ABSTRACT
I will refer to as the distance hypothesis any claim that increasing distance between certain arguments or between dependents and heads results in increased or decreased processing difficulty. Early Immediate Constituents (EIC) and Discourse Locality Theory (DLT) predict an increase in processing difficulty if certain arguments are displaced from their canonical position, but each does so for different reasons (see pages 40, 42). Interestingly, Retrieval Interference Theory (RIT-01) predicts improved processability if certain arguments are displaced with respect to their canonical order.
