We introduce a novel computer implementation of the Unification-Space parser (Vosse and Kempen in Cognition 75:105–143,
2000) in the form of a localist neural network whose dynamics is based on interactive activation and inhibition. The wiring of
the network is determined by Performance Grammar (Kempen and Harbusch in Verb constructions in German and Dutch. Benjamins,
Amsterdam,
2003), a lexicalist formalism with feature unification as binding operation. While the network is processing input word strings
incrementally, the evolving shape of parse trees is represented in the form of changing patterns of activation in nodes that
code for syntactic properties of words and phrases, and for the grammatical functions they fulfill. The system is capable,
at least qualitatively and rudimentarily, of simulating several important dynamic aspects of human syntactic parsing, including
garden-path phenomena and reanalysis, effects of complexity (various types of clause embeddings), fault-tolerance in case
of unification failures and unknown words, and predictive parsing (expectation-based analysis, surprisal effects). English
is the target language of the parser described.
Keywords Predictive parsing - Syntactic ambiguity resolution - Psycholinguistics - Unification Space - Localist neural network