Week 8: Syntactic Structure

Question 1

Two types of theories of how we process syntax when reading

Answer 1

Modular (isolated, separate system)
Constraint-satisfaction (uses context, prosody etc.) e.g. garden-path

Most evidence supports c-s, but less so for children

Question 2

Two factors affect fixations to unmentioned objects

Answer 2

Linguistic anticipation

Semantic priming

Question 3

Syntax plays a role in…

Answer 3

Anticipatory eye movements

Syntactic factors include case marking and active/passive voice

Question 4

Studies of ambiguity, compatability

Answer 4

Show that we use visual and linguistic information, especially in regards to affordances, to process syntax and meaning

Question 5

Children

Answer 5

Cannot rapidly use visual referential context

Question 6

ERP results

Answer 6

Time course suggests rapid incremental gathering of non-linguistic (visual) information

Question 7

Syntactic priming

Answer 7

Eye-tracking shows verb affects expectation

But, other factors as well as verbs have been shown

Question 8

Three theories of pronoun resolution

Answer 8

1) First-mention
2) Subject-preference (subject of previous clause favoured)
3) Parallelism (pronoun assumed to be co-referent of previous noun)

Some eye-tracking evidence for 1) and 2)
But as independent effects