Parsing WH-constructions: Evidence for on-line gap location

Stowe, Laurie A.

doi:10.1080/01690968608407062

Cited by 338 publications

(323 citation statements)

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“…Therefore, showing that parsers do not engage in active dependency formation inside island domains would in principle constitute strong evidence that grammatical knowledge guides parsing decisions. A number of studies have shown that experimental measures of active dependency formation are not observed in island domains (Stowe 1986, Bourdages 1992, Pickering, Barton & Shillcock 1994, Traxler & Pickering 1996cf. Freedman & Forster 1985, Kurtzman & Crawford 1991, and many share the consensus that island constraints are respected in incremental processing (Phillips 2006).…”

Section: Islandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(2) (a) The babysitter forgot which CD the toddler likes her mother to play __ (b) The babysitter forgot whether the toddler likes her mother to play a CD _ Word-by-word reading times have shown that a disruption begins at the constituent her mother in (2a) (Crain & Fodor 1985, Stowe 1986, Lee 2004). This processing disruption, called the Filled Gap Effect, suggests that comprehenders posit a gap in advance of an overt constituent.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the past two decades, it has been established that the sentence processor attempts to form wh-dependencies before any direct evidence in the input signals the position of missing constituents (Crain & Fodor 1985, Stowe 1986, inter alia), a phenomenon commonly referred to as ' active filling ' (Frazier & Flores D'Arcais 1989). Once the parser identifies a displaced element (henceforth, a filler), gaps are posited at each available position that would allow the dependency to be completed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Multiple dependencies and the role of the grammar in real-time comprehension

Wagers

Phillips

2009

J. Ling.

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Wh-dependencies are known to be formed rapidly in real-time comprehension. The parser posits the location of gap sites in advance of the bottom-up evidence for missing constituents, and must therefore have a means of deciding when and where to project dependencies. Previous studies have observed that the parser avoids building ungrammatical wh-dependencies, for example, by restricting the search for gap sites from island domains. This paper tests the stronger claim that constraints are not merely respected, but that grammatical knowledge actively prompts the construction of some representations in advance of the input. Three self-paced reading experiments examined patterns of wh-dependency formation in multiple-dependency constructions: obligatory across-the-board (ATB) extraction from coordinated verb phrases, and from optional parasitic gaps in post-verbal adjunct clauses. The key finding is that comprehenders immediately enforce the requirement for extraction from coordinates, and hence actively search for multiple gap sites within a coordinate VP; but they do not search for post-verbal parasitic gaps. This difference cannot be attributed to relative differences in acceptability, as comprehenders rated both of these multiple-gap constructions equally highly, nor can it be explained by general parsing incentives to develop maximal incremental interpretations of partial strings. More plausibly, the difference reflects the deployment of detailed grammatical knowledge in a parser that is motivated to satisfy structural licensing requirements in real time.

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Section: Islandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Multiple dependencies and the role of the grammar in real-time comprehension

Wagers

Phillips

2009

J. Ling.

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“…Second, and perhaps more importantly, heavy NP shift has much in common with whmovement, the processing of which has been studied in great detail (e.g., Aoshima, Phillips, & Weinberg, 2004;Boland, Tanenhaus, Garnsey, & Carlson, 1995;Crain & Fodor, 1985;Fodor, 1978Fodor, , 1989Garnsey, Tanenhaus, & Chapman, 1989;Pickering & Traxler, 2003;Stowe, 1986;Traxler & Pickering, 1996). Whmovement occurs in both questions and relative clauses, as in (3a) and (3b), respectively: (3a) [Which boy] i did the teacher punish t i for his bad behavior?…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Fodor notes that this prediction is inconsistent with clear intuitions about processing difficulty, and research using on-line measures such as eyetracking and self-paced reading has consistently provided evidence that readers do not follow the last resort strategy (Crain & Fodor, 1985;Stowe, 1986). In fact, a fair amount of evidence now supports the first resort strategy over the lexical expectation strategy (e.g., Pickering & Traxler, 2003;Traxler & Pickering, 1996; but cf.…”

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confidence: 99%

Heavy NP shift is the parser’s last resort: Evidence from eye movements☆

Staub

Clifton

Frazier

2006

Journal of Memory and Language

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Two eye movement experiments explored the roles of verbal subcategorization possibilities and transitivity biases in the processing of heavy NP shift sentences in which the verb's direct object appears to the right of a post-verbal phrase. In Experiment 1, participants read sentences in which a prepositional phrase immediately followed the verb, which was either obligatorily transitive or had a high transitivity bias (e.g., Jack praised/watched from the stands his daughter's attempt to shoot a basket). Experiment 2 compared unshifted sentences to sentences in which an adverb intervened between the verb and its object, and obligatorily transitive verbs to optionally transitive verbs with widely varying transitivity biases. In both experiments, evidence of processing difficulty appeared on the material that intervened between the verb and its object when the verb was obligatorily transitive, and on the shifted direct object when the verb was optionally transitive, regardless of transitivity bias. We conclude that the parser adopts the heavy NP shift analysis only when it is forced to by the grammar, which we interpret in terms of a preference for immediate incremental interpretation. KeywordsSentence comprehension; Parsing; Heavy NP shift; Argument structure; Eye movements Consider the comprehension of sentences in which a direct object is separated from the verb by intervening material, as in (1) below: (1) Lucy ate t i with a fork [the extremely delicious, bright green broccoli] i . This construction is known as heavy NP shift. According to the classic syntactic account (Ross, 1967; but cf. Kayne, 1998;Rochemont & Culicover, 1997), heavy NP shift involves a movement operation that displaces the verb's direct object from its underlying position adjacent to the verb, where it receives both accusative case and a thematic role, to an adjoined position to the right of other verbal arguments and/or adjuncts. As in other movement operations, a trace of the moved constituent remains in the pre-movement position. Notably, heavy NP shift is typically able to apply only when the direct object noun phrase is relatively long or "heavy" relative to the intervening constituent, as evidenced by the comparative awkwardness of (2a) and the unacceptability of (2b):

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Language Processing

Rayner¹,

Clifton²

2002

Stevens' Handbook of Experimental Psychology

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In this chapter, a number of issues related to language comprehension are reviewed. The chapter consists of four main section: (1) tasks and paradigms used to study language comprehension, (2) comprehension of words, (3) comprehension of sentences, and (4) comprehension of text. For the sections on comprehending words, sentences, and text, we discuss (1) the nature of the task, (2) the core phenomena, and (3) representations and models of the specific process. Research on both reading and listening are discussed, and a number of influential models related to difference aspects of the comprehension process are discussed. While there are fully implemented models of word recognition, sentence parsing, and text comprehension, what is missing are general models of language comprehension that account for the interaction of word, sentence, and discourse comprehension. Developing such a model will not be an easy task, but the empirical facts about reading and listening reviewed in this chapter will hopefully make it possible that such an all‐encompassing model of language comprehension will be developed soon.

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Parsing WH-constructions: Evidence for on-line gap location

Cited by 338 publications

References 7 publications

Multiple dependencies and the role of the grammar in real-time comprehension

Multiple dependencies and the role of the grammar in real-time comprehension

Heavy NP shift is the parser’s last resort: Evidence from eye movements☆

Language Processing

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