scholarly journals O EFEITO LABIRINTO ALÉM DA SINTAXE: ELIMINANDO A AMBIGÜIDADE

2004 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Tadeu Gonçalves ◽  
Luiz Arthur Pagani
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Categorial Grammar ◽  
Grammatical Structure ◽  
Garden Path ◽  
Combinatory Categorial Grammar ◽  
Incremental Interpretation ◽  
Human Sentence Processing ◽  
Processing Mechanism

O presente artigo trata das chamadas sentenças-labirinto, mostrando que, em casos em que a entoação e a estrutura informacional são suficientemente claras, a ambigüidade gerada pelo mencionado efeito não ocorre. O artigo contribui para a área do processamento lingüístico humano mostrando que, quando faladas, as sentenças das quais se esperam problemas de processamento sérios podem não apresentar tais problemas. A partir de um modelo teórico chamado Gramática Categorial Combinatória, mostramos como o processamento incremental de sentenças é ajudado pelas informações prosódicas e informacionais na atribuição de estrutura gramatical adequada a sentenças tradicionalmente consideradas “labirinto”. Garden-path effect beyond syntax: eliminating ambiguity Abstract The present article deals with the so-called garden-path effect. Traditionally, garden-path sentences are those that cause serious problem for the mental parser during processing and, although they are perfectly grammatical, there is no attribution of grammatical structure to them. We try to show that, when spoken, the garden-path sentences may not present the same kind of problem to the human sentence processing mechanism. In this paper we show how sufficiently informative data regarding prosody and informational structure can help the parser attribute correct grammatical structure to garden-path sentences when they are spoken. Using a framework called Combinatory Categorial Grammar, we show how incremental interpretation of garden-path sentences can be helped by prosody and informational structure during the processing of such sentences.

Recency preference in the human sentence processing mechanism

Cognition ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Gibson ◽  
Neal Pearlmutter ◽  
Enriqueta Canseco-Gonzalez ◽  
Gregory Hickok
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Human Sentence Processing ◽  
Processing Mechanism

scholarly journals Repair, Revision, and Complexity in Syntactic Analysis: An Electrophysiological Differentiation

2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith Kaan ◽  
Tamara Y. Swaab
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Syntactic Processing ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Ambiguous Sentence ◽  
Garden Path ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Different Characteristics ◽  
Human Sentence Processing ◽  
Electrophysiological Differentiation

One of the core aspects of human sentence processing is the ability to detect errors and to recover from erroneous analysis through revision of ambiguous sentences and repair of ungrammatical sentences. In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to help identify the nature of these processes by directly comparing ERPs to complex ambiguous sentence structures with and without grammatical violations, and to simpler unambiguous sentence structures with and without grammatical violations. In ambiguous sentences, preference of syntactic analysis was manipulated such that in one condition, the structures agreed with the preferred analysis, and in another condition, a nonpreferred but syntactically correct analysis (garden path) was imposed. Nonpreferred ambiguous structures require revision, whereas ungrammatical structures require repair. We found that distinct ERPs reflected different characteristics of syntactic processing. Specifically, our results are consistent with the idea that a positivity with a posterior distribution across the scalp (posterior P600) is an index of syntactic processing difficulty, including repair and revision, and that a frontally distributed positivity (frontal P600) is related to ambiguity resolution and/ or to an increase in discourse level complexity.

scholarly journals A new argument for co-active parses during language comprehension

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Dillon ◽  
Caroline Andrews ◽  
Caren M. Rotello ◽  
Matthew Wagers
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Ambiguity Advantage ◽  
Linguistic Input ◽  
Acceptability Judgments ◽  
Human Sentence Processing ◽  
Processing Mechanism

One perennially important question for theories of sentence comprehension is whether the human sentence processing mechanism is parallel (i.e. it simultaneously represents multiple syntactic analyses of linguistic input) or serial (i.e. it constructs only a single analysis at a time). Despite its centrality, this question has proven difficult to address for both theoretical and methodological reasons (Gibson & Pearlmutter, 2000; Lewis, 2000). In the present study, we reassess this question from a novel perspective. We investigated the well-known ambiguity advantage effect (Traxler, Pickering & Clifton, 1998) in a speeded acceptability judgment task. We adopted a Signal Detection Theoretic approach to these data, with the goal of determining whether speeded judgment responses were conditioned on one or multiple syntactic analyses. To link these results to incremental parsing models, we developed formal models to quantitatively evaluate how serial and parallel parsing models should impact perceived sentence acceptability in our task. Our results suggest that speeded acceptability judgments are jointly conditioned on multiple parses of the input, a finding that is overall more consistent with parallel parsing models than serial models. Our study thus provides a new, psychophysical argument for co-active parses during language comprehension.

scholarly journals Children do not overcome lexical biases where adults do: the role of the referential scene in garden-path recovery

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 222-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
EVAN KIDD ◽  
ANDREW J. STEWART ◽  
LUDOVICA SERRATRICE
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Test Sentence ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Garden Path ◽  
Initial Analysis ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
Scene Information ◽  
Lexical Cues

ABSTRACTIn this paper we report on a visual world eye-tracking experiment that investigated the differing abilities of adults and children to use referential scene information during reanalysis to overcome lexical biases during sentence processing. The results showed that adults incorporated aspects of the referential scene into their parse as soon as it became apparent that a test sentence was syntactically ambiguous, suggesting they considered the two alternative analyses in parallel. In contrast, the children appeared not to reanalyze their initial analysis, even over shorter distances than have been investigated in prior research. We argue that this reflects the children's over-reliance on bottom-up, lexical cues to interpretation. The implications for the development of parsing routines are discussed.

scholarly journals Incrementality and Prediction in Human Sentence Processing

2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerry T. M. Altmann ◽  
Jelena Mirković
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Human Sentence Processing

scholarly journals The interaction between structure and meaning in sentence comprehension: Recurrent neural networks and reading times

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan L. Frank ◽  
John Hoeks
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Neural Networks ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Recurrent Neural Networks ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Semantic Relations ◽  
Garden Path ◽  
Word Predictability ◽  
Syntactic Ambiguities ◽  
Potential Object

Recurrent neural network (RNN) models of sentence processing have recently displayed a remarkable ability to learn aspects of structure comprehension, as evidenced by their ability to account for reading times on sentences with local syntactic ambiguities (i.e., garden-path effects). Here, we investigate if these models can also simulate the effect of semantic appropriateness of the ambiguity's readings. RNNs-based estimates of surprisal of the disambiguating verb of sentences with an NP/S-coordination ambiguity (as in `The wizard guards the king and the princess protects ...') show identical patters to human reading times on the same sentences: Surprisal is higher on ambiguous structures than on their disambiguated counterparts and this effect is weaker, but not absent, in cases of poor thematic fit between the verb and its potential object (`The teacher baked the cake and the baker made ...'). These results show that an RNN is able to simultaneously learn about structural and semantic relations between words and suggest that garden-path phenomena may be more closely related to word predictability than traditionally assumed.

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