10. Language Flashcards
What is Parsing?
Process by which words in a message are transformed into a mental representation of the combined meaning of the words
What are constituents in Parsing?
Constituents in Parsing are subpatterns that correspond to basic phrases, or units, in a sentence’s structure
Identification of constituent structure is important to the parsing of a sentence
What do participants do during comprehension (parsing)
– Process the meaning of a sentence one phrase at a time
– Maintain access to a phrase only while processing its meaning
what did Jarvella (1971)’s study include?
Jarvella (1971) had people listen to long passages of speech. Interruptions during the passages were cues to the participants to recall, as precisely as possible, whatever they could from the sentence just heard. Jarvella created passages that contained identical phrases, except that the phrases “belonged” to different clausal constituents.
What is the immediacy of interpretation in parsing?
– People try to extract meaning out of each word as it arrives
– They do not wait until the end of a phrase to decide on how to interpret a word
what did Just and Carpenter’s (1980) study find?
Participants fixated longer on unfamiliar or surprising words while reading a sentence
what did Berkum et al. (1999) study find?
The cat entered the room suddenly, startling a mouse which had found a bit of cheese in the corner.
The mouse quickly/slowly returned to its hole
quickly = predictable slowly = unpredictable
how do people process sentences according to parsing?
- People process a sentence as each word comes in
- However, the meaning of a sentence is defined in terms of the phrase structure
- Thus, some of the information cannot be processed until the phrase is complete
What is permanent ambiguity in parsing?
- Ambiguity remains to the end of a sentence
* e.g., Flying planes can be dangerous.
What is transient ambiguity in parsing?
• Ambiguity is resolved by the end of a sentence
• e.g., The old train…
… left the station.
… the young.
what is the principle of minimal attachment in parsing?
The parser builds the simplest syntactic structure possible (that is, the one with the fewest phrasal nodes).
– One interprets a sentence in a way that causes minimal complication of its phrase structure
The horse raced past the barn fell.
The woman painted by the artist fell.
– If ambiguity is resolved within a phrase, we are often unaware of dealing with the ambiguity
how do we deal with lexical ambiguity according to Swinney?
The man was not surprised when he found several spiders, roaches, and other bugs in the corner of the room.
– Lexical decision task
• spy, ant, or sew
– When they were presented within 400 ms of the prime word (bugs), recognition of both spy and ant was facilitated
– If the delay was more than 700 ms, only the elated word (ant) was facilitated
According to parsin, what do people do when presented with ambiguous words?
When an ambiguous word is presented, participants select a particular meaning
within 700 ms
what are the two syntactic cues that are used to interpret a sentence?
– Word order
– Inflectional structure
Him kicked the girl.
The girl kicked he.
The girl kicked him.
He kicked the girl.
what else is used to interpret a sentence and what was an experiment that supported this?
Semantic cues are also used Jane fruit eat [Jane eat(s) fruit] • Fillenbaum (1971, 1974) 1. John was buried and died. 2. John died and was buried. – When asked to paraphrase the sentence #1 above, about 60% of the participants generated a sentence that had the same meaning as #2
how are syntactic and semantic cues integated?
Syntactic and semantic cues are integrated to arrive at an interpretation of a sentence
What was Typer and MArslen-Wilson (1977)’s study?
– If you walk too near the runway, landing planes are
– If you’ve been trained as a pilot, landing planes are
How do we combine syntactic and semantic cues?
through interactive processing
what is interactive processing?
– Syntactic and semantic cues are simultaneously processed
– People appear to be able to use semantic information immediately to guide syntactic
decisions
What as Trueswell et al (1994)’s study in parsing?
The evidence examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable.
The evidence that was examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable
What is utilisation in language?
Utilization
– A stage of language comprehension in which people use the meaning of a sentence to arrive at deeper understanding of the sentence
what does utilisation usually include?
Usually includes something beyond what is stated in the sentence itself
what are backward inferences in utilisation?
Inferences in sentence comprehension that connect the sentence to prior context
what are forward inferences in utilisation?
Inferences in sentence comprehension that anticipate things not yet asserted
what was Singer (1994)’s experiment in utilisation?
– The dentist pulled the tooth painlessly. The patient liked the method. (direct statement)
– The tooth was pulled painlessly. The dentist used a new method. (backward inference)
– The tooth was pulled painlessly. The patient liked the new method. (forward inference)
– Participants judged whether it was true that A dentist pulled the tooth.
What is inference of reference in utilisation?
Various linguistic cues indicate that an expression is referring to something that we already know
– e.g., a and the
What was Loftus and Zanni’s (1975) experiment on utilisation?
– Participants watched a film of a car accident
– Then they were asked a series of questions such as:
A. Did you see a broken headlight?
B. Did you see the broken headlight?
– Participants were more likely to answer “Yes” when asked the question in form B
what is prenominal reference in utilisation?
Deciding who is being referenced by a pronoun is critical for sentence comprehension
what are the cues used to interpret pronouns?
Number or gender cues
Syntactic cues
Semantic cues
what are examples of number or gender cues?
Melvin, Susan, and their children left when [he, she, they] became sleepy.
what are examples of syntactic cues?
Floyd punched Bert and then he kicked him.
• Dorothea ate the pie; Ethel ate cake; later she had coffee.
What are examples of semantic cues?
- Tom shouted at Bill because he spilled the coffee.
* Tom shouted at Bill because he had a headache.
what are negative sentences in utilisation?
Appear to suppose a positive sentence and then ask us to infer what must be true if the positive sentence is false
e.g. Ken is not a crook
– The above sentence supposes that it is reasonable to assume that Ken is indeed a crook
– Then it asserts that this assumption is false
what was in Clark and Chase’s studies (e.g. 1972)
1. The star is above the plus. • True affirmative 2. The plus is above the star. • False affirmative 3. The plus is not above the star. • True negative 4. The star is not above the plus. • False negative
what did Clark and Chase hypothesise?
Clark and Chase hypothesized that three processes are involved in the processing of these sentences – T: processing of base supposition – M: processing of mismatch between supposition and picture – N: processing of negation
what were Clark and Chases results?
The star is above the plus. (true affirmative)
The plus is above the star. (false affirmative)
The plus is not above the star. (true negative)
The star is not above the plus. (false negative)
what is text processing?
A number of recurring relations serve to organize sentences into larger parts of a text
what is response relation?
A question is presented and an answer follows or a problem is presented and a solution follows
what is a specific relation?
Specific information is given subsequent to a more gentle point
What is an explanation relation?
An explanation is given for a point
what is evidence relation?
Evidence is given to support a point
what is sequence relation?
Points are presented in their temporal sequence as a set
What is cause relation?
An event is presented as the cause of another event
What is goal relation?
An event is presented as the goal of another event
What is a collection relation?
A loose structure of points is presented (this is perhaps a case in which there is no real organisation relation)
how are propositions in texts organised?
Propositions in a text are often organized hierarchically according to various semantic relations
What are the characteristics of memory from textual material?
– is sensitive to the hierarchical and causal
structure of that text
– tends to be better when people attend to
that structure
What was Keenan et al (1984)’s experiment on text processing?
- Joey’s big brother punched him again and again.
- Racing down the hill, Joey fell off his bike.
- Joey’s crazy mother became furiously angry with him.
- Joey went to a neighbor’s house to play.
The next day, his body was covered with bruises.
what are bridging inferences?
Sometimes two propositions that are further apart in the text need to be related
