Jakub Dotlacil

Language, Linguistics and Memory

Abstract

One challenge that linguistics faces is how to connect linguistic theories, which are often developed as rich symbolic and discrete systems that abstract away from cognitive capacities, to experimental behavioral data, which are continuous and noisy and subject to various cognitive constraints.
In this talk, I will look at a theory of memory that can link symbolic theories to behavioral data, at least to some extent. The theory was developed in cognitive sciences in the 70’s (as a model of memory in the cognitive architecture ACT-R) and have recently become very popular in (psycho)linguistics under the name of cue-based retrieval memory model. The theory can explain various behavioral patterns regarding memory, including issues such as why (and when) we forget and why some pieces of information take more time to recall than others. Crucially, when coupled with a symbolic linguistic theory, it can also make predictions for reaction-time data like reading times.
I will discuss some old evidence from linguistic reading studies supporting the memory model. Then, I will move on to discuss two novel case studies: one showing that the memory model can be used to investigate symbolic structures in discourse meaning, another one showing that the memory model can be used to investigate symbolic structures in syntax (parsing of relative clauses). The case studies to be discussed in the talk were developed in the NWO project in collaboration with Tijn Schmitz, Jan Winkowski and Rick Nouwen.