Memory and Language

Peter C. Gordon

Language Comprehension based on
– memory
  * discourse accessibility

* similarity-based interference
eg: The teacher said that Jonh cheated in the exam.
      (descriptive)             (name)
  John said that the student cheated in the exam.
  (name)              (descriptive)
                                                  vs.
  The teacher said that the student cheated in the exam.
  John said that Bill cheated in the exam.

→ similar NPs resulted in more RT
→ disimilar NPs resulted in less RT.

– information structure

topicality of NPs – Alignment with syntactic postions