sentence processing Flashcards
what do we do when we process a sentence
- recognise individual words
- assign syntactic structure
- interpretation
what is syntax
- the words in a sentence are not just strung together one after the other, they are structured into phrases and clauses
- the way the phrases can be depicted in tree diagrams
what is syntactic ambiguity
- where a clause or sentence may have more than one interpretation, given the potential grammatical functions of the individual words
what are the 2 types of syntactic ambiguity
- global ambiguity - sentence is always ambiguous
- temporary ambiguity - ambiguous to begin but not by the end of sentence
what are temporary syntactic ambiguous sentences also known as
garden path sentences
what is an example of serial models
garden path theory
what is the garden path theory
- only one syntactic structure is initially considered
- sentence meaning is not involved in the selection of this structure
- if the simplest structure is incorrect, then the sentence meaning can influence re-analysis
how is the simplest structure chosen in the garden path theory
- minimal attachment
- late closure
what is minimal attachment
- you want to build the simplest tree - the fewest nodes
what is late closure
- if both interpretations have same number of nodes
- attach ambiguous part of sentence to the most recently mentioned thing
what is an examples of parallel models
constraint satisfaction
what is constraint satisfaction
- all relevant sources of info are immediately available to the parser
- initial interpretation depends on multiple sources of info
- different sources of info are known as constraints
- competing sentence structures are activated simultaneously
what multiple sources of information does constraint satisfaction depend on
- context
- plausibility
- general world knowledge
- verb bias
what is unrestricted race model
- combines garden path theory and constraint satisfaction
what is non-literal language
- the intended meaning cannot be derived by direct composition of the literal meanings of the words as guided by the grammar
examples of non-literal sentences
- metaphor
- idiom
- irony
what theories explain figurative language processing
- standard pragmatic view
- graded salience hypothesis
- direct access view
what is the standard pragmatic view
- literal meaning is accessed first, mismatch with context is detected, the utterance is then reanalysed as being ironic
what is the graded salience hypothesis
- highly familiar ironies, the ironic meaning is accessed straight away
- for unfamiliar ironies, the literal meaning is accessed first and reanalysis must occur
what is the direct access view
- literal and ironic language are treated the same way
- ironic meaning can be accessed without the literal meaning first
- no additional processing cost for ironic language compared to literal language
what is an example of shadow processing
- the moses illusion
- don’t process all words
