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Related Experiment Videos

Argument status and PP-attachment.

Julie E Boland1, Allison Blodgett

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 525 E. University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1109, USA. jeboland@umich.edu

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
|July 14, 2006
PubMed
Summary
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This study shows that readers process argument prepositional phrases (PPs) faster than adjunct PPs, supporting differential processing during sentence comprehension. This indicates argument structure influences early syntactic analysis.

Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Cognitive Science

Background:

  • Prepositional phrase (PP) attachment in temporarily ambiguous sentences is a key area in sentence processing research.
  • Previous studies suggested a general bias towards verb phrase attachment for PPs, regardless of argument or adjunct status.
  • The hypothesis of differential processing for arguments versus adjuncts remained debated.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether argument status (argument vs. adjunct) influences the initial processing of prepositional phrases.
  • To test the hypothesis that argument structure plays a role in early syntactic analysis.
  • To provide evidence for or against differential processing of arguments and adjuncts in sentence comprehension.

Main Methods:

Related Experiment Videos

  • An eye-tracking experiment was conducted using temporarily ambiguous sentences.
  • Sentences were designed to manipulate both attachment site (noun phrase vs. verb phrase) and argument status (argument vs. adjunct).
  • Reader's eye movements, specifically first-pass reading times, were recorded to measure processing difficulty.

    • Main Results:

    • Readers spent significantly less first-pass time on argument prepositional phrases (PPs) compared to adjunct PPs.
    • This finding held true even during the initial stages of syntactic analysis.
    • The results indicate that readers process arguments and adjuncts differently from the outset.

    Conclusions:

    • The study supports the hypothesis of differential processing for arguments and adjuncts.
    • A noun's or verb's argument structure appears to facilitate the analysis of its arguments during sentence comprehension.
    • This provides evidence for the influence of lexical-semantic information on early syntactic processing.