Sentence Processing
The complexity of the issue

The U.S. military transferred a man suspected of
involvement with terrorist attacks in East Africa to
the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, the Pentagon said Monday.

How is lexical, syntactic, and semantic
information coordinated during sentence
comprehension?
Modular vs. interactive views
Mental Representations
Language Subprocesses
Semantic
Semantic
ate (dog, ?)
Syntactic
S
NP
VP
The dog
ate ?
Syntactic
Lexical
The dog ate the bone
[Current eye fixation]
1
How do we study sentence
processing?


Study comprehension as
it happens
 Eye fixation studies
 Priming studies
(reaction time)
Look at the product of the
comprehension process
 Memory studies
Syntactic ambiguity




The student warned about the possible failure
dropped the class.
The student who was warned about the possible
failure dropped the class.
 Garden path sentence
Modular view—commit to syntactic analysis
before using semantic information
Interactive view—use semantic information to
determine the syntactic structure of a sentence
Parsing

Assign elements of sentence to linguistic
categories
 The cat in the hat came back.
 The dog bit the man.
S
 The man bit the dog.
VP

Challenges:
 Memory demands
 Decision-making
NP
det
N
V
NP
N
the
dog
likes ice cream
2
Parsing strategies


Parsing principle: use the simplest, easiest-toconstruct phrase structure tree possible (Frazier, 1987)
Strategy 1: Late closure
 attach new items to the current constituent
 Martin had a date with the sister of the teacher
who was named in the newspaper last week.
 Whose name appeared in the newspaper?
 Frazier and Rayner (1982)
 Since Jay always jogs a mile seems like a very
short distance to him.
 Since Jay always jogs a mile this distance
seems like a short distance to him.
Parsing strategies

Strategy 2: Minimal attachment

attach phrases to tree using as few branches as
possible


S
The spy saw the cop with binoculars but the cop
didn’t see him.
Who had the binoculars?
S
V NP
VP
NP
VP
NP
PP
The spy saw the cop with binoculars
NP
V
NP
PP
The spy saw the cop with binoculars
Minimal attachment, cont.

Rayner, Carlson, & Frazier (1983)
 The spy saw the cop with the revolver but
the cop didn’t see him.
3
Can semantics affect parsing?


Taraban & McClelland (1988)
 The couple admired the house with a…
 friend but knew that it was overpriced.
 garden but knew that it was overpriced.
Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Garnsey (1994)
 The defendant examined by the lawyer turned
out to be unreliable.
 The evidence examined by the lawyer turned
out to be unreliable.
 But…The performer/florist sent the flowers
was very pleased.
Extralinguistic context effects

Tanenhaus, Spivey-Knowlton, Eberhard, &
Sedivy (1995)
Extralinguistic context effects, cont.
4
S
VP
NP
V
NP
PP
The couple admired the house with a friend…
S
VP
NP
V
NP
NP
PP
The couple admired the house with a garden…
5