Abstract / Description of output
Two eye-tracking experiments investigated processing of VP-NP attachment ambiguities. Experiment 1 tested sentences in which there was an initial bias toward VP attachment. Readers experienced more difficulty when semantic information disambiguated the sentences to NP attachment than when it disambiguated them to VP attach ment or when it was consistent with tither analysis. Experiment 2 tested sentences in which there was no initial bias toward either VP or NP attachment. Readers experienced more difficulty when semantic information disambiguated the sentences to NP attachment or VP attachment than when it was consistent with either analysis. We argue th;lt these results challenge theories that assume a competition mechanism, such as constraint-based lexicalist accounts (e.g., MacDonald, Pearlmutter, & Seidenberg, 1994; McRae, Spivey-Knowlton, & Seidenberg, 1998; Spivey-Knowlton & Sedivy, 1995) and fixed-choice two-stage models (e.g., Frazier, 1987). We interpret the results in terms of the unrestricted race model (cf. Traxler, Pickering, & Clifton, 1998). (C) 2001 Academic Press.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 225-258 |
Number of pages | 34 |
Journal | Journal of Memory and Language |
Volume | 45 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Aug 2001 |
Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)
- sentence processing
- syntactic ambiguity resolution
- reanalysis
- competition
- SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITY RESOLUTION
- RELATIVE-CLAUSE SENTENCES
- LATE-CLOSURE STRATEGY
- EYE-MOVEMENTS
- ARGUMENT STRUCTURE
- LEXICAL AMBIGUITY
- GARDEN-PATHS
- PROBABILISTIC CONSTRAINTS
- PROPOSAL MECHANISM
- FIXATION TIMES