PROCESSING NOTES
its threshold for activation is temporarily
WEEK 14: P97-117
LEXICAL ACCESS: set of mental representations and
process that are involved in identifying which specific
words we are hearing (during spoken word processing)
or seeing (during visual word processing).
Principles of spoken word processing: (studies)
1) William Marslen-Wilson (1973): shadowing
task to estimate how much time it took people
to identify words. Subjects listen to recorded
speech and they try to repeat (shadow) as
quickly as possible the words that they hear.
Result: fast shadowers were able to perform
lexical access very fast and that higher order
aspects of the speech stream.
2) Word monitoring (involves listening to
utterances and responding as quickly as
possible when a specific target word appears in
the input) and gating tasks (involves listening
to short snippets of the beginnings/onsets of
words)
THEORIES: to explain how people take inputs from
the auditory or the visual system and match those
inputs to stored representations of word form.
1) John Morton – logogen
Bottom-up driven system that takes spoken or visual
input and use it to activate previously stored word form
representations (Morton, 1969)
Each word in a person’s vocabulary is represented by a
logogen  Words are therefore recognised when the
activation levels of their corresponding logogen exceed
some threshold.
Logogen could receive inputs from either
- Spoken words
- Written words
- Preceding context
 The semantic input mechanism allows for
context to influence the time it takes to
recognise a word
 Context words that are semantically relatd to
an individual logogen will raise the activation
of the logogen before the listener gets direct
perceptual evidence that the corresponding
word is actually present in the input
 One a logogen has been triggered or activated,
lowered
 As a result, less evidence is needed in the
acoustic and visual input channels to reactivate
the logogen.
 This mechanism can account for repetition
priming effects, it is easier to recognise a word
the second time you see it than the first
because the activation threshold is lower the
second time around
Assumptions of Logogen Model:
2) Information flow is strictly bottom up; auditory
and visual processing units affect the
activation of logogens, but logogens do not
affect the activation levels of auditory and
visual processing units that feed into the
logogen.
3) There are no direct connections between and
among the logogens themselves. As a result,
the activation level of one logogen does not
affect the activation of other logogens.
How is it successful?
1) Proves that exposure to high-frequency words
lowers the threshold for activation in the
logogens that represent those high-frequency
words  less external evidence needed 
respond faster to high-frequency words
2) Explains why high-frequency words are shorter
than lower-frequency words  shorter words
pack less phonological and/or orthographic
information
3) Explain high-frequency words are easier to
recognise when they have been degraded by
noise. Noise in the signal decreases the quality
of the bottom-up input, but high-frequency
words don’t need as much bottom-up input, so
they are recognised even in noisy environment
4) Frequency ordered serial bin-search
 Word form representations were activated by
bottom-up input from the auditory system 
people use auditory/visual cues to search their
long-term memories for a matching stimulus
 Lexical representations are organised into bins and
they are organised according to word frequency
(high-frequency word = front bin, lower-frequency
word = back bin)
 Self-terminating – the searching process stops
itself when it succeeds
 Words are organised in the bins according to
shared roots (dog, dogs, dogged, dogpile,..) – a
word that has a low surface frequency will be
responded to quickly if its root frequency is high
5) COHORT
 Views the process of lexical access as involving 3
processes:
 Lateral inhibition – processing units within a layer
of units in the network try to reduce or inhibit each
other’s levels of activation – letters have excitatory
or inhibitory feedback connections from other
letters
 Word superiority effect – a class of behaviours
indicating that we have an easier time recognising
letters and phonemes when they appear in the
context of a word than when they appear by
themselves or alone

o Activation (contact)
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COHORT AND TRACE
Multiple word form representations are activated in
response to the auditory stimulus TRACE COHORT
Views word form Views word form
o Selection
activation as resulting activation as reflecting a
Sorting through the activated word form from a process of massively parallel
representations to find the one that best matches the competition and mutual process without
auditory stimulus. It depends on bottom-up stimulus. inhibition competition until the
selection phase
o Integration More activated words Allows for unlimited
candidates are parallel activation of
Happens when the features of the selected word are associated with less word candidates, the
incorporated into the evolving representation of the activation being gained number of activated
entire utterance. Properties of the selected word by any one candidate, candidates does not
(grammatical class and meaning) are evaluated with and greater competition affect the speed with
respect to how well they fit with the preceding context. between candidates which the correct
candidate is identified
 As an autonomous process – it is affected by Relies on global Word onsets (beginning)
auditory stimulation. Word representations are similarity match to are critical because they
activated as soon as the initial sounds in the determine how active a determine which
acoustic stimulus have been perceived, and it is stored word form representations will
possible for people to identify individual words in becomes make it into the cohort
the speech stream before they hear the entire Activation of word nodes Words are recognised
word. will be a function of when the acoustic
 Word that are highly predictable in context may be similarity. Hence, words stimulus reaches the
recognised a bit faster than less predictable words that share offsets should recognition point –
prime each other’s people can recognize
meanings words and access their
meanings without
having to wait until the
6) TRACE very end of the word
 Highly interactive – have connections between
processing units that allow units within the same
level to affect one another
 Combining bottom-up as input and top-down for
feedback
 Assumes that activation is cascaded – units
receiving input begin to send output as soon as any
activation at all comes in from other units
 Letter representations start to become activated
as soon as any visual feature has been identified
 WEEK 15: TRAXLER CHAPTER 10

