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Back to Usual IssuesSo, evidence supports both Parallelism &
Interaction of multiple within-sentence constraints
And shows Verb Bias effects in sentences that should not require
any reanalysisBut Verb Bias effects could be part of 1st stage,
since may be a kind of syntactic knowledgeAnd N+V plausibility
effects are only testable in sentences with Clause structure, so
could be due to reanalysis
What about constraints from outside sentence?
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Discourse ContextWhat are Non-minimally Attached PPs?They modify
the NP they followWhen does an NP need modification?When it wouldnt
be clear in context who or what it refers to
If you see/hear The doctor examined the patient with ...In a
context where there are several patients in the waiting roomYou may
expect what follows to tell you which patient is meant
i.e., context may lead you to expect a Non-minimal
Attachment
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Altmann & Steedman(1988) Contexts:A burglar broke into a
bank carrying some dynamite. He planned to blow open a safe. Once
inside, he saw that there was ...
2-safe context:... a safe with a new lock and a safe with an old
lock.1-safe context: ... a safe with a new lock and a strongbox
with an old lock.
Target Sentences:MA: The burglar blew open the safe with the
dynamite and ...NMA: The burglar blew open the safe with the new
lock and ...
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PredictionIf people use discourse context immediately,they'll
read new lock faster than dynamite after the 2-safe contextbecause
they need new lock to know which safe is meant
Results (Moving-Window RT)People did read new lock faster than
dynamite after 2-safe contexti.e., the Non-Minimally Attached
sentence was easier than the Minimally Attached sentence
So, suggests people dont always try the simpler structure
1stWhat they try first seems to depend on the discourse contextBUT,
these results have been notoriously difficult to replicate!
What if the context comes from the world rather than the
discourse?If that influences parsing, the system is clearly very
interactive
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Tanenhaus, Spivey-Knowlton, Eberhard & Sedivy (Science,
1995)Head-mounted eyetracker
Track eyes while people look at visual scenes & hear spoken
instructions
They usually look at objects before reaching for them
So eye movements can show what theyre thinking of reaching for,
based on how theyre understanding a sentence so far
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ProceduresPeople looked at displays of 4 objects while hearing
instructions like:Put the apple on the towel in the box.Ambiguous
between:Put the apple on the towel in the box. towel = destination
(MA)Put the apple on the towel in the box. towel = modifier
(NMA)
The visual scene had either 1 or 2 apples presentIf visual
context influences parsing, then when there are 2 apples:They
should think PP modifies it, to pick out which appleSo they should
not think the towel is a destination & thus should not look at
it (much)- i.e., They should prefer the Non-Minimal Attachment
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Typical Result in 1-Ref ConditionUnambiguous version
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Typical Result in 2-Ref Condition2 applesin display
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Overall Results
-
InterpretationWhen there were 2 apples, people rarely looked at
the empty towelSuggests rarely considered it as a possible
destinationThus, that they did not always try MA first?So,
non-linguistic visual context immediately constrained
interpretation So, sentence comprehension processing is
Interactive
Whether you believe this interpretationDepends on whether you
think people would move their eyes to the empty towel if they
briefly mis-parsed the sentence & thought it was a destination
???
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The next section has slides from a talk of mine about a study
with Reduced Relatives, showing some individual difference effects.
I will talk about this study when we talk about memory and language
processing, so dont worry if you cant figure it out from just the
slides.
-
Individual Differences in the Effect of Yet-to-be-Fixated Words
during Sentence Reading With thanks to: Elizabeth Myers Neal
Pearlmutter Kate Pirog Mike Tanenhaus John Trueswell Gary
Wolverton
-
My Very Favorite Example of a Garden-Path SentenceA University
student charged with threatening to kill the President via email
was arrested Thursday, following issuance of a complaint and
warrant, officials said.
- Daily Illini, 2/27/94
-
A University student charged with threatening to kill the
President viaemailXY
-
You may not have noticed that there wasanother opportunity for
garden-pathing inthis example with threateningto kill the President
A University student chargedwho was
^Reduced Relative
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The Most Famous English Garden-Path SentenceThe horse raced past
the barn 1. Horses are good racers
-
Dual Purkinje EyetrackerFor the font size and distance we use,
spatial resolution is ~1/4 character
-
First-passReadingTime
= Sum of all fixations in a region before leaving the region
- Used as a measure of initial processing
-
Example Stimulus Set for Allof the Studies that FollowAnimate =
Good AgentThe witness (who was) examined by the lawyer turned out
to be unreliable.
Inanimate = Bad Agent = Possible Passive PatientThe evidence
(that was) examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable.
-
We thought there were some problems with the materials:e.g.,The
trash smelled by the dog was laying on the sidewalk.
The questions asked about the murder could not be answered.
The stories told about the incident were a great source of
concern.
-
Daneman & Carpenters (1980)Reading Span TestAt the
conclusion of the musicians' performance, the enthusiastic crowd
applauded.Without any hesitation, he plunged into the difficult
mathematics assignment blindly.The devastating effects of the flood
were not fully realized until months later.When I got to the big
tobacco field I saw that it had not suffered much.
-
What does the test measure? - Verbal working memory capacity? -
Ability to focus attention? - Skill with language and reading? - .
. . ?
For some purposes, it doesnt matter
- As long as it reliably identifies subgroups of people - Who
can then be tested for differences in other tasks - Which may help
us figure out what the test measures
-
Parafoveal Preview in ReadingBurgess (1991) - Self-paced moving
window reading time study - Varied window size from single to
several words
- Found an animacy effect only when people saw the
disambiguating preposition by chunked together with the verb
preceding itexamined bythe lawyerturned out e.g., The
evidenceFerreira & Clifton used a 40-character wide display -
Sometimes the preposition was on the next line
-
We created sentences with verbs at least 8 characters long - So
we could analyze data contingent on whether or not people were
likely to get preview of by while still fixating on verb
The professor confronted by the student was not ready to
-
48 item sets with 4 versions each:The professor (who was)
confronted by the student was not ready for an argument.
The professor (had) confronted the student but was not ready for
an argument.
All animate Want people biased toward main clause
interpretations- So sentences are fairly hard, so theres a better
chance to see how much preview of by can help
- Participants - 23 high-span (>=3.5, 13 female) - 20 low-span
(
-
People are differently abled when it comes to making rapid use
of cues that can help in understanding hard sentences- In Trueswell
et al. (1994), - We probably just happened to get a high proportion
of high-span subjects - And something about the display &/or
materials happened to make it easy to get preview of by- Presenting
sentences one word at a time in ERP studies (among others) may
yield unrepresentative results especially for highly skilled
readers