9. 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 is a constituent
sub-patterns that correspond to basic phrases, or units in a sentence structure
identification of constituent structure is important to the parsing of a sentence
define immediacy of interpretation
trying to extract meaning out of each word as it arrives
they don’t wait until the end of a phrase to decide on how to interpret a word
describe the general process of parsing
people process a sentence as each word comes in
however meaning is defined in terms of the phrase structure
thus some of the infomration cannot be processed until the phrase is complete
define ambiguity in parsing
permanent ambiguity
- ambiguity remained to the end of the sentence
transient ambiguity
- ambiguity is resolved at the end of the sentence
how do you deal with lexical ambiguity
when an ambiguous word is presented
we select a particular meaning within 700 ms
what are syntactic and semantic cues
syntactic - word order, inflection structure
semantic - words themselves
how are syntactic and semantic cues used in combination
interactive processing
- simultaneous process
use semantic info immediatly to guide syntactic decisions
define utilisation
a stage of language comprehension in which people use the meaning of a sentence to arrive at a deeper understanding of the sentence
usually includes something beyond what is stated in sentence itself
what is backwards and forward inferences
backwards
- inferences in sentence comprehension that CONNECT the sentence to PRIOR context
forwards
- inference in sentence comprehension that ANTICIPATE things not yet asserted
what is inference of reference
various linguistic cues indicate that an expression is referring to something we already know
e.g. The in comparison to A
pronominal reference….
deciding who is being referenced by a pronoun is critical for comprehension
how do you process negativ esentences
they appear to suppose a positive sentence and then asks us to infer what must be true if the positive sentence is false
