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: | Artículo |
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Springer Science & Business Media B.V.
January 2008
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=510739046&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 510739046 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 0090502X MEG jtl: Memory & Cognition issn: 0090502X maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: January 2008 vid: 36 iid: 1 pid: 237 pub: Springer Science & Business Media B.V. artinfo: ui: 510739046 10.3758/MC.36.1.201 ppf: 201 ppct: 16 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: T tig: atl: Underspecification of syntactic ambiguities: Evidence from self-paced reading. aug: au: Swets, Benjamin Desmet, Timothy Clifton, Charles Ferreira, Fernanda su: Ambiguity Reading speed Reading comprehension sug: subj: Ambiguity Reading speed Reading comprehension keyword: Reading -- Rate of reading 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. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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