Week 11 Flashcards
Why does temporary ambiguity occur?
Because sentence processing is incremental. The ambiguous region is the point where there are two possible meanings. Temporary ambiguity is almost always resolved in the sentence.
Type of ambiguous sentence:
Put the apple on the napkin in the box
Low vs High PP
Type of ambiguous sentence:
When Sam answered /the vendor was surprised.
/the door the vendor was surprised
Early/ Late closure
Type of ambiguous sentence:
Paula knew /the guy from high school
/the guy was a creep
Object / clause
Type of ambiguous sentence:
The students evaluated /their professor after class
/by the TA scored higher
main clause/ reduced relative
If parsing is Serial . . .
Only a single analysis is considered at a time. The chance that you will make a misanalysis and have to reanalyze. Proof: Regression in eye movements while reading, slower reading times in the disambiguating region
If parsing is Parallel. . .
Carry both possibilities along until you have enough info to describe one. Processing difficulty would occur in the ambiguous region.
Describe the Garden Path Model
Serial,
Modular: initial decision on syntactic principles (minimal attachment and late closure are preferred)
Non syntactic info (context, real world, prosody) contributes to reanalysis
Describe CBL
Parallel: multiple parses at once
Interactive: All info influences parsing decision: - Prosody, co-occurance, verb bias, context, real-world knowledge and plausability
Speeded Grammaticality Judgements and Plausability: Teachers vs Children taught
Garden Path predicts-
CBL predicts-
Real Life-
GP: Equal difficulty parsing
CBL: If plausability plays a role “Children taught” should be easier to parse because it is more likely
RL: People judged “children taught” as grammatical more often than “teachers taught”
Eye tracking while reading and Plausibility: The defendent (that was) examined by the lawyer...
Slower reading times of disambiguating regions for sentences without “that was” than for those with it.
Why are the results different b/w Grammaticality Judgements and plausibility and Eye tracking and plausibility?
The results differ because grammaticality judgements are offline while Eye tracking is an online measure of sentence processing
Offline
Measures at end of Sentence:
Grammaticallity judgements
Comprehension questions
Online
Measures during sentence processing:
Eye tracking
Self paced reading
Event Related potentials
Verb Bias
How often the given verb occurs in different constructions. Based on usage there can be a verb preference for one continuation over another. Helps prevents garden paths. Verb bias is lexical not syntactical.
