Sidestepping Garden Paths: Assessing the Contributions of Syntax, Semantics and Plausibility in Resolving Ambiguities

Ni, Weijia

doi:10.1080/016909696387196

Cited by 122 publications

(112 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…First, the presence of the three-and-one-referent context allows for the conclusion that referential effects in syntactic ambiguity resolution reflect not only a highly incremental process of establishing reference, but also, more specifically, the on-line use of linguistically coded presuppositions. That is, it distinguishes between a strictly referential account, couched in terms of identification of a referent (e.g., Ni, Crain, & Shankweiler, 1996), and a more general pragmatic account in which expectations for modification affect ambiguity resolution. Second, and perhaps most important, the comparisons of the two-referent and one-referent contexts in and Trueswell et al (1999) were insufficient to rule out the possibility that the effect of a temporary garden path on eye movements was masked by inhibition from potential eye movements to an alternative referent.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eye movements and spoken language comprehension: Effects of visual context on syntactic ambiguity resolution

Spivey

2002

Cognitive Psychology

260

203

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eye movements and spoken language comprehension: Effects of visual context on syntactic ambiguity resolution

Spivey

2002

Cognitive Psychology

260

203

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“…These sentences contrasting two types of reduced relative clause constructions, ones marked by the determine "the" versus ones marked by the focus operator "only" (Kemtes, 1998;Ni et al, 1996). The focus operator sets up an expectation of contrasting set, blocking the main verb interpretation, as in "Only businessmen loaned money at low interest rates…" Ni et al claim that this contrast is semantic or referential and biases the initial interpretation of the verb as a reduced relative clause.…”

Section: Experiments IImentioning

confidence: 99%

Eye-Fixation Patterns of High- and Low-Span Young and Older Adults: Down the Garden Path and Back Again.

Kemper¹,

Crow²,

Kemtes³

2004

Psychology and Aging

122

101

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Abstract:Eye fixation patterns for older adults and young adults were monitored as they read sentences containing temporary syntactic ambiguities such as "The experienced soldiers warned about the dangers conducted the midnight raid." Young and older adults' fixation patterns were similar except that older adults made many more regressions to the Subject NP for ambiguous sentences. In a second experiment, high and low span older adults were compared to high and low young adults. First pass fixation times for high and low span readers were similar; however, high and low span readers adopted different processing strategies when they encountered disambiguating information. High span readers were able to quickly resolve the ambiguity whereas low span readers required many regressions to the Subject NP in order to resolve the ambiguity. As a consequence, total fixation times for low span readers were longer than those for high span readers. High span readers were also able to use the focus operator ONLY (e.g., "Only experienced soldiers warned about the dangers…") to immediately resolve the temporary ambiguity. No age group differences were observed. These results are discussed with reference to contemporary theories of the role of working memory in sentence processing. Text of paper:Eye . Eye fixation patterns of high and low span young and older adults: Down the garden path and back again. Psychology and Aging, 19,[157][158][159][160][161][162][163][164][165][166][167][168][169][170].. Publisher's official version: http://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0882-7974.19.1.157. Open Access version: http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/. Eye Fixation Patterns of High and Low Span Young and Older Adults: Down the Garden Path and Back AgainTwo experiments were conducted to provide new data relevant to the on-going debate over the role of working memory capacity limitations in sentence processing and the possibility of age differences in the processing of complex syntactic constructions . This debate has focused on the processing of complex sentences containing temporary syntactic ambiguities, such as "The experienced soldiers warned about the dangers conducted the midnight raid." At issue is whether or not both young and older adults or high and low span individuals experience garden-path effects: an increasing in processing time reflecting the initial misinterpretation of the first verb "warned" as the main verb (MV) of the sentence, rather than as the verb of a reduced relative clause (RRC). Existing studies have been severely criticized on a number of methodological and procedural grounds (see Caplan & Waters, 1999 and subsequent responses).Just and his colleagues Just & Varma, 2002;King & Just, 1991;MacDonald, Just, & Carpenter, 1992) ) have claimed that working memory capacity constrains the interpretation of temporary syntactic ambiguities, limiting the ability of older or low span readers to make and sustain multiple interpretations of the ambiguous phrases. In contrast, Caplan and Waters in another series of reviews an...

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“…This elaboration should lead to a richer, more interconnected memory representation, making the anaphor a more effective retrieval cue to memory. Moreover, adjectives often serve a contrastive function and are used to distinguish between referents (Ni, Crain, & Shankweiler, 1996;Sedivy, Tanenhaus, Chambers, & Carlson, 1999). Thus, the prenominal adjectives in this experiment may serve as additional cues that there is a specific referent in the discourse model.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Readers’ sensitivity to linguistic cues in narratives: How salience influences anaphor resolution

et al. 2004

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Despite the general assumption that anaphoric inferences are necessary inferences, Levine, Guzmán, and Klin (2000) concluded that the probability of resolving noun phrase anaphors depends both on the degree of accessibility in memory of the antecedent concepts and the extent to which resolution is necessary to create a coherent discourse representation. Four experiments are presented in which the factors that influence readers' standard of coherence are investigated. We examine the hypothesis that readers are more likely to resolve anaphors that are perceived as salient; salience was manipulated both with a syntactic focusing structure (wh-clefts) and with the addition of prenominal adjectival modifiers. The results of a probe recognition time task provide support for the hypothesis that a variety of linguistic cues serve as mental processing instructions (Givón, 1992), which instruct readers as to how much attention to devote to processing.

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Sidestepping Garden Paths: Assessing the Contributions of Syntax, Semantics and Plausibility in Resolving Ambiguities

Cited by 122 publications

References 30 publications

Eye movements and spoken language comprehension: Effects of visual context on syntactic ambiguity resolution

Eye movements and spoken language comprehension: Effects of visual context on syntactic ambiguity resolution

Eye-Fixation Patterns of High- and Low-Span Young and Older Adults: Down the Garden Path and Back Again.

Readers’ sensitivity to linguistic cues in narratives: How salience influences anaphor resolution

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