Abstract
Natural language processing is a fast and automatized process. A crucial part of this process is parsing, the online incremental construction of a syntactic structure. The aim of this study was to test whether a wh-filler extracted from an embedded clause is initially attached as the object of the matrix verb with subsequent reanalysis, and if so, whether the plausibility of such an attachment has an effect on reaction time. Finally, we wanted to examine whether subcategorization plays a role. We used a method called G-Maze to measure response time in a self-paced reading design. The experiments confirmed that there is early attachment of fillers to the matrix verb. When this attachment is implausible, the off-line acceptability of the whole sentence is significantly reduced. The on-line results showed that G-Maze was highly suited for this type of experiment. In accordance with our predictions, the results suggest that the parser ignores (or has no access to information about) implausibility and attaches fillers as soon as possible to the matrix verb. However, the results also show that the parser uses the subcategorization frame of the matrix verb. In short, the parser ignores semantic information and allows implausible attachments but adheres to information about which type of object a verb can take, ensuring that the parser does not make impossible attachments. We argue that the evidence supports a syntactic parser informed by syntactic cues, rather than one guided by semantic cues or one that is blind, or completely autonomous.
Highlights
Parsing refers to the process of assigning syntactic structure to language stimuli during on-line language comprehension in real time
Experiment 1 confirms that a temporary implausible attachment of a wh-filler to a matrix verb has a significant negative effect on the overall acceptability of a sentence
This is consistent with the results reported by Fanselow & Frisch [26] and Christensen et al [25] where a reduction in acceptability is argued to reflect an increase in processing cost
Summary
Parsing refers to the process of assigning syntactic structure to language stimuli during on-line language comprehension in real time. A key question in the literature on sentence processing is how the parser makes these decisions; that is, which types of information are taken into account during on-line parsing [1,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. For a parser to do this, it must rely on some basic syntactic heuristics, such as late closure, which states that the parser prefers to attach new words into the phrase currently being processed [1], and it must ignore (or have restricted access to) non-syntactic information and information about subcategorization frames (i.e. transitivity, requirements on the number and types of objects/complements a verb can or must take). It has been argued that the human parser has access to all types of information, including syntax, semantics and pragmatics, simultaneously when making attachment decisions [3,14]
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