Word Frequency Effect: recognition times are faster 1) EYE MOVEMENT CONTROL AND READING
for words seen more frequently than for words seen
less frequently.
 Highly predictable words = skipped
Word Supremacy Effect: people have better
recognition of letters presented within words as  Very short function words = skipped
compared to isolated letters and to letters presented  Content words = fixated
within nonword strings

Context Effect: influence of environmental factors on Perceptual span: to find out from what region of text
one's perception of a stimulus. (top-down design). people can extract information on a given fixation
Distortion Effect: Study:

1) moving window paradigm: part of the text is

displayed in the normal way, and part of the
text is replaced with something else (XXX)
2) Boundary change paradigm: an invisible
boundary is located somewhere in the text –
the purpose is to deny readers accurate letter
preview information

Dual-route and Dual-route cascaded (DRC) models:

 two most intensively investigated and highly

developed accounts of visual word processing.
 There are two separate ways that people can
use visual input to access entries in the mental
lexicon
o 1) access the lexicon by ‘sounding out’
the word
o 2) access the lexicon directly without
activating phonological codes

DRC:

1) you can use a sequence of letters to access a

word’s lexical entry by converting that
sequence of letters into a sequence of
phonemes
2) apply grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence
(GPC) rules on a letter-by-letter basis
3) readers appear to access the lexicon by
activating the sounds that go with each letter
in a more-or-less left-to-right fashion
4) the activated phoneme then make contact
with an entry in the lexicon that has the same
sequence of phonemes

Phonological/Assembled Phonology Route:

  when exception words (with irregular phonological units that are connected
spelling-pronunciation) have run through to words in that neighbourhood
the assembled phonology system, it
compiles a set of phonemes that do not
match any of the entries in the mental
lexicon.
 Regularisation error: when phonological  Recent neuroimaging data show that
route stays active and can cause readers to overlapping brain areas are activated when
people read novel words compared to real-
mispronounce exception words
words  implies a unified system for reading
 Regular words are accessed via assembled
novel words and familiar words
phonology
 We can also use it to generate
pronunciations for words that we have
never seen before/assigned any meaning
to
DYSLEXIA – when an individual has a
problem reading, even though they are otherwise
Orthographic/Direct Route: intellectually and behaviourally normal
 DRC – proposing that some words can be 1) SINGLE-DEFICIT MODELS
accessed via a separate system that People who have trouble reading non-words
bypasses the assembled phonology route than exception words (
and contacts the lexicon directly
 Exception words accessed via visual code,
and once the matching lexical entry has
been activated by the visual input, the
lexicon makes the correct pronunciation
available.
 Irregular words are accessed via the direct
route

Single-route model

Based on a neural network model containing three

groups of processing units

 Orthographic units
 Hidden units
 Phonological unit

Regularity effect: regular words are easier to recognise

Frequency by regularity interaction:

