When is the verb a potential gap site? The influence of filler maintenance on the active search for a gap

ABSTRACTThroughout an open filler-gap dependency, some features of the filler are actively maintained in working-memory, while others decay and are retrieved at the gap. The current study asks whether the availability of certain features of the filler (due to their maintenance) influences the parser’s attempt to posit a gap upon encountering a verb. We report the results of two self-paced reading experiments testing the hypothesis that maintained features guide active gap-filling. Experiment 1 used similarity-based interference to show that animacy is a maintained feature. Experiment 2 combined a filled-gap design and a plausibility manipulation, with violation of either the animacy requirement or some other selectional restriction of the verb, to test when an attempt to resolve a dependency is made despite poor fit between the verb and the filler. Results suggest that only verbs selecting an argument with features like those maintained in the filler’s representation trigger an attempt to resolve the depe...