37.2175, Books: Memory Retrieval in Presupposition Processing: Winkowski (2026)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2175. Wed Jun 24 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2175, Books: Memory Retrieval in Presupposition Processing: Winkowski (2026)

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Date: 22-Jun-2026
From: Jan Martin [lotdissertations-fgw at uva.nl]
Subject: Memory Retrieval in Presupposition Processing: Winkowski (2026)


Title: Memory retrieval in presupposition processing
Subtitle: An experimental and computational approach
Series Title: LOT Dissertation Series
Publication Year: 2026

Publisher: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke
(LOT)
           http://www.lotpublications.nl/
Book URL: https://dx.medra.org/10.48273/LOT0716

Author(s): Jan Winkowski

Paperback
ISBN: 978-94-6093-501-5
Pages: 213
Price 36,00 euros

Abstract:

Language comprehension relies on memory. In many cases, we need
information scattered throughout an utterance to arrive at its
meaning. Consider the sentence: "Mary, who was really, really tired,
passes the bag to Suzy." To understand who is doing the passing, we
need to retrieve the word "Mary" when reading "passes the bag".
To date, extensive research has investigated memory operations
involved in processing syntactic dependencies within a sentence. This
dissertation extends that research by focusing on semantic
dependencies, which are not constrained by sentence boundary.
The approach taken here is a mix of behavioural experiments and
computational modeling. The experiments attempt to establish whether
semantic dependencies are subject to distance effects, that is,
whether they require more effortful memory operations when the
distance between the head and the dependent increases. Having
established this, the dissertation turns to modeling to propose a
mechanistic computational model explaining this phenomenon. The
models, implemented in ACT-R, explore a variety of possible
explanations and ultimately suggest that the effect arises as a
combination of parallel processing and diminishing activation of the
relevant chunk over time.
The dissertation contributes to our understanding of memory systems
involved in language comprehension and highlights the difficulties and
pitfalls in cognitive modeling.

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science




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