Back to Usual IssuesSo, evidence supports both Parallelism & Interaction of multiple within-sentence constraints

And shows Verb Bias effects in sentences that should not require any reanalysisBut Verb Bias effects could be part of 1st stage, since may be a kind of syntactic knowledgeAnd N+V plausibility effects are only testable in sentences with Clause structure, so could be due to reanalysis

What about constraints from outside sentence?

Discourse ContextWhat are Non-minimally Attached PPs?They modify the NP they followWhen does an NP need modification?When it wouldnt be clear in context who or what it refers to

If you see/hear The doctor examined the patient with ...In a context where there are several patients in the waiting roomYou may expect what follows to tell you which patient is meant

i.e., context may lead you to expect a Non-minimal Attachment

Altmann & Steedman(1988) Contexts:A burglar broke into a bank carrying some dynamite. He planned to blow open a safe. Once inside, he saw that there was ...

2-safe context:... a safe with a new lock and a safe with an old lock.1-safe context: ... a safe with a new lock and a strongbox with an old lock.

Target Sentences:MA: The burglar blew open the safe with the dynamite and ...NMA: The burglar blew open the safe with the new lock and ...

PredictionIf people use discourse context immediately,they'll read new lock faster than dynamite after the 2-safe contextbecause they need new lock to know which safe is meant

Results (Moving-Window RT)People did read new lock faster than dynamite after 2-safe contexti.e., the Non-Minimally Attached sentence was easier than the Minimally Attached sentence

So, suggests people dont always try the simpler structure 1stWhat they try first seems to depend on the discourse contextBUT, these results have been notoriously difficult to replicate!

What if the context comes from the world rather than the discourse?If that influences parsing, the system is clearly very interactive

Tanenhaus, Spivey-Knowlton, Eberhard & Sedivy (Science, 1995)Head-mounted eyetracker

Track eyes while people look at visual scenes & hear spoken instructions

They usually look at objects before reaching for them

So eye movements can show what theyre thinking of reaching for, based on how theyre understanding a sentence so far

ProceduresPeople looked at displays of 4 objects while hearing instructions like:Put the apple on the towel in the box.Ambiguous between:Put the apple on the towel in the box. towel = destination (MA)Put the apple on the towel in the box. towel = modifier (NMA)

The visual scene had either 1 or 2 apples presentIf visual context influences parsing, then when there are 2 apples:They should think PP modifies it, to pick out which appleSo they should not think the towel is a destination & thus should not look at it (much)- i.e., They should prefer the Non-Minimal Attachment

Typical Result in 1-Ref ConditionUnambiguous version

Typical Result in 2-Ref Condition2 applesin display

Overall Results

InterpretationWhen there were 2 apples, people rarely looked at the empty towelSuggests rarely considered it as a possible destinationThus, that they did not always try MA first?So, non-linguistic visual context immediately constrained interpretation So, sentence comprehension processing is Interactive

Whether you believe this interpretationDepends on whether you think people would move their eyes to the empty towel if they briefly mis-parsed the sentence & thought it was a destination ???

The next section has slides from a talk of mine about a study with Reduced Relatives, showing some individual difference effects. I will talk about this study when we talk about memory and language processing, so dont worry if you cant figure it out from just the slides.

Individual Differences in the Effect of Yet-to-be-Fixated Words during Sentence Reading With thanks to: Elizabeth Myers Neal Pearlmutter Kate Pirog Mike Tanenhaus John Trueswell Gary Wolverton

My Very Favorite Example of a Garden-Path SentenceA University student charged with threatening to kill the President via email was arrested Thursday, following issuance of a complaint and warrant, officials said.

- Daily Illini, 2/27/94

A University student charged with threatening to kill the President viaemailXY

You may not have noticed that there wasanother opportunity for garden-pathing inthis example with threateningto kill the President A University student chargedwho was

^Reduced Relative

The Most Famous English Garden-Path SentenceThe horse raced past the barn 1. Horses are good racers

Dual Purkinje EyetrackerFor the font size and distance we use, spatial resolution is ~1/4 character

First-passReadingTime

= Sum of all fixations in a region before leaving the region

- Used as a measure of initial processing

Example Stimulus Set for Allof the Studies that FollowAnimate = Good AgentThe witness (who was) examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable.

Inanimate = Bad Agent = Possible Passive PatientThe evidence (that was) examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable.

We thought there were some problems with the materials:e.g.,The trash smelled by the dog was laying on the sidewalk.

The questions asked about the murder could not be answered.

The stories told about the incident were a great source of concern.

Daneman & Carpenters (1980)Reading Span TestAt the conclusion of the musicians' performance, the enthusiastic crowd applauded.Without any hesitation, he plunged into the difficult mathematics assignment blindly.The devastating effects of the flood were not fully realized until months later.When I got to the big tobacco field I saw that it had not suffered much.

What does the test measure? - Verbal working memory capacity? - Ability to focus attention? - Skill with language and reading? - . . . ?

For some purposes, it doesnt matter

- As long as it reliably identifies subgroups of people - Who can then be tested for differences in other tasks - Which may help us figure out what the test measures

Parafoveal Preview in ReadingBurgess (1991) - Self-paced moving window reading time study - Varied window size from single to several words

- Found an animacy effect only when people saw the disambiguating preposition by chunked together with the verb preceding itexamined bythe lawyerturned out e.g., The evidenceFerreira & Clifton used a 40-character wide display - Sometimes the preposition was on the next line

We created sentences with verbs at least 8 characters long - So we could analyze data contingent on whether or not people were likely to get preview of by while still fixating on verb

The professor confronted by the student was not ready to

48 item sets with 4 versions each:The professor (who was) confronted by the student was not ready for an argument.

The professor (had) confronted the student but was not ready for an argument.

All animate Want people biased toward main clause interpretations- So sentences are fairly hard, so theres a better chance to see how much preview of by can help

Participants - 23 high-span (>=3.5, 13 female) - 20 low-span (

People are differently abled when it comes to making rapid use of cues that can help in understanding hard sentences- In Trueswell et al. (1994), - We probably just happened to get a high proportion of high-span subjects - And something about the display &/or materials happened to make it easy to get preview of by- Presenting sentences one word at a time in ERP studies (among others) may yield unrepresentative results especially for highly skilled readers