Language And Reading 2 Flashcards
Syntax
The way that words are structured into phrases, clauses, and sentences
Tree diagrams
Method to structure phrases, clauses, and sentences
In a tree diagram, each sentence can be broken down to small constituents aka
Nodes
In a tree diagram, nodes are connected via
Branches
Syntactic ambiguity
Where a clause and sentence may have more than one interpretation, give the potential grammatical functions of the individual words
The types of syntactic ambiguity
Global and temporary
Global ambiguity
When a sentence can be interpreted in two different ways
Temporary ambiguity
Type of ambiguity where the meaning is made clear in the same utterance or sentence
Global ambiguity example
The spy observed the politician with binoculars
Temporary ambiguity example
While Anna dressed the baby threw up
In the sentence “While Anna dressed the baby threw up”, “the baby” would be considered
A temporarily ambiguous noun phrase
In the sentence “While Anna dressed the baby threw up”, “threw up” would be the
Disambiguating verb
Syntactically ambiguous sentences are known as
Garden path sentences
Syntactically ambiguous sentences are known as
Garden path sentences
In the garden path theory, ___ ___ syntactic structure is initially considered
Only one
In the garden path theory, ____ ____ is not involved in the selection of this structure
Sentence meaning
In the garden path theory, the simplest structure is chosen following
Minimal attachment or late closure
In the garden path theory, if the simplest structure is incorrect, then
sentence meaning can influence re-analysis
In the sentence “the spy observed the politician with binoculars”, following minimal attachment, who was using the binoculars?
The spy
In the sentence, “she said he tickled her yesterday”, following late closure, was she tickled yesterday or did she talk about being tickled yesterday
She was tickled yesterday
Parallel models: constraint satisfaction
All relevant sources of info are immediately available to the parser
The initial interpretation of a sentence depends on
Context, plausibility, general world knowledge, verb bias
Constraints
The different sources of info; context, plausibility, general world knowledge, verb bias
With constraint satisfaction, Competing sentence structures
are activated simultaneously
The syntactic structure receiving more support from all constraints is
The most activated, and is chosen
Theories that have been proposed to explain how we assign syntactic structure to a sentence
Garden path theory, constraint satisfaction, unrestricted race theory
How do we compute what a sentence actually means
Non literal language, context and world knowledge, shallow processing
Non literal language
When intended meaning cannot be derived by direct composition of the literal meanings of the words as guided by the grammar
Shallow processing example
How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the ark? None, it was Noah