 Orthographic neighbourhood – words often

come in groups that resemble one another
(book, took, nook, look)
o Letters that activate large
neighbourhoods will lead to more
units sending activation to the
WEEK 16: TRAXLER (54-70)
Speech perception:
Liberman and colleagues (1952): phonological content
of speech could be described in terms of formants
(steady-state, stable patterns of vibrations) and
formant transitions (consists of short bursts of sounds
– often coincide with rapid increases or decreases in
frequency)
COARTICULATION EFFECTS ON SPEECH PERCEPTION
 Coarticulation: Articulators are moving
simultaneously but for different phonemes, or
that phonemes overlap in time, which
explicitly implicate a belief in some sort of
underlying “segment” that has its physical
expression in articulatory behaviour.
 The brain coordinates these individual
articulator movements in a very ingenious way,
such that movements needed for adjacent
vowels and consonants are produced
simultaneously.
THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN COARTICULATION:
1) When you produce a phonemic sound (i.e. /d/), the
way you make the sound and its physical form is
different when the /d/ sound is followed by
different vowels
2) Despite the differences of your phonemic
production and the actual physical properties of
sound waves, you perceive the two signals as being
the same phoneme (perceptual constancy –
different physical patterns are perceived as being
the same)
3) Speech sounds being spread out over time – not
clean breaks between phonemes, acoustic parts
of one phonemes may overlap partially or entirely
with other phonemes
4) Silent centre vowels are perceived when
researchers edit a recording to remove part of the
acoustic signal for an utterance. For example,
when the middle part is erased, the word does not
sound entirely normal, but people will correctly
identify which phoneme was present in the original
utterance
As long as the preceding and the following consonants
carry information that results from coarticulation,
listeners can accurately identify the missing vowel
sound.
EVIDENCE FOR COARTICULATION:
 Cross-spliced stimuli study
Parts of one spoken word have been chopped
off and bolted onto a different word.
Single-syllable words divided into onsets and
codas. /p/ is onset and /ress/ is coda.
Coarticulation means that the way the burst is
pronounced depends on the coda, and the way
the coda is pronounced depends on the burst.
Result: If two syllables are recorded, and the
end of one is spliced onto the beginning of the
other, people are more likely to misperceive
the coda as matching the original unspliced
version that the burst came from.
Thus, eliminating information that comes from
coarticulation makes the perceiver’s job
harder.
THE MOTOR THEORY OF SPEECH
PERCEPTION
1) Gestures represent the fundamental unit of mental
representation of speech (Cooper et al, 1952)
 When you speak, you attempt to move your
articulators to particular places in specific ways
 The motor part of the speech production
system takes the sequence of words you want
to say and comes up with a gestural score that
tells your articulators how to move.
 By knowing what the gestures are, you can tell
what the set of words was that produced that
set of gesture
 Alvin Liberman: we map acoustic signals to the
gestures that produced them, because there is
a closer relationship between gestures and
phonemes than there is between acoustic
signals and phonemes
2) Speech perception is accomplished by a naturally
selected module (Fodor, 1983).
  This speech perception module monitors
incoming acoustic stimulation and reacts
strongly when the signal contains the
characteristic complex pattern that make
up speech.
 While the speech module recognises an
incoming stimulus as speech, it pre-empts
other auditory processing systems,
preventing their output from entering
consciousness.
CHAPTER 4: SENTENCE PROCESSING
First stage: syntactic information only
Second stage: analysis of the semantic information
A sentence is globally ambiguous if it has two distinct
interpretations. = The cop chased the criminal with a
fast car
Local ambiguities persist only for a short amount of
time as an utterance is heard or written and are
resolved during the course of the utterance so the
complete utterance has only one interpretation. = The
critic wrote the book was enlightening

Globally ambiguous sentence: have sequences that can

be organised in more than one way, and those different MODULAR VS INTERACTIVE
ways of organising the sentence are all consistent with
the grammar of the language MODULAR INTERACTIVE
assumes that each factor assume that all available
Ambiguity leads to involved in sentence information is processed
processing is computed at the same time and
 longer reading times
in its own module, can immediately
 lower comprehension accuracy which has limited means influence the
 different patterns of brain activity in of communication with computation of the final
comprehenders than unambiguous sentences the other modules analysis.
that say the same thing

processing cost depends on a variety of factors:

 what information the listener has just

processed
 what contextual information is available

how to determine the effect of ambiguous sentence to

processing costs on the listener?

 Measure the time taken for someone to

understand the ambiguous sentence

Temporary ambiguous: contain a sequence of words

that can be configured in more than one way, but the
sentence as a whole has only a single grammatically
licensed or acceptable structure

The garden path model theory

 proposed by Frazier and Fodor in 1978

(Christianson et al. 2001).
 suggests that when encountering ambiguous
sentences, only one meaning is initially
processed.
 Then, upon reaching the end of, or a key point
within, the sentence, if the meaning ascribed
does not work the sentence is reparsed until a
satisfactory meaning can be ascribed.

