Investigations of Syntactic Ambiguity

Two experiments were conducted with male and female university students in an attempt to establish whether syntactically ambiguous words are better represented by independent lexical entries for each syntactic context in which the items occur, or whether the different usages could be adequately represented by single entries. Both experiments were attempts to influence recall through control of the coding of ambiguous items. Experiment one (N = 128) involved a free recall procedure in which ambiguous items were embedded in lists of nonambiguous nouns or verbs, and Experiment two (N = 144) involved a release from proactive inhibition procedure which has been shown to make syntactic features highly salient. The results of both experiments supported the single entry view; that is, the ambiguous items apparently were not coded according to one usage independent of other usages.