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Plausibility and argument structure in sentence comprehension

S R Speer1, C Clifton

  • 1Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Dole Center, University of Kansas, Lawrence 66045, USA. speer@ukans.edu

Memory & Cognition
|October 31, 1998
PubMed
Summary

Sentence plausibility and argument status affect reading speed. Highly plausible phrases and argument phrases are read faster, impacting sentence interpretation models.

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Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Cognitive Science

Background:

  • Understanding sentence processing is crucial for cognitive science.
  • Reader's interpretation of sentence structure influences reading time.
  • Prepositional phrases play a key role in sentence comprehension.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how reading time is affected by prepositional phrase plausibility.
  • To examine the impact of argument versus adjunct status of prepositional phrases on reading speed.
  • To compare the effects of plausibility and argument status on sentence parsing.

Main Methods:

  • Conducted two experiments: self-paced reading and eye-tracking during normal reading.
  • Utilized subject-verb-noun-phrase-prepositional-phrase sentence structures.
  • Measured reading times for prepositional phrases based on plausibility and grammatical role.

Main Results:

  • Highly plausible prepositional phrases were read significantly faster than less plausible ones.
  • Argument prepositional phrases were read faster than adjunct prepositional phrases.
  • Both plausibility and argument status effects emerged early in reading the prepositional phrase.

Conclusions:

  • Sentence interpretation is influenced by both the semantic plausibility and grammatical role of prepositional phrases.
  • Plausibility effects on reading time are larger and more persistent than argument status effects.
  • Findings inform models of syntactic parsing and semantic integration during language comprehension.

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