Related Experiment Videos
Thematic roles assigned along the garden path linger
K Christianson1, A Hollingworth, J F Halliwell
1Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages, and Cognitive Science Program, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. kiel@cogsci.msu.edu
Cognitive Psychology
|May 23, 2001
Summary
Language processing often results in partial reanalysis of garden path sentences, where initial misinterpretations persist alongside correct interpretations. This suggests language comprehension aims for "good enough" representations rather than perfect syntactic structures.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Science
- Computational Linguistics
Background:
- Garden path sentences pose comprehension challenges, typically assumed to result in full reanalysis or parse failure.
- Previous research focused on complete syntactic repair or outright comprehension failure.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the phenomenon of partial reanalysis in garden path sentences.
- To determine the conditions under which initial misanalyses persist during comprehension.
- To challenge the assumption of complete syntactic repair in language processing.
Main Methods:
- Conducted five experiments manipulating sentence structure, ambiguity length, and interpretation plausibility.
- Compared comprehension of garden path versus non-garden path sentences.
- Utilized different types of comprehension questions.
- Employed syntactically unique verbs to isolate syntactic processing from general reasoning.
Main Results:
- The likelihood of full reanalysis was influenced by the length of the ambiguous region and the plausibility of the final interpretation.
- Partial reanalysis was observed, where elements of the initial incorrect parse remained.
- Evidence suggests that pragmatic inference does not fully account for processing garden path sentences.
Conclusions:
- Language comprehension does not always result in a fully idealized syntactic structure.
- Comprehenders often achieve "good enough" interpretations, allowing initial misanalyses to persist.
- Partial reanalysis is a common outcome in processing syntactically complex sentences.