Linguistics Encyclopedia.pdf

Therefore, a listener must find the gap in the relative clause and decide what its function
would have been in an independent declarative clause, in order to be able to determine
what the function of the head noun is.
In the ATN framework, the gap-finding process is represented by the addition of three
arcs to the basic NP network presented above. The first arc tests for the presence of a
relative pronoun at the end of the head noun phrase. If a relative pronoun is found, the
action associated with the arc places the head NP on the HOLD list, and the second new
arc (marked SEEK S) instructs the processor to go to the sentence network and try to
analyse the relative clause as if it were an independent declarative clause. The attempt
will fail when the gap is reached, because there is no noun phrase to be found. However,
the third new arc, a bypass arc (labelled RETRIEVE HOLD) allows the processor, if
there is an item in the HOLD list, to retrieve that item, and once it is retrieved, the
attempt to treat the relative clause as an independent clause will succeed (ibid., p. 134):
When the ATN reaches the gap in the relative clause and SEEKs a noun
phrase, the head NP will be on the HOLD list. Therefore, the bypass arc
will RETRIEVE it from HOLD and restore it to working memory. The
ordinary SEND action at the end of the noun phrase network will then
return the head NP to the arc that initiated the SEEK NP, and that arc will
automatically assign the head NP the same function label it would assign
to a noun phrase that occurred at that point in an independent declarative
clause.
The new noun-phrase network is represented below (the new arcs are arcs 9, 10, and 12;
there is no alteration to the sentence network represented in the elementary grammar
above) (ibid., p. 135):
Arc Action
The linguistics encyclopedia 68
5 ASSIGN DET to current word
6 ASSIGN MOD to current word
7 ASSIGN HEAD to current word
8 ASSIGN NOUN PHRASE SEND current phrase
9 HOLD
10 CHECK HOLD ASSIGN MOD to current clause