Chapter 13: Language Comprehension Flashcards
What are the 3 stages of language comprehension
perceptual, parsing, and utilization
what is the perceptual stage of language comprehension
encoding the message through vision and hearing
what is the parsing stage of language comprehension
words are transformed into a mental representation of the meaning/constituents
what is the utilization stage of language comprehension
the mental representation is used
Define constituents
subpatterns that correspond to basic phrases or units, in a sentence’s surface structure
What are 3 pieces of evidence of constituent structure?
1) The identification of constituent structure is important to the parsing of a sentence; 2) with the completion of each major phrase, participants seemed to need more time to process it; 3) after one has processed the words in a phrase, there is no need to make further reference to these exact words
How do participants process sentence meaning
one phrase at a time; maintain access to a phrase only while processing its meaning
When does sentence interpretation begin?
before we encounter main verb
why do we pause at the end of each phrase?
to “wrap-up” our thoughts after having focused on each individual word
when is there more broca’s area activation in word processing?
when the main subject and verb are separated
when we encounter an ambiguous sentence, what do American vs Italian speakers rely on?
Americans= syntax; Italians= semantics
Define transient ambiguity
refers to ambiguity in a sentence that is resolved by the end of the sentence
Define Garden-path sentence
sentence with a transient ambiguity where we make the wrong interpretation initially and have to correct ourselves
Define the principle of minimal attachment
sentences are interpreted in a way that causes minimal complication of its phrase structure
Who tested 3 types of amiguity
Mason et al. (2003)
