Incremental Processing of Gap-filler Dependencies: Evidence from the Processing of Subject and Object Clefts in Japanese* Barış Kahraman [1] , Atsushi Sato [2] , Hajime Ono [3] , and Hiromu Sakai [2] ÇANAKKALE ONSEKİZ MART UNIVERSITY [1] , HIROSHIMA UNIVERSITY [2] , and KINKI UNIVERSITY [3] 1. Introduction In the field of sentence processing, there is a general consensus on the incrementality of sentence processing. The term incrementality is widely defined as immediate assignment of thematic roles before they are signaled unambiguously (e.g., Kamide et al. 2003). Following this definition, the present study regards incrementality as predicting and building a representation for upcoming elements of the sentence or clause, even before the exact input is encountered (Kamide 2008). However, it is still unknown to what extent the sentences are processed incrementally. Particularly, the processing of gap-filler dependencies 1 in head-final languages casts serious doubt on the issue of incrementality. The present study uses clefts sentences in Japanese to deal with the issue of incrementality of gap-filler dependencies. In the sentence processing terms, a filler refers to the moved argument in a sentence, and a gap refers to the original position of the filler (e.g., Fodor 1989).