Attempts to use experimental research to decide between alternative sophisticated linguistic analyses can easily disappoint. What we take to be radically different approaches from the perspective of linguistic theory, in fact, rarely make different predictions in terms of e.g. reading times or electrophysiological responses.

This does not mean that linguistic theory does not have its place in experimental psycholinguistics or that results from psycholinguistics cannot help us better understand theoretical issues in linguistics.

In this course, we will focus on some cases in which working across the divide can support both domains of research. The discussion will focus primarily on the following topics:

• Locality and open issues in Cue-Based Retrieval Models
• (Pseudo) Relative Clauses
• Experiential Constructions and incremental semantic processing
• Nested garden-paths at the syntax-prosody interface