Entwicklung eines Modells der menschlichen Satzverarbeitung aufbauend auf Konzepten der Optimalitätstheorie und der Rational Analysis. Umsetzung des Models durch Computersimulationen mit Hilfe von corpusbasierten Techniken aus der Computerlinguistik; Test des Modells durch Blickbewegungsdaten.

• Applicant: Dr. Frank Keller
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2001 to 2004
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5322502

Human sentence processing is highly automatic and takes place with great robustness and accuracy. Current models of human parsing typically focus on the processing of sentences that are carefully constructed to investigate how the parser reacts to ambiguities in the input. While successful in predicting certain structural and lexical preferences of the human parser, these models have difficulties explanining why the parser is generally robust. The proposed research program assumes that these limitations can be overcome by applying the concept of optimization to human sentence processing. Optimization is at the heart of recent developments in cognitive psychology and theoretical linguistics. I will develop an optimization-based account of human parsing using corpus-based and probabilistic techniques, providing a fully implemented parsing model that explains the robustness and broad coverage of the human sentence processor. By using concepts from Optimality Theory, this model will also offer a systematic account of crosslinguistic variation in human parsing. Its predictions will be tested against a broad range of experimental data from both English and German.

• DFG Programme: Emmy Noether International Fellowships