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The Processing of Tense

Psycholinguistic Studies on the Interpretation of Tense and Temporal Relations

  • Book
  • © 2001

Overview

Authors:
  1. Michael Walsh Dickey

    1. Northwestern University, USA

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Part of the book series: Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics (SITP, volume 28)

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Table of contents (5 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
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  2. Introduction

    • Michael Walsh Dickey
    Pages 1-53

  3. Interpreting AspectP

    • Michael Walsh Dickey
    Pages 55-113

  4. Interpreting TenseP

    • Michael Walsh Dickey
    Pages 115-163

  5. Sequence of Tense and Simplicity

    • Michael Walsh Dickey
    Pages 165-211

  6. Conclusions and Remaining Questions

    • Michael Walsh Dickey
    Pages 213-229

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 231-312
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Keywords

About this book

This work is a psycho linguistic investigation of the processing of tense (more specifically, the English past tense): When it is interpreted, how it is interpreted, and what it is interpreted with respect to. While there has been a great deal of attention paid to tense in the syntax and semantics literature, little work has been done on the details of the psychological processing of this category. The chief value and contribution of this book is to present a richly detailed in-depth study of the processing of tense in adult comprehension tasks, providing an excellent model of how to conceive of detailed experimental work against a background of sophisticated, deep, and broad linguistic theory. The discussion of the representational issues is deep and informative, and is directly brought to bear on experimental issues. The experiments aim to evaluate whether a hypothesis called "Parsimony," a highly plausible notion that has received tentative experimental support in other domains, is the chief controlling feature of the interpretation of tense. The experimental results presented quite consistently do not confirm the apparent predictions made by Parsimony, but rather tend to be more consistent with another view (which Parsimony is aimed at opposing) which holds that actual structural factors in the syntax of a sentence are a decisive factor. Along the way, the author considers a number of other plausible hypotheses as the experimental results are presented, but evaluating Parsimony remains the chief organizing principle of the line of research presented here.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Northwestern University, USA

    Michael Walsh Dickey

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Processing of Tense

  • Book Subtitle: Psycholinguistic Studies on the Interpretation of Tense and Temporal Relations

  • Authors: Michael Walsh Dickey

  • Series Title: Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0568-5

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2001

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4020-0184-0Published: 31 December 2001

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4020-0185-7Published: 31 December 2001

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-010-0568-5Published: 29 June 2013

  • Series ISSN: 1873-0043

  • Series E-ISSN: 2215-1788

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIII, 310

  • Topics: Psycholinguistics, Semantics, Theoretical Linguistics, Artificial Intelligence

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