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Highs and Lows in English Attachment
Nino Grillo1, João Costa2, Bruno Fernandes2
1Institut für Linguistik: Anglistik, Universität Stuttgart, Germany.
Cognition
|August 13, 2015
Summary
This study investigates how sentence structure ambiguity is resolved in English and other languages. Findings suggest grammatical principles, not just language-specific features like Pseudo-Relatives, guide sentence interpretation.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Computational Linguistics
- Syntax
Background:
- Relative-clause attachment ambiguity resolution is influenced by Pseudo-Relative interpretation availability in languages like Italian.
- This availability is linked to the main predicate's semantics (perceptual vs. stative).
Purpose of the Study:
- To test if predicate type alone explains attachment preferences in languages without Pseudo-Relatives (English).
- To explore English's capacity for High Attachment in ambiguous sentences.
- To provide crosslinguistic evidence for grammatical accounts of sentence processing.
Main Methods:
- Experiment 1: Tested English sentences varying predicate types but disallowing Pseudo-Relatives.
- Experiment 2: Examined English sentences ambiguous between Small-Clause and reduced Relative-Clause interpretations.
Main Results:
- Low Attachment in English was independent of predicate type.
- Predicate type had a minor modulatory effect on attachment.
- English demonstrated High Attachment in specific ambiguous sentence structures.
Conclusions:
- Grammatical factors, not solely Pseudo-Relative availability, govern attachment ambiguity resolution.
- English parsers show a preference for Small-Clause over Restrictive interpretations in certain ambiguous contexts.
- Results support a universal grammatical account of sentence processing preferences.
Keywords:
Attachment preferencesParsing UniversalsPseudo Relative Small ClausesRelative ClausesSentence processingMore Related Videos
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