Abstract

Introduction I begin with an intuition: when I read a sentence, I read it a chunk at a time. For example, the previous sentence breaks up something like this: (1) [I begin] [with an intuition]: [when I read] [a sentence], [I read it] [a chunk] [at a time] These chunks correspond in some way to prosodic patterns. It appears, for instance, that the strongest stresses in the sentence fall one to a chunk, and pauses are most likely to fall between chunks. Chunks also represent a grammatical watershed of sorts. The typical chunk consists of a single content word surrounded by a constellation of function words, matching a fixed template. A simple context-free grammar is quite adequate to describe the structure of chunks. By contrast, the relationships between chunks are mediated more by lexical selection than by rigid templates. Co-occurence of chunks is determined not just by their syntactic categories, but is sensitive to the precise words that head them

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