Work

Revisiting processing complexity of nested and cross-serial dependencies

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: In two web-based experiments, we compare comprehension difficulty between Dutch and German sentences with clusters of two or three verbs. In Dutch, such sentences involve crossing dependencies, whereas these dependencies are nested in German. Replicating the seminal finding of Bach et al. (1986), we find that the crossing (Dutch) structure is easier to comprehend than the nested (German) structure, although we find a different pattern of results in terms of where this difficulty manifests. The results are in line with predictions from the Dependency Locality Theory.

Source: Glossa Psycholinguistics

DOI: 10.5070/g601120916

Authors: Himanshu Yadav, Stefan Frank, Richard Futrell, Samar Husain

Institutions: Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Radboud University Nijmegen, University of California, Irvine, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

Language: English

Topic: Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism

Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: diamond

OpenAlex ID: W4407700775

FWCI: 0.553

Cites:

Cited by: 1

Related to: 10