The use of thematic role information in parsing: Syntactic processing autonomy revisited

被引:116
作者
Clifton, C
Traxler, MJ
Mohamed, MT
Williams, RS
Morris, RK
Rayner, K
机构
[1] Univ Massachusetts, Dept Psychol, Amherst, MA 01003 USA
[2] Univ Calif Davis, Davis, CA 95616 USA
[3] Univ S Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208 USA
关键词
syntax; parsing; reduced relative clause; garden-pathing; eyetracking;
D O I
10.1016/S0749-596X(03)00070-6
中图分类号
H0 [语言学];
学科分类号
030303 ; 0501 ; 050102 ;
摘要
Two eye-movement experiments examined the processing of sentences containing reduced relative constructions. In the first experiment, animacy of the sentential subject, structural ambiguity, and parafoveal preview of syntactically disambiguating material were manipulated. Evidence of disruption was found in temporarily ambiguous sentences, regardless of animacy or preview. In the second experiment, readers with high versus low verbal working memory capacity read the sentences from Experiment 1. High and low-span readers exhibited very similar patterns of processing. As in the first experiment, evidence for disruption was found in temporarily ambiguous sentences whether the sentential subject was animate or inanimate. Sentences with animate subjects were hard to interpret, and relatively late measures of processing indicated that an animate subject made ambiguity especially hard to overcome. We interpret the findings as being consistent with serial, depth-first models of parsing. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.
引用
收藏
页码:317 / 334
页数:18
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