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(1)
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(1)
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La anciana/el ladrón
vio al ladrón/la anciana [PRO] saltando
sigiloso por la ventana.
"The old woman/the thief saw the thief/the old
woman [PRO] jumping silently (masc) out of the
window."
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In Experiment 2 verb control information (object and
subject control verbs) was manipulated, as in (2).
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(2)
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Juan
prometió/aconsejó a Maria [PRO]
mantenerse más informado(a) del problema de
la empresa.
"Juan promised/advised Maria [PRO] to keep more
updated (masc/fem) about the problem of the
company."
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Experiment 3 used the prepositions 'por' and 'para' to
force a bias either into causal or final reading, thus
compelling the controller of PRO to be the object or the
subject of the main sentence.
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(3)
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Julia dejó a Luis
por/para [PRO] olvidarse de todo y [PRO] marcharse
de monje/a a un monasterio.
"Julia left Luis for/*in order to [PRO]
forgetting/forget everything and [PRO]
becoming/become a monk/nun in a monastery."
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In all experiments sentences were disambiguated by
gender agreement. Two-stage models predict that
semantic plausibility and control information should not
influence initial syntactic analyses. In contrast,
constraint-based theories predict a competition between
two or more syntactic analysis equally activated by
initially using all sources of information. The
data showed that PRO is processed on-line and related to
its antecedent as fast as possible. Object
antecedent sentences were initially processed faster than
subject antecedent sentences, indicating that
extra-syntactic information is not used initially and no
competition occurred. However, when the syntactic
analysis does not fit with extra-syntactic information, a
reanalysis is triggered. Furthermore, not all
sources of information do influence the process at the
same time, being quickly used when available.
References
Boland, J. E., Tanenhaus, M. K., Garnsey, S. M., &
Carlson, G. N. (1995). Verb argument structure in
parsing and interpretation: Evidence from
wh-questions. Journal of Memory and Language, 34,
774-806
Rayner, K., Carlson, M., & Frazier, L.
(1983). The interaction of syntax and semantics
during sentence processing: Eye movements in the analysis
of semantically biased verbs. Journal of Verbal
Learning and Verbal Behavior, 22, 358-374
Clifton, C., & Frazier, L. (1986). The use
of syntactic information in filling gaps. Journal
of Psycholinguistic Research, 15, 209-224
McDonald, M. C., Pearlmutter, N. J., & Seidenberg,
M. S. (1994). Lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity
resolution. Psychological Review, 101, 676-703
Trueswell, J. C., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (1994).
Toward a lexicalist framework for constrained-based
syntactic ambiguity resolution. In C. Clifton, K.
Rayner, & L. Frazier (Eds.), Perspectives on Sentence
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Associates.
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