，并将潜在地用于行为营销和新闻等领域，在这些领域，理解一个人对修辞和话语结构的解释至关重要。该项目还将丰富联合项目负责人的指导和管理技能，并将为本科生助理提供宝贵的研究经验。本项目由多个句子加工实验组成，通过对语篇状态不同的关系分句类型——同位语从句（ARCs）和限制性从句（RRCs）进行处理，研究语篇结构和信息在工作记忆中的组织和维持。实验1-5比较了相对条款类型在ARC和RRC语境下的数字协议吸引效应；实验6-7研究了主宾关系从句的加工成本；在实验8-11中考察了代词指称和预设消解在ARCs和RRCs中的作用。研究结果将有助于理解语篇状态如何影响实时语言处理中的工作记忆提取，并将为推进语篇结构相关的语言学理论提供见解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This dissertation research project explores the cognitive underpinnings of how humans read and comprehend sentences. More specifically, the project will advance linguistic theories in semantics and pragmatics by investigating how different types of linguistic information in a discourse context are represented and processed. Results from this experimental investigation will inform our understanding of the interplay between working memory and language and psycholinguistics, and will potentially be of use to fields such as behavioral marketing and journalism, where understanding one’s interpretation of rhetorical and discourse structure is of crucial importance. The project will also enrich the co-PI’s mentoring and managerial skills, and will provide undergraduate assistants with valuable research experience.The project is comprised of multiple sentence processing experiments that will manipulate relative clause types that differ in discourse status--appositive relative clauses (ARCs) and restrictive relative clauses (RRCs)--to investigate the organization and maintenance of discourse structure and information in working memory. Multiple methods (self-paced reading and eye tracking) are deployed to assess the impact of relative clause type on reading costs: Number agreement attraction effects in ARC and RRC contexts are compared in Experiments 1–5; processing costs for subject- versus object-relative clauses are investigated in Experiments 6–7; and pronominal reference and presupposition resolution across ARCs and RRCs is examined in Experiments 8–11. Findings will contribute to the understanding of how discourse status impacts working memory retrieval in real-time language processing, and will also provide insight for advancing linguistic theories related to discourse structure.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.