In three experiments, we examined an interaction between the pronoun they and syntactic analysis. Experiment 1 demonstrates that they can slow reading times to is when this verb is visually presented immediately after a sentence fragment ending with an ambiguous expression such as flying kites. This effect seems to involve a coreference assignment linking they and the ambiguous expression that influences the syntactic analysis of the latter. Experiments 2 and 3 show that this effect can operate even when coreference between they and the ambiguous expression is implausible. These results support a modular theory of comprehension that includes structurally oriented reference processes with access to some, but not all, of the listener's knowledge relevant to coreference.The syntactic principles that characterize sentences in natural languages have a distinctive quality that has, as far as we know, no parallel in other domains. Although these principles seem to be quite complex, they are nevertheless employed with such speed and facility as to suggest that their application is a kind of reflex (see Fodor, 1983, p. iv), This, among many other considerations, has led some investigators to speculate that these principles are brought to bear on sentence comprehension by special cognitive processes dedicated to this task. In particular, the suggestion is that these processes are distinct from and essentially insensitive to those that deploy the interpretive principles and real-world knowledge that, together with the syntactic principles, determine sentence interpretation. For example, the fact that the patient is understood to perform surgery in the sentence The patient consulted the doctor after performing the appendectomy suggests that some process dominated by the structural properties of this sentence overrides any processes that might provide a more plausible analysis based on real-world knowledge. Models of the language comprehension system that stress distinctions among process types and posit This article is based in part on the first author's dissertation, which was done at the City University of New York under the direction of the second author. This project benefited greatly from discussions with Bob Fiengo, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, Terry Langendoen, Lou Gerstman, Merrill Garrett, and Tom Bever. Roberta Klatzky and two anonymous reviewers provided very valuable comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. The authors are grateful to Uma Subramanian for invaluable assistance in executing the third experiment. Requests for reprints should be sent to W. Cowart, Cunz Hall, Room 204; Ohio State University, 1841 Millikin Rd., Columbus, OH 43210. constraints on interactions among types are collectively known as modular or autonomous theories.The research reported here supports a modular conception of the language comprehension system. We argue that an empirically adequate theory of this system must recognize a distinction between processes that select condidate antecedents for certain pronouns on narrowly struc...

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We argue for an extension of the proposal that grammars are in part shaped by processing systems. Hawkins (2014) and others who have advanced this idea focus primarily on parsing. Our extension focuses on production, and we use that to explore explanations for certain subject/object asymmetries in extraction structures. The phenomenon we examine, which we term the mirror asymmetry , runs in opposite directions for within-clause and across-clause (long-distance) extraction, showing a preference for subject extraction in the former and for object extraction in the latter. We review several types of evidence suggesting that the mirror asymmetry and related phenomena are best explained by an account of the formation of grammars that assigns an important role to properties of sentence planning in production.

Recent developments in psycholinguistics, neurology, and brain imaging technology may have made it possible to integrate linguistic, psychological, and neurological approaches to the study of syntactic processing. In an integrated approach, observations of the brain itself, or observations that are linked to it, enrich the database on which processing theory is built and by which it is constrained.