Complexity Limitations on Parsers and Grammars

Hungarian evidence is examined for its relevance to Edward S. Stabler's (1994) bounded connectivity hypothesis (BCH). The BCH limits the processing complexity of linguistic constructions involving iteration (eg, center embedding). One type of Hungarian evidence - wh-chains - provides straightforward evidence for the BCH, but the other - topicalization - seems at odds with Stabler's theory. This apparent counterexample can be accounted for by restricting the domain of application of the BCH to truly ambiguous structures. Multiple topics occupying the same position obey the nested dependency constraint, which eliminates the ambiguity. The memory burden posed by iterated occurrences of the same relationship is thus relieved, making the BCH unnecessary. This analysis provides further motivation for treating the BCH as a consequence of the limitations of human memory capacity. 8 References. Adapted from the source document