Chapter 22 - Sentence Processing

Abstract

By convention, the term “sentence processing” refers to the subfield of psycholinguistics focusing on the interpretation of sentences. A range of information sources is used for successful sentence processing. Lexical and syntactic constraints are central for defining the structural alternatives, and information associated with the prosody of the sentence as well as the discourse and visual context in which the sentence occurs reinforces some interpretations and fleshes out the meaning of the sentence. Approaches to sentence processing differ regarding whether they assume serial versus parallel and modular versus interactive architectures; almost all assume incremental interpretation and even prediction of structure and lexical content. Current models include the garden-path model, constraint-based models, and approaches that allow the processing system to reduce and even distort the input (Good-Enough Processing; Noisy Channel Models). An important trend is work designed to shed light on how sentence processing is implemented in the brain.