Effects of the Focus Particle Only and Intrinsic Contrast On Comprehension of Reduced Relative Clauses

Abstract:

The poster will discuss how the focus properties of "only" are satisfied. "Only" in an NP requires a contrast set that could be provided by a modifier such as an adjective or a relative clause, or by an unmodified head noun that provides a clear contrast set. Ni, Crain, and Shankweiler (1996) presented data that suggest that "only" eliminates the usual difficulty of reduced relative clause (RRC) sentences such as "Only people taught new math passed the test." They claim that the requirement for a contrast set forces the parser to treat the ambiguous "taught new math" as a RRC. Crain et al. (1996) have even presented data showing that disambiguation in favor of a main clause (MC) is hard.These findings have been taken as strong evidence that initial parsing decisions are not based on structural considerations alone, but are guided by semantic factors.

We will briefly present several unsuccessful attempts to replicate these effects, but will concentrate on our studies of different ways of satisfying the contrast requirement of "only." We selected High Contrast nouns like "winners" (with the contrast set of "losers") and Low Contrast nouns like "boxers." We measured eye fixations while people read temporarily ambiguous and unambiguous sentences like "Only/The winners/boxers (who were) rushed out of the arena made it safely to the waiting limousines."

If parsing decisions are made to meet semantic requirements, "only" should facilitate reading ambiguous relative clauses most with Low Contrast items. Such items need a modifier to provide a contrast set. In fact, our data showed precisely the opposite. While ambiguous sentences generally had long first pass reading times, re-reading of a RRC sentence was additively facilitated by the presence of "only" and by the use of a High Contrast noun (see Table 1 for second pass times in ms/char). It appears that the focus operator "only" facilitated the eventual comprehension of a temporarily ambiguous relative clause even when the head noun itself provides a clear contrast set. More speculatively, it may be that a high contrast noun encourages the reader to form a contrast set, a process which in turn encourages interpreting the material after the noun as a modifier.

Table 1
Second Pass Times on the Disambiguating Region, Ms/Char

Crain, S., Ni, W., Shankweiler, Conway, L., and Braze, D. (1996). "Meaning, memory and modularity." Paper presented at the NELS 26 Sentence Processing Workshop, Cambridge, MA.

Ni, W., Crain, S., and Shankweiler, D. (1996). "Sidestepping garden paths: Assessing the contributions of syntax, semantics and plausibility in resolving ambiguities." Language and Cognitive Processes, 11, 283-334.