Processing Complexity in Subjacency Violations: The Complex Noun Phrase Constraint∗

We may make an intuitive judgment that some linguistic expression is odd or deviant. But we cannot in general know, pretheoretically, whether this deviance is a matter of syntax, semantics, pragmatics, belief , memory limitations, style, etc. [Chomsky (1977:4)] 1 Introduction At least since the pioneering work of Chomsky and Miller (1963), it has been generally agreed within discussions of grammatical theory that processing has a role to play in explaining why certain linguistic examples are unacceptable. That is, certain examples that conform to the rules of the competence grammar, e.g. (1), are nevertheless judged to be unacceptable because they are difficult to process.