UALL 2004

PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

Lecture 9

Sentence Processing

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 Learning Outcomes
At the end of this lecture, students will be able
to:-
• Understand the structural properties of
sentences.
• Explain the syntactic processing in a
sentence.
• Define sentence parsing and sentence
ambiguity.
• Identify the types of syntactic ambiguity.
• Explain models of sentence processing.
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 Introduction
• What happens after we recognize a word?

• When we access the lexical entry for a word, 2

major types of information become available:

– information about the word’s meaning, and

– information about the syntactic and thematic
roles that the word can take.

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 Structural Properties of Sentences

• We can define the structure of language in terms

of sets of rules that tell us how words strung
together can form a sentence and convey a
meaning.

• Speaker and the listener must share a common

knowledge base, and each must have access to
the same knowledge sets and rules.

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 Example

• The student read the book.

• The teacher graded the test.
• The teacher heard the student.

- The first two sentences are not reversible.

– Only the third sentence is reversible.
– Some actions are possible, and some are not.
– Real world knowledge can supply constraints
that operate as part of the structure of our
language.

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 Syntactic Processing
• During the 1960s some researchers attempted to use
Transformational Grammar to fulfill the speaker’s and
listener’s knowledge of language structure.

• A system of language analysis that recognizes the

relationship among the various elements of a sentence
and uses rules/transformations to express these
relationships which are in the mind or brain of a native
speaker.

• Transformation process of the syntactic structures can

be best summarized by adding, deleting, moving, and
substituting of words.
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• Noam Chomsky believed that grammar has recursive
rules allowing one to generate grammatically correct
sentences over and over.

• These attempts made 2 important points relevant to

syntactic processing

The difference between surface structure and

deep structure

The difference between competence and

performance

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Surface Structure (SS) Versus Deep
Structure (DS)

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 Surface Structure (SS) Versus Deep
Structure (DS)
• The surface structure of a sentence is represented by
the words you actually hear spoken or read.

• The specific words we have chosen to convey the

meaning of what it is we wish to say.

• The listener must “decode” this SS to discover the

meaning that underlies the utterance – the “deep
structure” of the sentence

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 Surface Structure (SS) Versus Deep
Structure (DS)
• DS and SS tell us that sentence processing is conducted
in two steps in which the listener analyses the SS and
uses this information to detect DS.

• Some sets of sentences have different SS, but the same

DS.
– Example
• The boy threw the ball.
• The ball was thrown by the boy.
– Both sentences focus on the fact that a boy
threw a ball.
– Two sentences have different SS, but they
convey the same meaning. 11
 Surface Structure (SS) Versus Deep
Structure (DS)
• Some sentences have the same SS, but different DS.
– Example:
• Flying planes can be dangerous.
– This sentence could mean that it is dangerous
to be a pilot or living near an airport can be
dangerous.
– The sentence has same SS, but they convey
the different meaning.

• The distinction between DS and SS makes an important

point for our understanding of sentence processing.
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 Competence versus Performance
• The second point is that the way people produce
language is not equivalent to their knowledge of
language.

• Much of what we say consists of incomplete fragments

that do not even approach a grammatical sentence
(Goldman-Eisler, 1968).
– COMPETENCE – what the speaker knows about the
structure of the language
– PERFORMANCE – how we can generate speech,
even if it is incomplete and fragmentary.

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Competence versus Performance
(Cont.)

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 Sentence Parsing and Syntactic
Ambiguity
• Sentence parsing - The assignment of words in a
sentence to their relevant linguistics categories.

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 Parsing : Overview
• Parsing is the analysis of the syntactical or grammatical
structure of sentence.

• It is an important process that readers and listeners use

to comprehend the sentences they read or hear.

• Observing the problems encountered by readers

struggling with ambiguous sentences can provide
revealing information about parsing process.

• One way in which listeners work out grammatical

structures of speech is by using prosodic cues in the
form of stress, intonation and duration. 16
 Parsing : Overview

• Prosodic cues are most likely to be used when spoken

sentences are ambiguous.

• The grammar of a language refers to the set of rules

according to which sentences are organised, allowing us
to reject unacceptable sentences.

• When sentences are ambiguous in their grammatical

structure, prosodic cues can be used to disambiguate
their meaning.

