Grant Goodall: “Grammar and working memory: How experimental syntax can help us tell the difference”

The use of formal experiments to measure sentence acceptability, known as “experimental syntax”, is able to capture many fine-grained grammatical contrasts, but it also captures effects that have long been thought to be extra-grammatical, such as those induced by increased cost to working memory. This ambiguity in the source of acceptability is a problem in some ways, but experimental syntax itself gives us some useful tools to address it. I show this through a series of case studies of constraints on wh-dependencies, including the role of intervening arguments, finiteness, D-linking, and islands. These cases suggest that grammatical and working memory constraints can be usefully distinguished, with the former sensitive to intervening hierarchical structure and the latter sensitive to intervening referents.

About eight times each year the department hosts colloquium talks by distinguished faculty from around the world.

More information at: http://linguistics.ucsc.edu/news-events/colloquia/index.html

2014 – 2015 Speakers

FALL 2014
October 17th
Jane Grimshaw, Rutgers

December 12th
Adam Albright, MIT

WINTER 2015
January 16th
Claire Halpert, University of Minnesota

January 23rd
Valentine Hacquard, Maryland

February 6th
Rachel Walker, USC

mid-March: date TBA
LASC: Linguistics at Santa Cruz Conference

SPRING 2015
April 10th
Daniel Lassiter, Stanford

April 17th
Keith Johnson, UC Berkeley

May 1st
Grant Goodall, UC San Diego

May/June: date TBA
LURC: Linguistics Undergraduate Research Conference