Temporary Syntactic Ambiguities Research Articles

Reading the WordsHer, His, Him:Implications for Parsing Principles Based on Frequency and on Structure

Two questionnaire studies and two experiments investigated the processing of the pronounsherandhim/his. The questionnaires and the first experiment searched for effects of lexical preferences in resolving the temporary syntactic category ambiguity of the wordher.Contingent frequency based on a verb's preference for a human vs an inanimate direct object demonstrably affected the final interpretation of an ambiguousherfollowing the verb in an off-line questionnaire study. However, it did not influence on-line processing times for SPEC versus NP uses ofher.This result is surprising from the perspective of current lexically based models of ambiguity resolution. Experiment 2 addressed how potential antecedents for the unambiguous pronounshimandhisare identified. Both Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 showed that NP uses of personal pronouns likeherandhimcould be processed more easily than SPEC uses ofherandhis.Experiment 2 showed that this difference largely reflected differences in difficulty of choosing an antecedent for the pronoun. To account for the processing ofher,we proposed that the parser initially builds an underspecified syntactic representation, fixing further details and disambiguating the category ofheras subsequent information becomes available. Comprehension proceeds by attempting to find an antecedent for the personal pronoun, with the preferred candidate a syntactically available within-sentence antecedent if one exists.

The influence of prosodic structure on the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguities

This paper investigates the influence of prosodic structure on the process of sentence comprehension, with a specific focus on the relative contributions of syntactic and prosodic information to the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. We argue that prosodic structure provides an initial memory representation for spoken sentences, and that information from this prosodic representation is available to inform syntactic parsing decisions. This view makes three predictions for the processing of temporary syntactic ambiguity: 1. When prosodic and syntactic boundaries coincide, syntactic processing should be facilitated. 2. When prosodic boundaries are placed at misleading points in syntactic structure, syntactic processing should show interference effects. 3. The processing difficulties that have been reliably demonstrated in reading experiments for syntactically complex sentences should disappear when those sentences are presented with a felicitous prosodic structure in listening experiments. These predictions were confirmed by series of experiments measuring end-of-sentence comprehension time and cross-modal naming time for sentences with temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. Sentences with coinciding or conflicting prosodic and syntactic boundaries were compared to a prosodic baseline condition.

What can prosody tell a parser?

In this paper, I consider how a sentence processor might use specific prosodic cues at various points in the processing of particular sentences containing (at least temporary) syntactic ambiguity. In principle, the usefulness of prosodic information depends on what a given cluster of prosodic cues typically signifies, and on which syntactic options exist for a given string: in only some instances can prosodic information provide useful disambiguating information.

Working memory constraints on the processing of syntactic ambiguity

We propose a model that explains how the working-memory capacity of a comprehender can constrain syntactic parsing and thereby affect the processing of syntactic ambiguities. The model's predictions are examined in four experiments that measure the reading times for two constructions that contain a temporary syntactic ambiguity. An example of the syntactic ambiguity is The soldiers warned about the dangers …; the verb warned may either be the main verb, in which case soldiers is the agent; or the verb warned may introduce a relative clause, in which case soldiers is the patient of warned rather than the agent, as in The soldiers warned about the dangers conducted the midnight raid. The model proposes that both alternative interpretations of warned are initially activated. However, the duration for which both interpretations are maintained depends, in part, on the reader's working-memory capacity, which can be assessed by the Reading Span task (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980). The word-by-word reading times indicate that all subjects do additional processing after encountering an ambiguity, suggesting that they generate both representations. Furthermore, readers with larger working-memory capacities maintain both representations for some period of time (several words), whereas readers with smaller working-memory capacities revert to maintaining only the more likely representation.

Evoked potentials and the study of sentence comprehension.

Evoked brain potentials were used to monitor moment-by-moment decisions during language comprehension. Subjects read sentences containing temporary syntactic ambiguities for which one of the possible interpretations was semantically implausible. The N400 component of the evoked potential, which is sensitive to implausibility, was used to discover when during a sentence subjects made a decision about the ambiguity. The results demonstrate that readers try to interpret a syntactic ambiguity early in a sentence rather than waiting for disambiguating information. This introduces a new way to use brain activity to study sentence comprehension processes.