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Making simple sentences hard: Verb bias effects in simple direct object sentences
Michael P Wilson1, Susan M Garnsey
1Department of Psychology and The Beckman Institute of Science and Technology, 603 E. Daniel St. Champaign, IL 61820.
Journal of Memory and Language
|February 18, 2010
Summary
Lexical models suggest readers use verb-noun combinations to resolve sentence ambiguities. This study shows verb bias impacts early language processing, even in simple sentences, challenging previous findings.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Computational Linguistics
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Constraint-based models of language processing posit that readers use various cues, including verb-noun combinatorial knowledge, to resolve temporary syntactic ambiguities.
- Prior research on verb bias effects was limited to structurally complex sentences, raising concerns about potential confounds with reanalysis mechanisms.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether verb bias influences early sentence comprehension stages.
- To determine if verb bias effects occur in syntactically simple sentences, independent of reanalysis.
Main Methods:
- A self-paced reading experiment was conducted to measure reading times.
- An eyetracking experiment was employed to capture detailed reading behavior.
Main Results:
- Verb bias effects were observed in sentences with simple structures.
- These findings were consistent across both self-paced reading and eyetracking measures.
Conclusions:
- The combinatorial properties of individual words, specifically verb-noun interactions, significantly affect the earliest stages of sentence comprehension.
- This provides evidence against a strict modular, two-stage processing system and supports constraint-based lexical influences from the outset.
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