On the parsing of garden-path sentences

Abstract

Previous studies have reported that temporarily ambiguous sentences sometimes cause reading disruption (garden-path effects). These studies have interpreted their finding as indicating that the human sentence processing device (the processor) initially assigns incorrect structures and subsequently attempts revision. That is a logical interpretation. However, no previous studies have demonstrated evidence of a causal relationship between garden-path effects and initial misanalysis. Besides, there is currently limited evidence regarding whether the processor conducts revision. The present study reports two self-paced reading experiments that investigated these fundamental issues about garden-path effects. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the processor initially misanalyses temporarily ambiguous sentences and consequently encounters garden-path effects and persists with initial misinterpretations. Experiment 2 similarly observed garden-path effects. Additionally, there was evidence that the processor constructs globally correct structures during revision. These findings provide evidence that garden-path effects result from initial misanalysis, and the processor conducts revision upon disambiguation.

Interference and filler-gap dependency formation in native and non-native language comprehension.

“…Many previous studies have investigated the mechanisms underlying such a gap-filling operation. These studies have demonstrated that because of the incremental nature of sentence processing (e.g., Crocker, 1996; Fujita, 2021; Kimball, 1973; Yoshida et al, 2013), readers either recover the information of the filler upon encountering a gap or predictively posit a gap (Aoshima et al, 2004; Cunnings & Sturt, 2018; Frazier & Clifton, 1989; Frazier & Flores d’Arcais, 1989; Kim et al, 2020; Lee, 2004; Nakano et al, 2002; Nicol & Swinney, 1989; Omaki et al, 2015; Parker, 2017; Phillips, 2006; Pickering & Guy, 1991; Pickering & Traxler, 2003; Stowe, 1986; Traxler & Pickering, 1996; Wagers & Phillips, 2014). For example, Traxler and Pickering (1996) tested sentences (2a/b) below.…”

The role of prosodic focus in the reanalysis of garden path sentences: Depth of semantic processing impedes the revision of an erroneous local analysis

“…Early proposals of the Good Enough approach (e.g., Christianson et al, 2001;Ferreira et al, 2001) are most consistent with the first possibility, where an illformed and/or underspecified syntactic representation can drive comprehenders to become more reliant on external heuristics that operate quickly at the surface level of the sentence. However, if the correct syntactic structure is fully recovered after undergoing reanalysis, that presents a potential challenge to this account: it would need to make an even stronger claim about the ability of surface-level heuristics to dominate structural information as the primary source of sentence meaning (Fujita, 2021).…”

“…In other words, comprehenders experience the illusion of having understood the sentence that was given to them, though the true underlying structure generates a different interpretation. Several models of this phenomenon have been proposed in the literature, where the debate has primarily centered on the question of whether the parser fails at recovering the true underlying structure or at discarding the initial semantic interpretation from the incorrect local parse (Ferreira et al, 2004;Sturt, 2007;Slattery et al, 2013;Fujita, 2021). In this paper, we explore this question by testing whether the depth of semantic processing within the incorrect local parse independently drives the misinterpretation of garden path sentences, above and beyond the contribution from lexically driven local coherence effects that have been the focus of previous works.…”

The influence of cognitive control on the processing of L2 garden path sentence among Chinese–English bilinguals

“…There are many studies in the literature aiming at investigating the garden path sentence (e.g., Ferreira and Henderson, 1991;Juffs and Harrington, 1996;Waters and Caplan, 1996;Ferreira et al, 2001;Christianson et al, 2006;Fujita, 2021;Huang and Ferreira, 2021). The garden path effect is prevalent in both native and non-native languages, i.e., English for native speakers and German speakers (Jacob and Felser, 2016).…”