| { |
| "paper_id": "E85-1018", |
| "header": { |
| "generated_with": "S2ORC 1.0.0", |
| "date_generated": "2023-01-19T11:30:24.462092Z" |
| }, |
| "title": "THE RESOLUTION OF LOCAL SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITY BY THE HUMAN SENTENCE PROCESSING MECHANISM", |
| "authors": [ |
| { |
| "first": "Gerry", |
| "middle": [], |
| "last": "Altmann", |
| "suffix": "", |
| "affiliation": { |
| "laboratory": "", |
| "institution": "University of Edinburgh George Square", |
| "location": { |
| "postCode": "EH8 9LL", |
| "settlement": "Edinburgh" |
| } |
| }, |
| "email": "" |
| } |
| ], |
| "year": "", |
| "venue": null, |
| "identifiers": {}, |
| "abstract": "", |
| "pdf_parse": { |
| "paper_id": "E85-1018", |
| "_pdf_hash": "", |
| "abstract": [], |
| "body_text": [ |
| { |
| "text": "Although the importance of contextual information will be stressed, I shall briefly consider reasons why parsing preferences arise in the absence of any explicit prior context.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "The conclusion is that computational models of syntactic ambiguity resolution which are based on evidence which has ignored contextual considerations are models of something other than natural language processing.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "has been much controversy recently surrounding the processes responsible for the \"garden path\" effect Ln the following kind of example:", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "There", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "The oil tycoon sold the off-shore oil tracts for a lot of money wanted to kill J.R.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "There", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "The garden path effect arises here because the Human Sentence Processing Mechanism (\"HSPM\") encounters, during the processing of this sentence, a local syntactic ambiguity.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "There", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "The word \"sold\" is ambiguous: it can be interpreted either as a simple active, or it can be interpreted as a past participle, in a reduced passive. The only way to make the whole string into a sentence is to interpret it as a reduced form of the passive.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "There", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "However, what seems to happen in this (and similar) examples is that people tend to interpret the word \"sold\" as the main verb. This tendency leads them down a syntactic garden path.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "There", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "So the HSPM exhibits a preference for one analysis over another when faced with a local ambiguity.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "There", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "But why? A number of suggestions have been made concerning this.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "There", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "One suggestion, originally proposed by Kimball (1973) and followed up more recently by Frazier (1979) and Rayner, Carlson, & Frazier (1983) , is that the HSPM takes into account the syntactic structure of these sentences. There are two possible structures which could be assigned to the ambiguous sentence fragment", |
| "cite_spans": [ |
| { |
| "start": 39, |
| "end": 53, |
| "text": "Kimball (1973)", |
| "ref_id": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "start": 87, |
| "end": 101, |
| "text": "Frazier (1979)", |
| "ref_id": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "start": 106, |
| "end": 139, |
| "text": "Rayner, Carlson, & Frazier (1983)", |
| "ref_id": null |
| } |
| ], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "There", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "The oil tycoon sold the off-shore oil tracts . . .", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "There", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "an extra NP node as compared to the main verb interpretation. Kimball (1975) and Frazier suggest that when more than one interpretation is possible, one pursues that interpretation which creates the structure with fewest nodes. This is what Frazier calls the Principle of Minimal Attachment.", |
| "cite_spans": [ |
| { |
| "start": 62, |
| "end": 76, |
| "text": "Kimball (1975)", |
| "ref_id": null |
| } |
| ], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "The reduced passive interpretation requires", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "proposes, then, that an initial decision is made on grounds of syntactic structure alone.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "This structural hypothesis", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "If it subsequently turns out to be the wrong decision (on grounds of \"implausibility\"), the alternative analysis (which is identified on the basis of \"thematic selection \" -Rayner et al., 1983) is then, and only then, attempted. or \"the safe\" we would not have known just which candidate \"oil tycoon\" or which candidate \"safe\" was intended.", |
| "cite_spans": [ |
| { |
| "start": 170, |
| "end": 193, |
| "text": "\" -Rayner et al., 1983)", |
| "ref_id": null |
| } |
| ], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "This structural hypothesis", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "But wi%ere do these different \"candidate .... oil tycoons\" and \"safes\" come from?", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "This structural hypothesis", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "Normally, they must presumably be introduced into the discourse some time before these target sentences are encountered, and represented by speaker and hearer in some kind of model of the discourse.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "This structural hypothesis", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "There is a sense in which all of these examples are unnatural because each sentence is presented in isolation. We refer to \"the oil tycoon\" and \"the off-shore oil tracts\", but we've never mentioned them before. To control for this, we should really present these target sentences embedded in a context.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "This structural hypothesis", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "Stephen Crain did just this: using an incremental grammaticality judgement task , and a class of ambiguity which is different in form but the same in principle (see below) , he showed that garden path effects could be overcome or induced depending on the referential nature of the context (i.e. depending on whether just one \"oil tycoon\" or more than one \"oil tycoon\" had been introduced in the preceding text). ", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [ |
| { |
| "start": 80, |
| "end": 188, |
| "text": ", and a class of ambiguity which is different in form but the same in principle (see below)", |
| "ref_id": null |
| } |
| ], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "This structural hypothesis", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "The burglar blew open the safe with the dynamite.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "Minimal (V_~P) attachment", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "The burglar blew open the safe with the diamonds. These examples are \"minimally-different\" to the extent that the only difference between them is the change from \"two safes\"", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "Non-minimal (NP) attachment", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "to \"a safe and a jewelry box\". This is a change which, in theory, affects only the cardinality of the set of \"safes\". The inferencing process can only be controlled for if the materials under study are preceded by felicitous co-texts. To assess the contribution of inferencing to processing time, an experiment was run (Altmann, forthcoming) using the following examples (which are similar to those used by Crain, 1980) . \"INFERENCING\" A policeman was questioning two women.", |
| "cite_spans": [ |
| { |
| "start": 407, |
| "end": 419, |
| "text": "Crain, 1980)", |
| "ref_id": null |
| } |
| ], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "Non-minimal (NP) attachment", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "He was suspicious of one of them but not of the other.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "Non-minimal (NP) attachment", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "A policeman was questioning two women.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "\"MINIMAL INFERENCING\"", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "He had his d Qubt$ about one of them but not about the other.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "\"MINIMAL INFERENCING\"", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "The policeman told the woman that h_ee had his doubts about to tell the truth.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "RELATIVE CLAUSE TARGET", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "The policeman told the woman that he had his doubts about her clever alibi.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "COMPLEMENT CLAUSE TARGET", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "(The underlining was not present in the experimental items.) The amount of inferencing required to process the relative target was manipulated by changing the (underlined) wording in the preceding co-text from \"was suspicious of\" (\"inferencing\") to \"had his doubts about\" (\"minimal inferencing\"). the distinction between Given and New) will also generalise to the examples which have, on \"structural\" accounts, been explained by Right Association (Kimball, 1973) and Late Closure (Frazier, 1979) . processes in the hearer. This is achieved, in part, by way of the syntactic constructions which the speaker chooses to adopt.", |
| "cite_spans": [ |
| { |
| "start": 230, |
| "end": 245, |
| "text": "(\"inferencing\")", |
| "ref_id": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "start": 447, |
| "end": 462, |
| "text": "(Kimball, 1973)", |
| "ref_id": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "start": 480, |
| "end": 495, |
| "text": "(Frazier, 1979)", |
| "ref_id": null |
| } |
| ], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "COMPLEMENT CLAUSE TARGET", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "The role of these processes is to establish a relationship between the information conveyed by the utterance, and the information already known to the hearer.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "COMPLEMENT CLAUSE TARGET", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "Such processes must therefore address information which is both internal and external to the utterance. Studies which purport either to investigate syntactic processing empirically, or to model it computationally, should not ignore the role or the requirements of these processes.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "COMPLEMENT CLAUSE TARGET", |
| "sec_num": null |
| }, |
| { |
| "text": "To do so is to study something other than natural language processing.", |
| "cite_spans": [], |
| "ref_spans": [], |
| "eq_spans": [], |
| "section": "COMPLEMENT CLAUSE TARGET", |
| "sec_num": null |
| } |
| ], |
| "back_matter": [], |
| "bib_entries": {}, |
| "ref_entries": {} |
| } |
| } |
