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Related Experiment Videos

Resolving attachment ambiguities with multiple constraints

M Spivey-Knowlton1, J C Sedivy

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Rochester, NY 14627, USA.

Cognition
|June 1, 1995
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Syntactic ambiguity resolution relies on both word meaning (lexical biases) and context (referential pragmatics), not just sentence structure. This constraint-based model explains how readers process complex sentences efficiently.

Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Cognitive Science

Background:

  • Syntactic ambiguity resolution theories propose various information sources for initial parsing decisions.
  • These include structural principles, lexical biases, and referential pragmatics.
  • A constraint-based approach suggests parallel use of lexical and pragmatic information.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the interplay of local (lexical) and contextual (pragmatic) information in resolving prepositional phrase attachment ambiguities.
  • To test the role of purely structural parsing principles, such as minimal attachment.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of text corpora.
  • Sentence fragment completion experiments.
  • Self-paced reading experiments.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • Both lexical biases and referential presupposition significantly contribute to on-line ambiguity resolution.
  • Evidence does not support a role for purely structural principles like minimal attachment.
  • Findings align with a constraint-based framework where multiple constraints interact.

Conclusions:

  • Syntactic ambiguity resolution is driven by an immediate interaction of multiple constraints, including lexical and contextual factors.
  • Structural principles alone do not appear to govern initial parsing decisions.
  • A unified framework integrating bottom-up and top-down processing is supported.