Sentence Processing: Traxler Chapter 4
1. Describe the relationship between sentence
structure and sentence meaning. How does
the way that we organise words in sentences
influence the meanings we assign to those
sentences?
2. What do experiments in which reading times
are measured tell us about the process of
interpreting a sentence? What do these
experiments have to say about incrementality
and immediacy?
3. Describe a prominent two-stage of sentence
processing. What experimental evidence
supports such an account?
4. What kinds of information can influence the
process of building a syntactic structure for a
sentence? Give examples of each kind of
information.
5. Explain how constraint-based models differ
from two-stage models. Describe
experiments that support constraint-based
models of sentence processing.
6. Describe the argument structure hypothesis.
How does it compare to two-stage and
constraint-based accounts. Why might a
person believe in the argument structure
hypothesis?
7. Describe two alternatives to both the two-
stage and constraint-based account of
sentence processing
8. Describe how long-distance dependencies
differ from local dependencies. Describe two
accounts of long-distance dependency
processing.
Globally ambiguous: have sequences of words that can
be organized in more than one way, and those different
ways of organising the sentence are all consistent with
the grammar of the language.
Temporarily ambiguous: contain a sequence of words
that can be configured in more than one way, but the
sentence as a whole has only a single grammatically
licensed or acceptable structure.
The longer it takes people to understand part of a
sentence, the greater the processing load that part of
the sentence imposes
Syntactic parsing: mental process or set of processes
that takes sequences of words and organises them into
hierarchical structures
Syntactic parser: a mechanism that carries out
processes that identify relationships between words in
sentences
MODELS OF PARSING: 1) TWO-STAGE
MODELS
1) Listeners build the wrong structure for some
temporarily ambiguous sentence while they are
processing the ambiguous part
2) Discover their error when they get to the
disambiguating information
3) Revise their initial syntactic and semantic
commitments
Garden Path Theory (Two-stage model)
 First stage
o the incoming sequence of words is analysed
to determine what categories the words
belong to (Noun, Verb, Preposition etc)
o once categories have been identified, the
parser can build a syntactic structure for the
sequence
 Second stage
o Standard meaning is computed by applying
semantic rules to the structured input
Thematic interpreter: assign roles to each of the
elements in the syntactic three based on their position
in the tree and how they are connected to other words
 If the thematic interpreter produces a meaning
that lacks one or more of these qualities, one
remedy is to send signal to the syntactic parser
that prompts the parser to try to find an
alternative structure for the sequence of
words
GARDEN PATH THEORY: assumes that the parser
begins to build a syntactic structure as soon as the
lexical processor begins to deliver information
about word categories.
 Thematic processor work on a word-by-
word basis (semantic interpretation does
not wait until the end of a phrase or a
 clause – but the process of interpretation
will slow down or stop as listeners detect
either syntactic or semantic problems with
the input.
 Rush to interpretation that leads people
astray
 Because decisions are made on a word-by-
word basis, the parser is forced to choose
between alternative structures when more
than one structure is compatible with the
input
Assumptions of Garden Path Theory:
 Assumes that people can only build one
syntactic structure at a time (represents
serial processing system)
 Assumes that the overarching principle
that the parser relies on is simplicity
(parser seeks to build the least complicated
structure it can)
o Simple structure take less time to
build than more complicated
structures
o Simple structure place lower
demands on cognitive resources
and reduced demands on working
memory also translates into
greater speed
Consequences following the assumptions:
 For garden path theory to work as a
general theory of parsing, it needs to
explain how people make choices when
more than one syntactic structure is
possible
 For garden path theory to work as a theory
about how people parse sentences, there
should be evidence that people have
problems at just those points in sentences
where garden path theory says structural
reanalysis is taking place
Two heuristics (basic rules that can be applied quickly
and consistently to make decisions about which
structure to build at any given point)
 Advantage: decisions can be made very quickly
on the basis of incomplete information
 Disadvantage: heuristics do not always lead to
the correct solution – resulting in delay in
getting to the correct interpretation as it is
outweighed by the overall time savings that
the heuristics provide
Heuristics:
1) LATE CLOSURE
 Do not postulate unnecessary structure. If
possible, continue to work on the same
phrase or clause as long as possible
2) MINIMAL ATTACHMENT
 When more than one structure is licensed
and consistent with the input, build the
structure with the fewest nodes
3) MAIN ASSERTION
 Given a choice between two structures,
build the structure where the new
elements relate to the main assertion of
the sentence
MODELS OF PARSING: 2) CONSTRAINT-
BASED MODELS
Difference from Garden Path Theory:
 CB parsers are capable of pursuing
multiple structural possibilities
simultaneously (parallel processing)
 Garden path parser relies solely on
word category information for its
inputs, but constraint-based persers
can draw on a much wider variety of
cues to decide what structures to
build and the relative emphasis to
place on each alternative structure
 Referred to as ‘one-stage’ models
because lexical, syntactic, and
semantic processes are all viewed as
taking place simultaneously
Story context effects:
1) Problems for classic garden path theory:
 If the parser only pays attention to word
category information to build syntactic
structure for a sentence, then the information
that appears in preceding sentences should
have no effect on the initial processing of a
given sentence
 According to referential context account, the
parser can use contextual information to
decide which syntactic structure it will favour
at a given point in time (create a story)
 Contrary to what the garden path theory
predicts, the parser does seem to pay
attention to information that context makes
available at least some of the time to make
decisions about which syntactic structure to
build for a new sentence
Subcategory frequency effects
 Some words are in the category Verb, but they
serve different purpose (transitive,
intransitive) – they belong different
subcategories
 Constraint-based theory says that structural
