Evaluating the direct association hypothesis: A reply to pickering and barry (1991)

Recent investigations of filler-gap dependencies in sentence processing have generally assumed that the parser must compute an antecedent-trace relation in which the trace site is identical to the canonical position of the moved phrase. In a recent article, Pickering and Barry (1991) challenge this view and present arguments against a processing account involving traces (or empty categories) and propose a “direct association hypothesis” (DAH) in which a preposed phrase is directly associated with its subcategoriser (either verb or preposition).But the apparent validity of the arguments against the empty category analysis stems from the fact that only a narrow range of examples was discussed. An examination of a wider range of structures involving filler-gap dependencies reveals that the arguments presented by Pickering and Barry fail to support the DAH.