Psycholinguistics lesson 6 Flashcards
Understanding sentences isn’t just a matter of recognising ______ words.
individual
To reconstruct the message we must also reconstruct the _____ of the sentence or in other words the _____.
structure
syntax
We have to put the meanings of the words ____ and the meaning _____ between the words in the sentence.
together
relations
We do not wait until the end of a sentence to _____ _____ of what we ____, this process is highly _______.
make sense
hear
incremental
At any given point in a sentence what do we do?
We construct a partial interpretation of the sentence so far.
When would we often have to revise a sentence?
If it was an ambiguous sentence
A sentence that is ambiguous until half way through and at the end becomes unambiguous is known as a ____ ambiguous.
Temporarily
What is a globally ambiguous sentence?
A sentence that is ambiguous from start to finish.
Hospitals are sued by 7 foot doctors- what type of sentence is this?
A globally ambiguous sentence
Word ____ can affect meaning.
organisation
The syntactic properties of sentences can be described at the level of- W\_\_\_\_\_ P\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ C\_\_\_\_\_\_ (not important) S\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
words
phrases
clauses
sentences
What is a phrase?
A phrase is the building block of a sentence, it is a group of words that “go together”
What is a Noun Phrase made up of (NP)?
(sometimes a determiner)and a noun
What is A Verb Phrase made up of (VP)?
A verb and sometimes a NP
What is a preposition phrase made up of (PP)?
A preposition (eg. in) and a NP (the red dress)
What is a sentence?
A group of phrases that MUST have a verb phrase
The woman ate the apple
-split this sentence into its NP and VP
NP- the woman
VP- ate the apple
The woman in the red dress ate the apple
-split this sentence into its NP, PP and VP.
NP-The woman
PP-in the red dress
VP- ate the apple
“in the red dress” is the PP telling us information about the woman so should be attached to the same ____ that “the woman” is.
NP
Name 2 things every sentence should have.
A NP aka. the subject
A VP aka. the predicate
The predicate is also known as the ____.
Verb Phrase (VP)
What can a noun phrase (NP) also be called?
The subject
If there are 2 possible meanings/interpretations of a sentence what is this known as?
eg.
1. John saw the man with the telescope (he used the telescope to see the man)
2. John saw the man with the telescope (John saw the man who had the telescope)
Syntactic Ambiguity
In syntactic ambiguity- what does the meaning depend on?
Whether the phrase “with the telescope” is attached to the NP (the man) or the VP (saw the man).
If the VP is attached to the PP- explain the ambiguous sentence John saw the man with the telescope.
this means that John was using the telescope to see the man, he was doing the act of seeing.
If the NP is attached to the PP- explain the ambiguous sentence, John saw the man with the telescope.
This means that john saw a man who had a telescope.
How many nodes does the VP attachment of the PP have?
7
How many nodes does the NP attachment of the PP have?
8
Name the 2 most influential theories of sentence processing.
Garden Path Model
Constraint-Based Model
What is the major concern of the 2 sentence processing theories?
How we process syntactically ambiguous sentences.
What happens in the initial analysis stage of the garden path model?
It first computes the phrase structure that is syntactically simpler eg. 7 nodes instead of 8 nodes.
In the garden path model the processor builds ____ syntactic structure/s at a time.
1
At the initial stage what is the only thing the garden path model considers?
syntax
The Garden Path model doesn’t consider _____.
semantics
Does the Garden Path model initially consider context?
No
The structure with the fewer ____ _____ is the one that is syntactically simpler.
branching nodes
According to the garden path model- what sentence should we favour?
The VP attachment to the PP eg. John used the telescope to see the man
In the Garden-Path Model, if the initial analysis is _____ with the ______ information, the processor re-analyses and goes for the alternative _____.
inconsistent
semantics
analysis