Week 10: Language Comprehension

Question 1

Sentence comprehension: 2 main levels of analysis (beginning with P)

Answer 1

Parsing

Pragmatics

Question 3

Parsing

Answer 3

Pulling a sentence apart - Analyse the syntactic/grammatical structure of sentences - when are different kinds of info used?

Syntactical structure - analyse the rules (like word order) for the formation of grammatical sentences

Question 4

Pragmatics

Answer 4

Sentence meaning.

Sentence meaning - analyse the intended, as apposed to literal, meaning (e.g. irony/ sarcasm)

Question 5

Four possibilities of parsing:

Answer 5

1. Syntactic analysis occurs before semantic analysis (explore grammatical structure before exploring meaning)
2. Semantic analysis occurs before syntactic analysis (explore meaning before analyse grammatical structure)
3. Syntactic and semantic analyses occur together (analysed together)
4. Syntax and semantics are closely related

Question 6

Parsing: ambiguous sentences

Answer 6

Reveal information about the parsing process

Question 7

Ambiguity at a GLOBAL LEVEL:

Answer 7

A whole sentence can have two or more meanings (the whole sentence)
E.g. ‘kids make nutritious snacks’

Question 8

Ambiguity at a LOCAL LEVEL

Answer 8

Various meanings possible at some point when parsing (localised in the sentence)

E.g. ‘The old men and women sat on the bench’

Question 9

Prosodic cues

Answer 9

• resolve ambiguity & facilitate understanding
  • Prosodic cues include
    – Stress (or accent)
    – Pauses
    – Intonation (rise/fall)
    – Rhythm
    – Word duration

e.g. a pause would be useful in the sentence ‘the old men and women sat on the bench’

Question 11

Models of parsing

Answer 11

1. Two-stage, serial processing models
   e.g. Garden path model (Fraizier & Rayner, 1982)
2. One-stage, parallel processing models
   e.g. Constraint-based model (MacDonald et al, 1994)

Question 12

Garden path model (led down the garden path)

Answer 12

• Misleading content/structure at the beginning of a sentence
• Reader enticed toward incorrect interpretation (i.e. led-down the garden path!)
• Must retrace mental footsteps to find understandable alternativeDetected by recording eye movements
  – Tells us where/when a reader has gone wrong and is re-reading a sentence

E.g. The detectives examined…
…by the reporter…
…revealed the truth about the robbery

Question 13

Garden Path Model Assumptions

Answer 13

Two-stage, serial processing model (one step after the other)

Makes the following assumptions
– One, syntactical structure considered
– Semantics (meaning) not involved initially
– Simplest syntactical structure chosen using MINIMAL ATTACHMENT and LATE CLOSURE
– If a sentence is incompatible with additional semantic information, interpretation revised (2nd stage)

(so SYNTACTICAL before SEMANTIC - need to understand structure before gaining meaning)

Question 14

Garden path: Minimal attachment

Answer 14

– Prefer grammatical structure producing fewest nodes preferred
– Nodes = major parts of sentence (e.g. nouns/verbs)

The girl knew the answer by heart
(brain likes this sentence as noun and verb instantly connect ‘knew’ and ‘answer’)

The girl knew the answer was wrong
(given additional info about the answer so requires more cognitive effort, against the idea of minimal attachment)

	(also known by tracking eye movement)

Question 15

Garden path: Late closure

Answer 15

New words encountered are attached to current phrase if grammatically permissible

Since Jay always jogs a mile it seems like a short distance to him
§ Attach the word jogs and mile together
Since Jay always jogs a mile seems like a short distance to him
§ Doesn’t make sense to connect jogs and mile, if pause after jogs.
Include ‘a mile’ in the first clause

Question 16

Garden path model: Strengths

Answer 16

• provides a simple account
• use of principles reduces processing demands

Question 17

Garden path: Weaknesses

Answer 17

• Assumption that we do not use meanings of words initially is inconsistent with some evidence

– Do not always adhere to principles

– No definitive test of model

– Does not account for difference in languages that have a preference for early closure (e.g. Spanish, French) (anglocentricities)

Question 18

Model of parsing 2: Constraint-based model (Macdonald et al)

Answer 18

One-stage, parallel processing model

Question 19

Constraint based model: Assumptions

Answer 19

• One-stage, parallel processing model– All sources of information (syntax, semantics, context) are available to parse
  – Constrain the number of possible interpretations
  – Competing syntactic analyses of a sentence activated at the same time
  – Structure receiving most support from constraints is highly activated (the one we tend to go to)

