Syntactic and semantic interference in sentence comprehension: Support from English and German eye-tracking data

Abstract

A long-standing debate in the sentence processing literature concerns the time course of syntactic and semantic information in online sentence comprehension. The default assumption in cue-based models of parsing is that syntactic and semantic retrieval cues simultaneously guide dependency resolution. When retrieval cues match multiple items in memory, this leads to similarity-based interference. Both semantic and syntactic interferencehave been shown to occur in English. However, the relative timing of syntactic vs. semantic interference remains unclear. In this first-ever cross-linguistic investigation of the time course of syntactic vs. semantic interference, the data from two eye-tracking reading experiments (English and German) suggest that the two types of interference can in principle arise simultaneously during retrieval. However, the data also indicate that semantic cues may be evaluated with a small timing lag in German compared to English. This suggests that there may be cross-linguistic variation in how syntactic and semantic cues are used to resolve linguistic dependencies in real-time.

Number feature distortion modulates cue-based retrieval in reading

“…In fact, the Wagers et al (2009) proposal was already difficult to reconcile with the broader literature on cue-based retrieval because, as also discussed in Villata and Franck (2020), there exists an array of data showing retrieval-driven processing difficulty in grammatical sentences (Mertzen, Paape, Dillon, Engbert, & Vasishth, 2022;Van Dyke, 2007;Van Dyke & McElree, 2006, 2011.…”

“…It would be odd to assume that the Van Dyke (2007) design differs from most other designs by somehow preventing prediction. Furthermore, as discussed in Mertzen et al (2022), there are good reasons to assume that prediction is happening in the Van Dyke designs: the effects of the interference manipulation show up consistently in the pre-critical region. 14…”

“…The current work has focused on subject-verb number agreement dependency because this construction has a relatively large amount of published data that is also publicly available. 18 Other dependencies have also been investigated for interference effects in comprehension, including subject-verb constructions in which syntactic and semantic similarity is manipulated (Mertzen et al, 2022;Van Dyke, 2007;Van Dyke & McElree, 2011); negative polarity items (Vasishth et al, 2008); and antecedent-reflexive dependencies (Cunnings & Felser, 2013;Dillon et al, 2013;Jäger et al, 2020).…”

SEAM: An Integrated Activation-Coupled Model of Sentence Processing and Eye Movements in Reading

“…A strong interpretation of the eye-mind assumption would predict that, given that the processing of attorney is finalized at complained, readers should refixate attorney once lexical access of complained is complete. However, this is not what usually happens: While readers do make more regressions in more complex sentences that involve memory retrievals (e.g., Gordon et al, 2006;Jäger et al, 2015;Lee et al, 2007;Mertzen et al, 2023), regressive eye movement nevertheless occur only in a minority of trials, and the word that is regressed to is not necessarily the word that needs to be retrieved to complete the dependency (Engelmann et al, 2013;Mitchell et al, 2008;von der Malsburg & Vasishth, 2011;von der Malsburg & Vasishth, 2013). Thus, while there is undoubtedly a connection between sentence processing and eye movements (Clifton et al, 2007;Frazier & Rayner, 1982;Rayner, 1998), it is much less direct than posited by the strong version of the eye-mind assumption (Reichle et al, 2009).…”

“…This more complicated picture of reading aligns with the fact that the structure of many sentences in natural language does not correspond to simple agent-action-object sequences. Consider a sentence like (1), taken from Mertzen et al (2023):…”