Efficiency profiling for Japanese word order performance data

Abstract

This thesis expands the empirical repertoire of the performance theory proposed in Hawkins (1994, 2004, 2014) with two major studies. The first is concerned with the position of a Japanese manner adverb in relation to the object. The second looks into the placement of the Japanese numeral classifier phrase, either internal to the noun phrase or adverbialised to an external position. This second study is the first work in the literature to apply efficiency evaluation to the internal order of a noun phrase, and across alternative constructions that cannot be treated in terms of pairwise alternations.

The theoretical contribution of the thesis lies on a novel proposal to consider syntactic processing efficiency as a feedback system. The concept is developed throughout the thesis by making a distinction between predictive and evaluative efficiency evaluations. Along the way, a new efficiency metric is proposed to quantify an aspect of processing efficiency that has heretofore only been addressed qualitatively, namely the preference to place a complement adjacent to the head. The last study is a compilation of cases involving data from the two major studies plus information structure, showcasing the applicability of efficiency evaluation to problems not previously studied from the perspective of efficiency.