The pattern of results argues against claims that a specialized WM is involved in sentence parsing that is different from the capacities tapped by standard simple or complex span measures (Caplan and Waters, 1999). We speculate that the relations to general WM capacity reflect the role controlled attention and potentially secondary memory retrieval involved in both complex span measures and in resolving interference during sentence comprehension. In addition, we consider the specific relation between semantic STM and semantic interference as an indication that code-specific retention capacities mediate resolution and that the rate of loss of semantic or syntactic features (if such could be measured) may differ separately across individuals. This latter assumption is consistent with the multiple capacities approach to WM in which there are separable syntactic and semantic capacities, with the rate of loss of featural information replacing the notion of capacity limits.