information is associated with individual
words in the lexicon and this information
influences which structural hypotheses will be
pursued as sentences are being processed - it
will use subcategory information to determine
which structural analysis to favour when more
than one structure is consistent with the input
 Constraint-based parser takes information
about the past and uses it to predict the future
(predicts direct object after seeing ditransitive
verb)
 Cross-linguistic frequency data
 Semantic effects
 Prosody
 Visual Context effects
SUMMARY (PART 1)
 A constraint-based parser can activate
multiple syntactic structures simultaneously
 It ranks different structures based on how
much evidence is available for each in the
input
 Evidence for a given structure and its
accompanying semantic interpretation can
come from multiple sources, including story
context, visual context, subcategory
information, and the semantic properties of
specific words.
ARGUMENT STRUCTURE HYPOTHESIS
 Argument frames and their corresponding
syntactic structures are important because
they determine how some elements of
sentences are interpreted
 Contends that the subcategory properties of
the verb determine how the prepositional
phrase is interpreted
LIMITATIONS, CRITICISMS, AND SOME
ALTERNATIVE PARSING THEORIES
(for constraint-based theory)
 The parser may not always favour likely
structures over less likely, but simple
structures
 Absence of evidence that sentences with
simple syntactic structures are ever hard to
process
HARLEY – CHAPTER 10
 Recording eye movement – we spend no
longer reading the ambiguous regions of
sentences than the unambiguous regions
of control sentences, but we spend longer
in reading the disambiguation region
Serial autonomous model: construct parse
trees on purely syntactic grounds, and then
decide using semantic information whether it
makes sense or not
Parallel autonomous model: construct all
possible syntactic representations in parallel
(using solely syntactic information), and then
use semantic or other information to choose
most appropriate one (Mitchell, 1994)
Disambiguated = resolved
Reduced relative clause = one that modifies
the main noun, and it is “reduced” because it
lacks the relative pronoun “which” or “that”
  Deletion of punctuation, complementiser
(that) can also produce misleading results
 Disfluencies (prosodic cues) influence the
way in which people interpret garden path
sentences
o When interruption (saying “uh”)
comes before an unambiguous NP,
listeners are more likely to think
that the NP is the subject of a new
clause rather than the object of an
old one
Factors for Garden Path Theory:
1) Serial autonomy model:
 The single syntactic representation we are
constructing on syntactic grounds turns out
to be incorrect
2) Parallel autonomy model:
 One representation is much more active than
the others because of the strength of the
syntactic cues (but this turns out to be
wrong)
3) Interactive model:
 Various sources of information support the
analysis more than its alternative
Earlier theories:
 Transformation: Savin and Perchonock
(1965) found that sentences with more
transformations in them took up more
memory space
Slobin (1966)  examined the processing of…
1) Reversible passive: where subject and
object of the sentence still makes
pragmatic sense
2) Irreversible passive: one that does not
make sense after this reversal
Size of parsing:
 Jarvella (19721): listeners only begin to purge
memory of the details of syntactic
constituents after a sentence boundary has
been passed
 There is a clause boundary effect in recalling
words: it is easiest to recall words from
within the clause currently being processed,
independent of the number of words in the
clause (Caplan, 1972)
 The processing load is highest at the end of
the clause, and eye fixations are longer on
the final word of a clause (Just & Carpenter,
1980)
Techniques to explore the size of syntactic unit:
1) Click displacement technique (Fodor & Bever,
1965; Garret, Bever, & Fodor, 1966)
The major processing units resist interruption:
 We finish what we are doing, then process
other material at the first suitable
opportunity
Methodology  Participants heard speech over
headphones in one ear, and at certain points in the
sentence, extraneous clicks were presented in the
other ear
That he was* happy was evident from the way
he smiled
Conclusion  the clause is a major unit of
perceptual and syntactic processing
Problems  click migration occurs in the response
stage; reflect the operations of memory rather
than the operations of syntactic processing
2) Anticipatory Eye Movements
People anticipate information based on semantic
associations to the syntactic structure
Conclusion  language processor operates
incrementally; (Pickering, 1999)
i) it rapidly constructs a syntactical analysis
for a sentence fragment
ii) assigns it a semantic interpretation
iii) relates this interpretation to world
knowledge
3) Surface Structure Cues readers only consider all relevant
initially one syntactic information is used
Parsing strategies that uses only syntactic cues
structure for any given and several syntactical
(the, a before NP) and S-V-O word order. sentence and meaning meanings are initially
Kimball (1973): 7 principles to sentence parsing is not involved in the considered before the
(SAUSAGE MACHINE) selection of most appropriate is
preliminary syntactical selected.
i) Parsing top-down (except the presence meaning.
of ‘and’) (start from the sentence node Fundamental Processor uses
and predict constituents) principles of parsing: multiple sources of
ii) Right association (new words are information, including
preferentially attached to the lowest  Minimal syntactic, semantic,
possible node in the structure attachment – discourse, and
incoming frequency-based
constructed so far)
material should (called constraints)
iii) New nodes (functional words signal a
be attached to
new phrase)
the phrase ^^ Garden path occurs
iv) The processor can only cope with marker being when the correct
nodes associated with two sentences constructed analysis of a local
nodes at any one time using the fewest ambiguity receives
v) Closure (the processor prefers to close nodes possible little activation
a phrase as soon as possible)
vi) Fixed structure (having a closed path, it  Late closure –
is computationally costly to reopen it incoming
and reorganised the previously close material should
constituents) be incorporated
vii) Processing (when a phrase is closed it into the clause or
exits from short-term memory and is phrase currently
being processed
passed on to a second stage of deeper,
semantic processing)
SAUSAGE MACHINE – it divides the language input
into something that looks like a link of sausages.
i) First stage: preliminary phrase  Ferreira & Clifton argued that semantic
packager (PPP) information does not prevent or cause
ii) Second stage: Sentence structure garden-pathing but can hasten recovery from
supervisor (SSS) it