(analysing everything together)

Question 20

Constraint-based model: Strengths

Answer 20

– Efficient that use all relevant information from the outset when interpreting sentences

– Able to account for more than one syntactic analysis at a time

Question 21

CBM: Weaknesses

Answer 21

Unlike the garden path model, it fails to make precise predictions about parsing

Question 21

Unrestricted race model: Assumptions

Answer 21

• Combines (best?) aspects of both garden path and constraint-based models
• Makes the following three assumptions

1. All sources of information used to identify syntactic structure of a sentence (constraint based model)
2. All other structures are ignored, unless favoured structure disconfirmed by subsequent information
3. If a chosen structure discarded, reanalysis undertaken before another structure chosen (garden path model)

Question 22

Next topic: Pragmatics

Answer 22

• The study of intended (not literal) meaning
• Figurative language = not to be taken literally
  – Metaphor
  – Irony
  – Idiom

Question 22

Understanding metaphors: two differing models

Answer 22

1. Standard pragmatic model (Grice, 1975)
   2. Prediction model (Kintsch, 2000)

Question 23

Standard prediction model (3 stages)

Answer 23

• Understanding metaphorical statements involves three stages

1. Literal meaning first accessed
2. Reader/listener decides if literal meaning makes sense
3. If literal meaning inadequate, search for suitable non-literal meaning

• Predicts metaphorical meaning accessed more slowly than literal one
  – But, some metaphors understood rapidly

Question 24

Common ground

Answer 24

• Need to adopt the speaker’s perspective to comprehend what they are saying
  
  • Common ground = shared knowledge between speaker and listener
    – Work together to ensure mutual understanding
  • Very attentionally demanding

Question 25

Prediction model (2 stages)

Answer 25

1. Latent semantic analysis - Represents the meanings of words based on relations with other words
   e.g. in the phrase ‘all lawyers are sharks’ you can find meaning in words that link to shark
2. Construction-integration - Use information from first stage to construct interpretation
   e.g. so once have words linking to sharks, not all of them apply (e.g. fins) so can link with predicted meaning, e.g. aggressive, vicious would make sense.

Question 26

When there is no common ground? egocentric heuristic

Answer 26

• Interpretation based on our own knowledge, rather than that shared with speaker
  – Use egocentric heuristics
• Often the cause of misunderstanding between listener and speaker

Question 27

Next part of lecture: Inferences (3 types)

Answer 27

1. Logical
2. Bridging (or backward)
3. Elaborative

Question 28

Logical inferences

Answer 28

Depends on the meaning of words - apply meaning on words to fill in blanks

e.g. ‘jill has very fair skin’. inference = jill is pale

Question 29

Bridging inferences

Answer 29

Establish coherence between current part of text and preceding text

E.g. ‘she had sunburn on monday’ inference = jill forgot to use suncream

A type of bridging inference: Causal inferences

Question 30

Bridging inferences: Causal inferences:

Answer 30

decipher causal relship between current sentence and the previous sentence. (uses context and prior knowledge)

TWO STAGES of forming inference:
- BONDING: automatic activation of words from preceding sentence
- RESOLUTION: ensures interpretation is consistent with contextual information

Ken drove to london yesterday.
The car kept overheating.
(Previous sentence gives context to second)

Question 31

Elaborative inferences

Answer 31

Add details to text using knowledge to expand on information

e.g. ‘She forgot to use sunscreen’ Inference = Jill will be sunburnt

Question 32

Making inferences: Schema theory

Answer 32

• Schemas can be defined as
  – ‘Packets’ of information about the world, events, people, actions etc.
  
  • Contain information needed to understand language
  • Allow the formation of expectations
    – Used to infer typical sequence of events
    – Make the world predictable, as our expectations are generally confirmed (but not always!)

Question 33

he procedure is quite simple. First, you arrange items into different groups. Of course one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step; otherwise, you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many

Answer 33

Washing clothes

Question 34

Schema theory

Answer 34

• Hearing the passage in absence of a title
  - incomprehensible and not well-remembered
  • But if title provided before
    
    • easy to understand and greater recall

Scheme knowledge provided by the title helped with comprehension
- if presented after the passage, but before recall, less information remembered (because automatically go to own interpretation of washing/ schema of washing)
(Bransford & Johnson)

Question 35

Schema theory strengths:

Answer 35

Semantic knowledge helps with text comprehension and general understanding

• account for errors and distortions

Question 35

Weaknesses:

Answer 35

Schema theories are hard to test

When/ how schemas are used is unclear

Exaggerate how error prone we are