Sentence Processing

The complexity of the issue

The U.S. military transferred a man suspected of

involvement with terrorist attacks in East Africa to
the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, the Pentagon said Monday.

How is lexical, syntactic, and semantic

information coordinated during sentence
comprehension?

Modular vs. interactive views

Mental Representations

Language Subprocesses

Semantic

Semantic

ate (dog, ?)

Syntactic
S
NP

VP

The dog

ate ?

Syntactic
Lexical

The dog ate the bone

[Current eye fixation]

How do we study sentence

processing?

Study comprehension as
it happens
Eye fixation studies
Priming studies
(reaction time)
Look at the product of the
comprehension process
Memory studies

Syntactic ambiguity

The student warned about the possible failure

dropped the class.
The student who was warned about the possible
failure dropped the class.
Garden path sentence
Modular viewcommit to syntactic analysis
before using semantic information
Interactive viewuse semantic information to
determine the syntactic structure of a sentence

Parsing

Assign elements of sentence to linguistic

categories
The cat in the hat came back.
The dog bit the man.
S
The man bit the dog.
VP

Challenges:
Memory demands
Decision-making

NP

det

NP
N

the

dog

likes ice cream

Parsing strategies

Parsing principle: use the simplest, easiest-toconstruct phrase structure tree possible (Frazier, 1987)
Strategy 1: Late closure
attach new items to the current constituent
Martin had a date with the sister of the teacher
who was named in the newspaper last week.
Whose name appeared in the newspaper?
Frazier and Rayner (1982)
Since Jay always jogs a mile seems like a very
short distance to him.
Since Jay always jogs a mile this distance
seems like a short distance to him.

Parsing strategies

Strategy 2: Minimal attachment

attach phrases to tree using as few branches as

possible

The spy saw the cop with binoculars but the cop
didnt see him.
Who had the binoculars?
S

V NP

VP

NP

VP

NP

PP

The spy saw the cop with binoculars

NP

V
NP

PP

The spy saw the cop with binoculars

Minimal attachment, cont.

Rayner, Carlson, & Frazier (1983)

The spy saw the cop with the revolver but
the cop didnt see him.

Can semantics affect parsing?

Taraban & McClelland (1988)

The couple admired the house with a
friend but knew that it was overpriced.
garden but knew that it was overpriced.
Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Garnsey (1994)
The defendant examined by the lawyer turned
out to be unreliable.
The evidence examined by the lawyer turned
out to be unreliable.
ButThe performer/florist sent the flowers
was very pleased.

Extralinguistic context effects

Tanenhaus, Spivey-Knowlton, Eberhard, &

Sedivy (1995)

Extralinguistic context effects, cont.

S
VP

NP
V

NP

PP

The couple admired the house with a friend

S
VP

NP
V

NP
NP

PP

The couple admired the house with a garden