Problems with Sausage Model  Wanner (1980)

 First stage of parsing is short-sighted and
does not use semantic or thematic
information
..........................................

Garden Path VS Constraint-based Model

Garden Path Constraint-based

Autonomous Interactive
Fraizer & Rayner MacDonald (1994)
(1982)
SUMMARY
o Two ideas from Chomsky’s original work
that were picked up by early
psycholinguists were the derivational
theory of complexity and the autonomy of
syntax
o The earliest experiments supported the
idea that the more transformationally
complex a sentence, the longer it took to
process; however, experiments using
psychologically more realistic tasks failed
to replicate these findings
o Although linguistic theory influenced early
accounts of parsing, linguistics and
psycholinguistics soon parted ways
o The clause is an important unit of syntactic
processing
o In autonomous structures, only syntactic
information is used to construct and select
among alternative syntactic structures, in
interactive models non-syntactic
information is used in the selection process
o Psycholinguists have particularly studied
how we understand ambiguous sentences,
such as garden path constructions
o One of the most studied types of garden
path sentences is the reduced relative (The
horse raced past the barn fell)
o Early models of parsing focused on parsing
strategies sing syntactic cues
o Kimball proposed 7 surface structure
parsing strategies
 Late closure: we prefer to attach incoming
material to the clause or phrase currently
being processed
 Minimal attachment: we prefer the
simplest construction, where simple
means the structure that creates the
minimum number of syntactic nodes
 In constraint-based models, lexical and
syntactic ambiguity are considered to be
fundamentally the same thing, and
resolved by similar mechanisms
 Some aphasics show difficulties in parsing
when they cannot rely on semantic
information
Syntactic Processing
A. syntactic parser: (together with the grammar)
guides the order of which elements of a sentence are
processed and the manner in which syntactic
structure is built up.
B. Some grammatically complex sentences are easy to
parse and some grammatically easy sentences are
hard to parse.
Ex: (complex sentence but easy parsing) Sarah
saw the goblin who displeased Jareth the
other day.
Ex: (easy sentence but hard parsing) The
horse raced past the barn fell.
C. garden-path sentences: sentences which are easy
for the grammar to produce, but hard for the parser.
The parser is “led down the garden path” to the
wrong structure.
Ex: The horse raced past the barn fell.
Parser’s garden path: “The horse raced past
the barn” = simple sentence.
“The horse raced past the barn fell” = Ack!
Correct Parse: “The horse raced past the
barn” = “The horse which was raced past the
barn” “raced past the barn”
modifies “the horse”.
“The horse raced past the barn fell” = The
horse (modifier) fell.
B. Garden path sentences reveal the preferences of
the parser.
Ex: Given “The horse raced past the barn”, the
parser can choose a simple Subj V PP
structure, or a Subj + modifying phrase
structure. The parsers chooses a simple Subj V
PP structure because it prefers this analysis.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jYzDAAAAQBAJ
&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=literature+review+sentenc
e+processing&source=bl&ots=3gUga0E6a2&sig=yH9t7
XG2lplY9eTJt2La4ak5kZQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKE
wiRhuWTyZDSAhViCMAKHZwhAy8Q6AEIXjAJ#v=onep
age&q&f=false

