|
Abstract:
Juliano and Tanenhaus (1994) have argued that
the apparently rigid garden path attachment of postverbal NPs
in cases like (1) is compatible with frequency based accounts,
if we assume that the absence of the comma is itself a
frequency based cue to treat the following object as a
dependent of the preceding verb. This allows the
intransitive bias of the verb to be overridden by the strong
bias of the lack of comma for postverbal attachment.
|
(1)
|
|
After the boy sneezed the girl
looked curious.
|
Ferreira and McClure (1996) ( henceforth FM)
have presented evidence from reciprocal clauses casting doubt
on this interpretation. The interpretation of a
reciprocal verb allows either the second conjunct of a
conjoined subject, or the direct object, to be taken as the
internal argument of a transitive reciprocal verb.
|
(2)
|
a.
|
Mary and John kissed.
|
|
|
b.
|
Mary kissed John.
|
In the reciprocal case, (3a), subjects had no
trouble interpreting the underlined noun as the subject of a
following clause. This is true despite the fact that
there is no comma. Non-reciprocal verbs showed clear
garden path effects under the same circumstances (3c).
This yielded a first pass reading time difference dependent on
the presence of an intervening comma only for non reciprocal
verbs.
|
(3)
|
a.
|
When the golfer and the opponent
tied THE RULES were changed.
|
|
|
b.
|
When the golfer tied the opponent
the rules were changed.
|
|
|
c.
|
When the golfer and the opponent
disputed THE RULES were changed.
|
(FM) argued that frequency constraints were thus
subordinate to argument structure constraints. These results
could not be attributed to frequency since the verb classes
were matched for transitive bias. One problem with their
data however is that the difference between (3a and c), and
many other of FMs stimulus sets could be also be attributed to
the unbalanced implausibility of the postverbal noun phrase as
an object in these cases.
Our own eye tracking experiments decouples
plausibility from argument structure biases. Our results
show the opposite pattern from that observed by FM.
Reciprocal verbs yield significantly longer residual first pass
reading times at the capitalized noun phrase than non
reciprocals in the no comma condition. The pattern is reversed
for 2nd pass and residual reading time measures. We
interpret these results within a constraint based model.
We show however, that this pattern argues for an inherent
argument structure saturation bias that cannot be reduced to
frequency.
References
Ferreira, F., & McClure, K. (1997). Parsing of
garden-path sentences with reciprocal verbs. Language and
Cognitive Processes, 12, 273-306.
Juliano, C., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (1994). A
constraint-based lexicalist account of the subject/object
attachment preference. Journal of Psycholinguistic
Research, 23, 459-471.
|
