Parameters in the theory of sentence processing: Minimal Commitment theory goes east

This paper introduces the Minimal Commitment theory. This theory is a subspecies of deterministic parsers. The theory builds representations where immediate dominance and precedence relations are unspecified. Justification that this approach is psycholinguistically justified comes from its ability to provide a cross-linguistically valid theory of Garden path sentences in English and Japanese.I would lide to thank audiences at CUNY (1990) and (1991) for valuable comments and the chance to present this work. Parts of this paper were also presented at the Duke Symposium on Natural Language Processing, and at the Workshop on Japanese Sentence Processing held at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. I thank these audiences for valuable comments as well. Robert Berwick, Janet Fodor, Ted Gibson, Paul Gorrell, Norbert Hornstein, David Lightfoot, and Juan Uriagereka along with the University of Maryland NLP working group provided valuable assistance on this and earlier drafts.This work was supported by BNS902154-02 from the NSF.