Garden-Path Non-Garden Non-Garden

Path Yes Path No
While the While the  When there is a temporary structural
skipper sailed skipper sailed ambiguity, the parser does not wait until
the boat the ship the
the end of the sentence before analysing it,
veered off boat veered off
course course but bets on one analysis
While Tom While Tom While Tm grilled
grilled the grilled the the hamburger
hotdog hamburger the the hotdog
burned hotdog began began to burn
to burn
CHRISTIANSON EXPERIMENT
In one such study, Christianson et al. (2001)
*if there’s consecutive nouns/np/dp it is easier for the examined the traditional assumption that full
subject to determine that it is non-garden path resolution of a local syntactic ambiguity is
sentence necessarily performed as part of the process of
*SVO – participants will assume ‘the hotdog’ as the deriving a robust interpretation of a sentence.
object following the SVO pattern of English Christianson et al. asked participantsto read
 The minimal attachment principle states that “for sentences containing ambiguities as in (1) and
any sequence NP-V-NP (noun phrase-verb-noun then answer comprehension questions as in (2).
phrase), the second NP will be interpreted as a direct
(2) Did Anna dress the baby?
object” (Ferreira, Henderson 1990).

*all the verbs are transitive – relate with SVO pattern
 Frazir (1978) suggests that the structure associated
with the preferred interpretation is initially chosen
because is guided by formal principles like Minimal
Attachment, which states that the parse using the
fewest nodes consistent with the rules of the
language should be preferred.
Problem:
1) If we ask the participant to read out loud,
they’ll read with intonation and that might
give them a hint to determine the sentence
2) If we ask them to read in silence, we don’t
know whether they’ll read more than once
Christianson et al. reasoned that, if readers
construct the interpretation that is compatible
with the global structure of the sentence, the
answer to this question must be ‘‘No’’ as the baby
is the subject of the matrix clause but not the
object of the embedded clause, whereas the
answer to a related question (Christianson et al.,
2006) exemplified in (3) must be ‘‘Yes.’’
(3) Did Anna dress herself?
Christianson et al. (2001, 2006) demonstrated in a
numberof experiments, however, that syntactic
manipulations of the garden path (like below)
affected accuracy rates on follow-up
comprehension questions.
 o clause order Two ways to parse ambiguous sentence:
o disambiguation
1) In the first, the ambiguous choice point in the
o length of ambiguous region
parse is detected (either as a misparse, or as an
None of these manipulations altered the lexical alternative disfavoured parse), and reanalysis
content of the sentences, nor the inferences likely occurs, bringing the entire structure into
to be drawn from those collections of lexical items. compliance with the grammar and generating the
correct semantic interpretation for the string.
Moreover, Christianson et al. (2006) found that
the likelihood of answering questions such as (3) 2) The second possibility is that the ambiguity is
correctly was related to readers’ working not noticed at all. This could happen if, at the
memory capacity. ambiguous choice point, the parser initially settled
on the eventually correct interpretation and
The authors therefore argued that full reanalysis
thereby avoided the need for reprocessing.
required more cognitive effort than readers with
lower working memories were willing or able to
expend, and so these readers settled for ‘‘Good
Enough’’ reanalysis and interpretations (Ferreira,
Bailey, & Ferraro, 2002; Ferreira & Patson, 2007;
Ferreira et al., 2001).
Several recent studies have corroborated
Christianson et al.’s observation that misanalyses
appear to linger (Kaschak & Glenberg, 2004;
Staub, 2007a; Sturt, 2007; van Gompel, Pickering,
Pearson, & Jacob, 2006), though researchers differ
on why this might be.
1) Christianson et al. (2001; see also
Christianson et al., 2006) attributed the
lingering effect to a failure to fully
reanalyze the partial, and ultimately
incorrect, syntactic structure constructed
during the initial parse of the garden path
sentence.
2) However, Kaschak and Glenberg (2004)
suggested that the persistence of previous
syntactic structure stems from episodic
memory traces of the initial structure,
3) whereas Sturt (2007) suggested that the
effects are due to semantic persistence.
4) Van Gompel et al. (2006) observed that the
structure of initial misanalyses of the sort
of garden-path sentences used in
Christianson et al. (2001) primed
subsequent production, but remained
agnostic (doubtful) as to whether the
source of this structural priming was
episodic memory or incomplete syntactic
reanalysis

