Underspecification of syntactic ambiguities: evidence from self-paced reading.
Syntactically ambiguous sentences are sometimes read faster than disambiguated strings. Models of parsing have explained this tendency by appealing either to a race in the construction of alternative structures or to reanalysis. However, it is also possible that readers of ambiguous sentences save t...
| Publicado en: | Memory & Cognition Vol. 36; no. 1; pp. 201 - 217 |
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| Autores principales: | , , , |
| Formato: | Journal Article |
| Publicado: |
Springer Nature
Jan2008
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=105901372&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 105901372 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 0090502X MEG jtl: Memory & Cognition issn: 0090502X maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jan2008 vid: 36 iid: 1 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature place: New York, New York artinfo: ui: 105901372 2009892810 NLM18323075 105901372 ppf: 201 ppct: 16 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: T db: ssf ui: 510739046 tig: atl: Underspecification of syntactic ambiguities: evidence from self-paced reading. aug: au: Swets B Desmet T Clifton C Jr Ferreira F affil: Department of Psychology, SUNY Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York 11794-2500, USA. bswets@notes.cc.sunysb.edu sug: subj: Reading Self-Efficacy Speech Cognition Psychology Methods Psychology Statistics and Numerical Data Time Factors ab: Syntactically ambiguous sentences are sometimes read faster than disambiguated strings. Models of parsing have explained this tendency by appealing either to a race in the construction of alternative structures or to reanalysis. However, it is also possible that readers of ambiguous sentences save time by strategically underspecifying interpretations of ambiguous attachments. In a self-paced reading study, participants viewed sentences with relative clauses that could attach to one of two sites. Type of question was also manipulated between participants in order to test whether goals can influence reading/parsing strategies. The experiment revealed an ambiguity advantage in reading times, but only when participants expected superficial comprehension questions. When participants expected queries about relative clause interpretation, disambiguating regions were inspected with more care, and the ambiguity advantage was attenuated. However, even when participants expected relative clause queries, question-answering times suggested underspecified representations of ambiguous relative clause attachments. The results support the construal and 'good-enough' models of parsing. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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