sentence processing

Question 1

what do we do when we process a sentence

Answer 1

• recognise individual words
• assign syntactic structure
• interpretation

Question 2

what is syntax

Answer 2

• 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

Question 3

what is syntactic ambiguity

Answer 3

• where a clause or sentence may have more than one interpretation, given the potential grammatical functions of the individual words

Question 4

what are the 2 types of syntactic ambiguity

Answer 4

• global ambiguity - sentence is always ambiguous
• temporary ambiguity - ambiguous to begin but not by the end of sentence

Question 5

what are temporary syntactic ambiguous sentences also known as

Answer 5

garden path sentences

Question 6

what is an example of serial models

Answer 6

garden path theory

Question 7

what is the garden path theory

Answer 7

• 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

Question 8

how is the simplest structure chosen in the garden path theory

Answer 8

• minimal attachment
• late closure

Question 9

what is minimal attachment

Answer 9

• you want to build the simplest tree - the fewest nodes

Question 10

what is late closure

Answer 10

• if both interpretations have same number of nodes
• attach ambiguous part of sentence to the most recently mentioned thing

Question 11

what is an examples of parallel models

Answer 11

constraint satisfaction

Question 12

what is constraint satisfaction

Answer 12

• 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

Question 13

what multiple sources of information does constraint satisfaction depend on

Answer 13

• context
• plausibility
• general world knowledge
• verb bias

Question 14

what is unrestricted race model

Answer 14

• combines garden path theory and constraint satisfaction

Question 15

what is non-literal language

Answer 15

• the intended meaning cannot be derived by direct composition of the literal meanings of the words as guided by the grammar

Question 16

examples of non-literal sentences

Answer 16

• metaphor
• idiom
• irony

Question 17

what theories explain figurative language processing

Answer 17

• standard pragmatic view
• graded salience hypothesis
• direct access view

Question 18

what is the standard pragmatic view

Answer 18

• literal meaning is accessed first, mismatch with context is detected, the utterance is then reanalysed as being ironic

Question 18

what is the graded salience hypothesis

Answer 18

• highly familiar ironies, the ironic meaning is accessed straight away
• for unfamiliar ironies, the literal meaning is accessed first and reanalysis must occur

Question 19

what is the direct access view

Answer 19

• 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

Question 20

what is an example of shadow processing

Answer 20

• the moses illusion
• don’t process all words