Sentence Comprehension 1

Question 1

What types of syntactically ambiguous sentences are there?

Answer 1

Globally ambiguous and temporarily ambiguous

Question 2

What is an example of a globally ambiguous sentence?

Answer 2

The criminal shot the cop with the pistol

Question 3

What are two temporarily ambiguous sentences?

Answer 3

• the criminal shot the dog with the collar

- the criminal shot the dog with the pistol

Question 4

What is syntactic ambiguity?

Answer 4

What information is used when the grammar does not dictate a particular analysis

Question 5

What is syntactic ambiguity also called?

Answer 5

Structural attachment

Question 6

What are garden path sentences?

Answer 6

Sentences that lead you up a dead end when you adopt one analysis, but it turns out to be wrong.

Question 7

What is the garden path model also called?

Answer 7

Garden path theory

Question 8

What is parsing?

Answer 8

Syntactic analysis of a sentence

Question 9

What does garden path model try to explain?

Answer 9

Parsing and both ambiguous and unambiguous sentences

Question 10

What two simple principles does the parser follow?

Answer 10

Minimal attachment and late closure.

Question 11

In garden path model what order are the simple principles applied?

Answer 11

First minimal attachment and then late closure.

Question 12

What does garden path model assume?

Answer 12

That words are incorporated into previous structures immediately, from left to right.

Question 13

What is minimal attachment?

Answer 13

Fewest nodes in the tree structure. If the sentence is ambiguous it will use the tree structure with the fewest number of additional nodes.

Question 14

According to minimal attachment what is ambiguous about the sentence “the criminal shot the cop with the pistol”?

Answer 14

The ambiguity lies in whether the pp “with the pistol” is to be attached to the vp “shot” or the np “the cop”.

Question 15

What is NP?

Answer 15

A noun phrase

Question 16

What is VP?

Answer 16

A verb phrase

Question 17

What is DET?

Answer 17

Determiners such as “the” or “a”

Question 18

What is V?

Answer 18

A verb

Question 19

What is PP?

Answer 19

Propositional phrase

Question 20

What is P?

Answer 20

A preposition

Question 21

What is N?

Answer 21

A noun

Question 22

Draw VP tree for “the criminal shot the dog with the collar”

Answer 22

13 nodes

Question 23

Draw NP tree for “the criminal shot the dog with the collar”

Answer 23

14 nodes

Question 24

Explain the findings of Rayner, Carlson, and Frazier (1983) about minimal attachment (garden path model).

Answer 24

They looked at eye movement in two conditions (VP and NP).
Binoculars and revolver (revolver should be difficult).
Reading times for critical region showed that vp < np which supports the minimal attachment theory.

Question 25

What happens when there is a no ambiguity solution?

Answer 25

They have equal nodes and therefore you should do the late closure principle

Question 26

What is the rule of late closure?

Answer 26

If they have the same number of nodes then attach the ambiguous phrase to the lowest part of the tree (the phrase that is currently being processed).

Question 27

What is a regency preference?

Answer 27

Attaching an ambiguous phrase to the most recent phrase

Question 28

What are the 3 properties of the garden path model?

Answer 28

Modular model Serial model Reanalysis model

Question 29

In garden path model what is the modular model?

Answer 29

Initial syntactic processing is not influenced by non-syntactic information. Other information is used after initial syntactic analysis (plausibility can trigger reanalysis).

Question 30

In garden path model what is the serial model?

Answer 30

Only a single analysis is adopted at a time

Question 31

In garden path model what is the reanalysis model?

Answer 31

Difficulty occurs when the initial analysis is inconsistent with information that is used later

Question 32

What does constraint based models argues that the garden model is incorrect?

Answer 32

Syntactic processing is not modular. Non structural information is used immediately and at the same time as structural information. Interactive model

Question 33

What is interactive model in constraint based model

Answer 33

All potentially useful sources of information interact from the very earliest stages of sentence processing.

Question 34

What are the properties of constraint based models?

Answer 34

Interactive models Parallel models Competition models

Question 35

In constraint based model what is the interactive models?

Answer 35

All sources of information (context, meaning, frequency) are used immediately and interact with each other.

Question 36

In constraint based model what is the parallel model?

Answer 36

All analysis of an ambiguous structure are activated in parallel. The stronger the support for an analysis, the higher the activation.

Question 37

In constraint based model what is the competition model?

Answer 37

Difficulty occurs when two or more analyses are about equally activated by the different sources of information.

Question 38

According to constraint based models when is plausibility used?

Answer 38

Immediately.

Question 39

What did trueswell, tanenhaus and Garnsey (1994) find about ambiguous sentences?

Answer 39

Plausibility information affects the structural preferences (which agrees with the constraint based model).

Question 40

What did Clifton et al (2003) find about ambiguous sentences?

Answer 40

That Trueswell et al (1994) used too little participants and they can’t prove the absence of a difference. So Clifton improved and found that plausibility effect was used in reanalysis which supports garden path model.