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Working memory and the language device
Author(s)
Date Issued
2019
Citation
Lu, B., & Wen, Z. (2019 Nov 10). Working memory and the language device. International Round Table Forum on Language Aptitude: Pushing the Boundaries, China.
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
Many general linguistic theories and language processing frameworks have assumed that language processing is largely a chunking procedure and that it is underpinned and constrained by our memory limitations. Despite this general consensus, the distinction between short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) limitations as they relate to language processing has remained elusive. To resolve this issue, we propose an integrated memory- and chunking-based metric of comprehension complexity, in which we postulate that STM limitations of 7±2 (Miller, 1956) are more sensitive to the Instant Chunk Number (ICN), while WM limitations of 4±1 (Cowan, 2001) are more sensitive to the mean dependency distance (MDD; Liu, 2008) during language processing. Examples of concrete calculations of our new metric are presented vis-à-vis Liu’s MDD metric and related methodology issues are also discussed. We conclude the paper by echoing some recently repeated calls (O'Grady, 2012 & 2017; Gómez-Rodríguez et al., 2019; Wen, 2019) to include STM and WM limitations as part and parcel of the language device (LD; cf. Chomsky, 1957) in that their impacts are ubiquitous and permeating in all essential linguistic domains ranging from phonology to grammar, discourse comprehension and
production.
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