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• Syntactic Ambiguity – Cases where a clause or
sentence may have more than one interpretation given
by the potential grammatical functions of the individual
words.

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 Types of Syntactic Ambiguity
Local ambiguity
• Refers to cases where the syntactic function of a word/
how to parse a sentence, remains temporarily
ambiguous until it is later clarified as we hear more of the
sentence.

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• Example:

• When Fred passes the ball it always gets to its target.

– The sentence is temporarily ambiguous / uncertainty
about the structure of sentence is only temporary
when we hear the NP, the ball because it could be
completed in two different ways /two possible
syntactic structures

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 First way:
• When Fred passes the ball, it always gets to its target.

 Second way/syntactic structure

• When Fred passes, the ball always gets to its target.

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V.DEEPA (201901) 22
Standing ambiguity
• Refers to cases where sentences remain syntactically
ambiguous even when all of the lexical information has
been received or sentence is complete.

• Example: The old books and magazines were on the

beach.
– Remains ambiguous.
– It is not clear whether there should be a boundary
after books - only the books were old, not the
magazines or whether a boundary should follow
magazines - both books and magazines were old.

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 Model of Sentence Parsing
• The old man the boats.
• The horse raced past the barn fell.
– Sentences like this, are especially misleading when
you first encounter them are called “garden path”
sentences.

Frazier and Rayner’s (1982) GARDEN PATH MODEL

• ‘Garden Path’ sentences
– Grammatically correct and misleading sentences
when we first encounter them.
– Sentences in which wording invites people to take the
wrong interpretive path at a point of local ambiguity.

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 Model of Sentence Parsing
• According to the model, the parser makes only one initial
syntactic analysis of a word sequence.

• This initial parse is made on the basis of several rules

and parsing principles.

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Important Principles of Garden Path Model

The Late Closure Principle

• Focuses on the way in which listeners or readers might

determine when they have reached a major clause
boundary.

• What is late closure? In sentence processing, late

closure is the principle that new words (incoming lexical
items) tend to be associated with the phrase or clause
currently being processed rather than with structures
farther back in the sentence.
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 Important Principles of Garden Path
Model
• One might attempt to “close” a clause boundary either at
the earliest point possible or to hold off until the latest
point possible.

• According to the late closure principle, listeners and

readers tend to do the latter.

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 Important Principles of Garden Path
Model (Cont.)
 Tom had said that Bill had taken the cleaning out
yesterday.

• Here the adverb “yesterday” may be attached to the

main clause “Tom said…” or the subsequent subordinate
clause “Bill had taken…”

• Frazier and Fodor (1978) argue that we tend to prefer

the latter interpretation.

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 Important Principles of Garden Path
Model
The Minimal Attachment Principle.

• The principle states that listeners or readers attempt to

interpret sentences in terms of the simplest syntactic
structure that is consistent with the input.

• What is minimal attachment? Listeners and readers

initially attempts to interpret sentences in terms of the
simplest syntactic structure consistent with the input that
is known at the moment.

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 Important Principles of Garden Path
Model
• This is done by using the fewest phrase-structure nodes
possible.

 The girl knew the answer by heart.

• The girl know the answer was wrong.

• “the answer” is the direct object of the verb “knew”

• Appropriate for the first sentence but not for the second
one.

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 Important Principles of Garden Path
Model
MacDonald et al. (1994) CONSTRAINT SATISFACTION
MODEL

• More than one syntactic analysis of a word sequence

may be generated during comprehension.

• Example: The old man the boats.

– consciously aware of the NP (The old man) but, the
alternative interpretation of old (Noun) and man
(Verb) will be activated.

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 Important Principles of Garden Path
Model
• According to the model, when we reach the end of the
sentence and discover that we must have made a
parsing error, we resolve the confusion by activating the
alternative interpretation.

• Uses multiple sources of information (syntactic,

semantic, discourse, and frequency-based)

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 Interstimulus Interval
 Land alongside a
river

BANK  A high mass of

Interstimulus Interval substance

 Tilting sideways in
making a turn

 Financial Institution

 Similar things
grouped together

 Providing additional
power

 Heap up fire with

tightly packed fuel 33