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Abstract:
A relatively new technique for presenting sentence
stimuli (the 'word maze') was used to investigate the influence
of semantic status on the syntactic processing of categorically
ambiguous words. In an earlier experiment using a syntactic
categorization task (i.e., noun/verb discrimination),
semantically related categorical ambiguities (hammer) were
compared to frequency matched non-systematic ambiguities
(coast). For the non-systematic ambiguities (coast) the
mean reaction time for the subordinate sense was slower than that
for the dominant sense, but there was no difference in reaction
times for related ambiguities (hammer). This raises the
possibility that semantic status plays a role in the syntactic
processing of categorically ambiguous words. The current
experiments were designed to investigate whether this effect also
occurs in sentence contexts.
Experiment 1 established the validity of the word
maze technique for investigations of sentence processing by
replicating eye-movement results that had been obtained by
Dopkins, Morris & Rayner (1992). In Experiment 2
related and non-systematic categorical ambiguities were tested in
a semantically neutral sentence context using the word maze
technique. A dominance effect was observed for both types
of ambiguities, although the effect was greater for
non-systematic ambiguities. The data obtained thus far
demonstrate that (1) semantics may influence syntactic processing
at the level of lexical access and integration; and (2) the word
maze technique is a new method that can be used to reliably
isolate lexical effects in sentence processing.
Reference
Dopkins, S., Morris, R.K. & Rayner, K.
(1992). Lexical ambiguity and eye fixations in reading: a
test of competing models of lexical ambiguity resolution.
Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 461-476.
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