In this seminar we'll focus on the processing mechanisms involved in the processing of long-distance dependencies, e.g. relative clauses and wh-questions. We'll examine studies carried out in a variety of methods, which aimed to characterize the strategies adopted by the parser as it processes these complex structures. We'll touch on the following issues, among others:

-         Working memory mechanisms in dependency processing

-         The interaction of grammatical constraints and processing strategies

-         Processing in head-final languages

-         The interaction of verb argument structure and real time processing

During the course, students will design an experiment and run it on a number of participants.

Prerequisites: Beginners syntax, Psycholinguistics: Research methods and experimental design, Beginner's statistics for linguists, Introduction to theories of sentence processing

Course requirements: reading, final paper