THEMATIC ROLES ASSIGNED ALONG THE GARDEN
PATH LINGER
1) Both the length of the ambiguous region
and the plausibility of the ultimate
interpretation affected the likelihood that
sentences would be fully reanalysed
2) Compared garden path sentences with
non-garden path sentences and compared
performance on two different types of
comprehension questions
3) Use small class of syntactically unique verb
(to provide evidence against the position
that people employ pragmatic inference
when faces with syntactically difficult
garden paths)
 Reanalysis of such sentences is not always
complete, so that comprehenders often
derive an interpretation for the full
sentence in which part of the initial
misanalysis persists.
Assumption #1: sentence meaning is derived from
a complete representation built up from the
component parts of an utterance into a fully
specified syntactic structure
#gardenpath:
o Garden path sentences result in some sort
of misanalysis in the initial syntactic
analysis or parse
o By investigating how garden path
sentences are initially parsed, reanalysed,
and ultimately comprehended, we can gain
insight into the underlying mechanisms
that’s usually operate accurately
Late closure: the incoming material is attached
inside the clause or phrase currently being
processed
Early closure: closing off the subordinate verb’s
argument structure despite the presence of an
apparently compatible object in the input string
While the man hunted the deer ran into the woods.
o Constraint-based model: phrase the deer is
initially treated as the object of the hunted
because the verb hunt may be frequently
transitive than intransitive and the
sentence lacks comma
# If analysis is successful = all steps described
above are completed and an interpretation of the
sentence licensed by the syntax and consistent
with the input string is produced
# if not, sentence-level interpretation cannot be
derived, or at least cannot be derived
systematically, consistently, and confidently
 If a sentence is an “easy” garden path, the
assumption is that people fully reanalyse
the sentence
 If a sentence is a “difficult” garden path, it
is generally assumed that, although some
sort of initial parsing mistake is
recognised, recovery is hampered or
prevented due either to syntactic
limitations on reanalysis or to activation
levels of alternate structures falling close
to zero
METHODOLOGY:
1) Present a garden-path sentence followed
by a question probing the interpretation of
that sentence
2) Manipulated a number of properties of
garden path and non-garden path
sentences to determine which factors
facilitated full reanalysis resulting in
syntactically licensed interpretations of
specific problematic constituent phrases
and which blocked or partially blocked
such interpretations
RESULTS (PREVIEW):
1) Initial thematic role assignments were
surprisingly resistant to revision, this was
 reflected in participants’ interpretations of  misanalysis in addition to pragmatic
the sentences plausibility
a. Interpretations based on the initial,
incorrect parse were quire
persistent and confidently held, GENERAL DISCUSSION
even though such interpretations
 much can be learned about the
reflected only partial reanalysis and
architecture of the language processing
depended globally unlicensed
system from comprehension measures
syntactic structures
2) Initial interpretations preserved was
influenced by syntactic factors that
Result:
created, exaggerated, or eliminated the
garden path  participants were accurate at answering
a. Ambiguous region length questions about the subjects and action of the
b. Head position within the main clause of a garden path sentence
ambiguous phrase o reveals that the parser and
c. Clause order comprehension system engaged in
d. Comma use successful reanalysis to some extent (it
e. Verb argument structure could not have been answered
f. Plausibility (non-syntactic factor) accurately with only initial analysis and
located an NP for the second clause
 comprehension system has some tendency to
Ferreira and Henderson (1991, 1998): the longer allow the interpretation based on the initial
one is committed to (ultimately) incorrect syntactic analysis of the subordinate clause to
thematic assignments, the more difficult full linger
reanalysis is.  misinterpretation of garden path sentences
 If yes responses reflect an interpretation
based on the perseverance of the initial
thematic assignments, the proportion of
incorrect ‘yes’ responses should be higher
when the ambiguous region is longer
 Length of the ambiguous region should
have a greater effect on responses to
garden path compared to non-garden
path sentences
o Because in in garden path sentences

Ferreira and Henderson (1991, 1998): if the head

of a phrase occurs early within it, reanalysis is
much harder than if the head occurs at the end of
the phrase

 Reverse the order of the subordinate main

clause – to assess further the extent to
which the comprehenders’ tendency to
give an answer due to the syntactic