ABSTRACT
A theory of parsing must explain how sentences are processed. Specifically, it must explain how a serially presented surface string is analyzed into its underlying representation. Two central components of the underlying representation include (a) a specification of how any particular constituent is configured with other constituents, which we refer to as syntactic attachment; and (b) an assignment of semantic roles to constituents, which we refer to as thematic role assignment. This representation for a sentence generally specifies what goes with what in a sentence, as well as the semantic relations holding between one constituent and another. Constructing this representation under the limits imposed by the serial order of a sentence string constitutes a large part of what is required to read and understand a sentence.
