Theoretical implications of disordered syntactic comprehension

We reexamine data from Caplan and Hildebrandt 1988 within the context of a different set of background assumptions, concluding that where these can be clearly distinguished from those underlying GB theory the evidence favors a non-GB-based account. We attribute the deficits observed in the process of infinitival complement constructions to an inability on the part of the patients to access either or both of two data structures required to support our proposed parsing algorithm, and show that on this account it is unnecessary to posit a compensatory heuristic to account for the behavior observed. We also question some other cases where Caplan and Hildebrandt advert to compensatory heuristics.