On the syntax of disjunction scope

Larson, Richard Κ.

doi:10.1007/bf00133841

Cited by 176 publications

(136 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…It seems likely, however, that when sentence-initial either is present, or is initially analyzed as coordinating two clauses, as shown in panel (a) of Figure 1. (Figure 1 avoids the question of how the word either should itself be attached, as this is a notoriously vexed question (see Larson, 1985;Schwarz, 1999), and does not bear on the present experiment. )…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 81%

“…The first important question is how the parser attaches the word or; the widely held assumption that syntactic parsing is highly incremental (Frazier & Rayner, 1982;Just & Carpenter, 1980) argues against the possibility that the nature of the coordinate structure is left completely indeterminate at this point. The grammar of English allows or to be analyzed as a coordinator between two clauses, two verb phrases, or two noun phrases when either is present sentence-initially (e.g., Larson, 1985;Schwarz, 1999). It seems likely, however, that when sentence-initial either is present, or is initially analyzed as coordinating two clauses, as shown in panel (a) of Figure 1.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The return of the repressed: Abandoned parses facilitate syntactic reanalysis☆

Staub

2007

Journal of Memory and Language

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Two eye movement experiments examined effects on syntactic reanalysis when the correct analysis was briefly entertained at an earlier point in the sentence. In Experiment 1, participants read sentences containing a noun phrase coordination/clausal coordination ambiguity, while in Experiment 2 they read sentences containing a subordinate clause object/main clause subject ambiguity. The critical conditions were designed to induce readers to construct the ultimately correct analysis just prior to being garden-pathed by the incorrect analysis. In both experiments, the earliest measures of the garden path effect were not modulated by this manipulation. However, there was significantly less regressive re-reading of the sentence in those conditions in which the correct analysis was likely to have been constructed, then abandoned, at an earlier point. These results suggest that a syntactic analysis that is abandoned in the course of processing a sentence is not lost altogether, and can be re-activated or retrieved from memory. Implications for models of initial syntactic analysis and reanalysis are discussed.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 81%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The return of the repressed: Abandoned parses facilitate syntactic reanalysis☆

Staub

2007

Journal of Memory and Language

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“…The phenomenon of either migrating to the left of the coordinate structure that is in focus, as in Example 7, is known in the linguistic literature as "runaway" either (Larson, 1985;Schwarz, 1999).…”

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confidence: 99%

Syntactic prediction in language comprehension: Evidence from either...or.

Staub

Clifton²

2006

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

188

169

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Readers' eye movements were monitored as they read sentences in which two noun phrases or two independent clauses were connected by the word or (NP-coordination and S-coordination, respectively). The word either could be present or absent earlier in the sentence. When either was present, the material immediately following or was read more quickly, across both sentence types. In addition, there was evidence that readers misanalyzed the S-coordination structure as an NPcoordination structure only when either was absent. The authors interpret the results as indicating that the word either enabled readers to predict the arrival of a coordination structure; this predictive activation facilitated processing of this structure when it ultimately arrived, and in the case of Scoordination sentences, enabled readers to avoid the incorrect NP-coordination analysis. The authors argue that these results support parsing theories according to which the parser can build predictable syntactic structure before encountering the corresponding lexical input.

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“…Ellipsis directionality (271) The syntax of 'either… or' in fact has a vast literature (see Larson 1985, Seuren 1985, Munn 1993, Schwarz 1999 (276c) and (276d) shows. Also, either is not restricted to cases of coordination, suggesting thatagain similarly to both -it is an adverbial that sometimes appears in coordination contexts.…”

Section: Ormentioning

confidence: 99%

Coordination in Optimality Theory

Gáspár¹

1999

Nordic Journal of Linguistic

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This dissertation provides an analysis of coordination within a restricted version of Optimality Theory (OT), operating exclusively with alignment and faithfulness constraints. It is shown that this version of OT, which does not assume the existence of syntactic structure, is capable of handling coordination phenomena that have been problematic for previous structureless accounts, while at the same time also avoids the problems encountered by structure-based theories trying to fit coordination into models developed to account for structures occurring elsewhere.It is standardly assumed in OT that syntactic structure conforming to X-bar Theory axioms is imposed on all the candidates generated from the input by the structure building component of the grammar. I reject this view and contend that it is by eliminating from the grammar historically inherited axioms about X-bar Theory or even the central notion of phrases that we can unlock the real power of OT: the violable constraints that make up the evaluation system are solely responsible for the grammar and grammatical differences between languages.I show how such an assumption, originally conceived in Newson (2000b), can predict basic word order patterns and can also account for topicalization as well as coordination in a wide variety of language types. As syntactic OT in general, and alignment OT in particular are relatively novel developments within linguistic research, the basic principles of the theory are still being formed. I show that the originally assumed family of predicate alignment constraints alone is not capable of accounting for a variety of data such as SOV language pattern as well as topicalization and focalization in a variety of languages, and introduce a second family of alignment constraints. Contrary to the predicate alignment constraints, which establish the position of an element with respect to its predicate (or, more generally, functor), first and last constraints sanction the placement of elements to the beginning and the end of 2 the string, respectively. The interaction of these constraints with each another and with the functor alignment and the faithfulness constraints provides a powerful grammar.The coordinative conjunction is argued to be a functor, taking the predicates of the propositions it conjoins as its arguments. As a functor, the functor constraints originally developed for the predicate-argument relationship are relevant for the conjunction-conjunct alignment relationship as well.Central to the analysis of ellipsis is the claim that ellipsis is not only characterized by phonological absence, but by syntactic absence as well. Essentially, ellipsis is treated as a semantic phenomenon: it is up to the semantic component of the grammar to reconstruct elided material missing from all other levels of grammatical description.In the framework adopted semantic interpretation is based on the input of the optimality system. Thus the input is the foundation of ellipsis phenomena -as much as it contains gaps for material that surface ...

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On the syntax of disjunction scope

Cited by 176 publications

References 7 publications

The return of the repressed: Abandoned parses facilitate syntactic reanalysis☆

The return of the repressed: Abandoned parses facilitate syntactic reanalysis☆

Syntactic prediction in language comprehension: Evidence from either...or.

Coordination in Optimality Theory

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