Cognitive Load and Syntactic Complexity: A Cross-Linguistic Analysis of Sentence Processing
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24113/ijohmn.v10i3.354Keywords:
syntactic complexity, cognitive load, sentence processing, cross-linguistic, psycholinguistics, eye-trackingAbstract
This study investigates the relationship between syntactic complexity and cognitive load during sentence processing across three typologically diverse languages: English, Hindi, and Mandarin. Using eye-tracking and self-paced reading experiments, we demonstrate that increased syntactic embedding correlates with higher cognitive load, but the degree of impact varies by language structure. The findings contribute to psycholinguistic theory and have implications for second language acquisition and AI-based language modeling.
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