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Abstract:
The role of noun-specific lexical information in the
resolution of syntactic ambiguity was investigated in a normative
study and reading experiment. The usage frequencies were assessed
for one hundred nouns that can occur with sentence complements.
Three noun categories were identified: (1) nouns occurring most
frequently with sentence complements (SC-biased); (2) nouns
occurring most frequently with relative clauses (RC-biased); and
nouns occurring equally often with sentence complements and
relative clauses (EQUI-biased). Eighty readers comprehended
sentences containing temporarily ambiguous clauses (e.g., "The
rumor that the actress.") that were continued either as sentence
complements (SC, e.g., "The rumor that the actress collapsed
shocked her fans.") or as relative clauses (RC, e.g., "The rumor
that the actress denied shocked her fans."). The type of noun
(SC-, RC-, or EQUI-Biased) preceding the ambiguous clause was
varied. Fourteen nouns from each category were tested. Sample
stimuli are presented in (1). Sentences were presented
word-by-word in a self-paced moving window. For each noun type,
reading times for sentences continuing as sentence complements
and relative clauses were compared at each presentation region. A
highly significant interaction between noun type and sentence
type was observed. For SC- and RC-Biased noun conditions, reading
time after the disambiguating clausal verb was longer for
relative clauses than for sentence complements, with the
difference observed for the former noun type being significantly
larger than that observed for the latter noun type. For
EQUI-Biased nouns, the difference in reading times between
sentence complements and relative clauses did not approach
significance. The results provide support for models of sentence
processing emphasizing the interactive use of multiple
information sources (e.g., Constraint Satisfaction, MacDonald,
Pearlmutter, and Seidenberg, 1994; Trueswell and Tanenhaus,
1994). The results are problematic for models emphasizing the
initial, modular application of structure based parsing
principles (Frazier and Fodor, 1979; Frazier and Rayner, 1982;
Rayner, Carlson, and Frazier, 1983).
(1) SC-Biased
The rumor that the actress had fallen disturbed many of her
fans. (SC)
The rumor that the actress had denied disturbed many of her
fans. (RC)
RC-Biased
The sign that the troops had retreated concerned many
high-ranking army officials. (SC)
The sign that the troops had mentioned concerned many
high-ranking army officials. (RC)
Equi-Biased
The statement that the politician had vanished caused a lot of
speculation. (SC)
The statement that the politician had released caused a lot of
speculatation. (RC)
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(pp. 155-179). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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