ABSTRACT
The main purpose of this introduction is to argue that studying the processing of syntactic structure is studying the nature of language – that is, that this kind of psycholinguistics is linguistics. Quite often whatever becomes the focus of the science of linguistics is very much a matter of historical chance, in the sense that it often depends on the ability of particular linguists to impose agendas. This introduction aims to show that the agenda that focuses on syntactic processing is very likely to interest anyone interested in language once it is brought to their attention. The chapter briefly introduces how the study of adjunction, agreement and empty categories may be approached experimentally. It also briefly provides a classic example of this kind of research (the notion of minimal attachment) and it explains why and how we need to focus on ambiguity resolution and then go beyond that in order to understand the oracle, that is, the set of principles and/or heuristics that the mind deploys in order to deal with a syntactic structure.
