Syntactic parsing one

Question 1

Syntactic parsing

Answer 1

Whatever it is your brain is doing to decode a structure of a sentence.
The dog bit the cat, the cat bit the dog, the dog was bitten by the cat
agrammatism: really struggle with sentence 3.
How do we study parsing: syntactic ambiguity (I saw the man with the binoculars)

Question 2

Garden Path model

Answer 2

Syntactic parsing primarily determined by snytax
„horse raced past the barn fell“ (we don’t expect to hear fell)
„Kids make nutritious snacks“
Autonomous two stage model

Question 3

GPM model stages

Answer 3

1. Syntax stage: what are the nouns and verbs doing, how do they relate to each other. Uses processes: minimal attachment and late closure
2. Semantics stage: if the first stage fails (sentence doesn’t make sense) then it looks at meaning of words, and reanalyze

Question 4

Late closure

Answer 4

„Mary said that Tom had walked the dog yesterday“
Could refer to Mary speaking yesterday or tom walking dog yesterday
But: we should prefer to interpret yesterday to tom walked due to late closure
Flip said that squeaky will do the work yesterday (future and past? Huh: must refer to when flip said.)

Frazier: eye-tracking study: since jay always jogs a mile and a half seems a very short distance to him. Reading times much longer to first

Question 5

Minimal attachment

Answer 5

The spy saw the cop with the binoculars“: 2 structures
Count nodes in tree diagram and one with less is preferred
„the spy saw the cop with the ice cream“ (cant use ice cream to look at someone)
Rayner: how difficult they find the sentences
„The spy saw the cop with the binoculars but the cop didn’t see him“ —> preferred: consistent with MA
„the spy saw the cop with the icecream but the cop didn’t see him.“ —> dispreferred

Question 6

Evidence that semantics doesn’t influence processing of syntax (sentence structure)

Answer 6

1. Rayner:
   „the florist sent the flowers was very pleased”
   „The performer sent the flowers was very pleased“
   We expect florists to send not receive but performers more likely to receive than send: does this affect how difficult we find the sentence
   Both sentences were equally difficult: meaning of words doesn’t help us find structure
   We do not pay attention to semantics when we process syntax
2. Ferreira and clifton
   Basic preferences for how we interpret sentence structures and meaning can’t change that

Question 7

Limitations to the Garden Path model

Answer 7

Old approach but still really influential
Misleading prosody and prior context can prevent people from using minimal attachment
Does not account for differences between languages