Processing of Syntactic and Anaphoric Gap-filler Dependencies in Korean

Chapter 5 investigates the processing of backward anaphoric and syntactic long-distance dependencies; the goal is to investigate possible similarities and differences in underlying cognitive/neural processes. The results show that the processing of anaphoric dependencies is also sensitive to grammatical constraints defined in terms of the accessibility hierarchy or hierarchical structural distance. In the ERP experiment, both syntactic and anaphoric object dependencies elicit a LAN effect compared to control sentences at the matrix subject position. This is taken to suggest that in both types of dependencies, gap-filler association is immediate. However, compared to anaphoric dependencies, syntactic dependencies elicited a larger LAN effect. At the next word, relative to syntactic dependencies, anaphoric dependencies elicited a sustained LAN effect that continued through the end of the clause. The different time-course of these (left) anterior negativities was taken to suggest different gap-filler association requirements for syntactic versus anaphoric dependencies.