The interaction of syntax and semantics during sentence processing: eye movements in the analysis of semantically biased sentences

Abstract

Two experiments explored the effects of semantic and pragmatic information on the syntactic analysis of ambiguous sentences. In both experiments, eye movements were recorded as subjects read structurally ambiguous sentences. The first experiment showed that the relative plausibility of two possible real world events does not influence the language processor's choice of an initial syntactic analysis of an ambiguous string: clear garden-path effects were observed in both relatively plausible and relatively implausible reduced relative clauses, while no garden-path effect was observed for simple active clauses. The second experiment showed that semantic and pragmatic considerations do govern the ultimate analysis of an ambiguous sentence but that structural preferences, and their agreement with the final analysis, governed reading times. Reading times were significantly shorter for sentences where the pragmatically more plausible analysis of the sentence coincided with the analysis preferred on purely structural grounds than for sentences where the pragmatically preferred analysis conflicted with the structurally preferred analysis. Taken together, the results of the two experiments argue for the existence of distinct processors in the human sentence comprehension mechanism.