AN INVESTIGATION OF LATE CLOSURE - THE ROLE OF SYNTAX, THEMATIC STRUCTURE, AND PRAGMATICS IN INITIAL AND FINAL INTERPRETATION

Four reading-time experiments investigated the application of the late closure principle in Italian. The experiments tested the principle go verning the initial attachment of different types of modifiers (relati ve clause, adjectival phrase, and prepositional phrase) to a complex n oun phrase. By manipulating the type of preposition within the complex noun phrase, the authors investigated the role of the thematic struct ure in initial and final parsing. The results show that the late closu re principle applies to initial parsing in Italian without being affec ted by the thematic structure of the complex noun phrase. Final interp retation, however, shows an effect of pragmatic preference and an effe ct of thematic structure on syntactic revisions. The results are discu ssed in terms of a parsing model that adopts syntactic parsing strateg ies and makes modular use of linguistic information.