3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 Back to Usual Issues So, evidence supports both Parallelism & Interaction of multiple within-sentence constraints And shows Verb Bias effects in sentences that should not require any reanalysis –But Verb Bias effects could be part of 1 st stage, since may be a kind of syntactic knowledge –And N+V plausibility effects are only testable in sentences with Clause structure, so could be due to reanalysis What about constraints from outside sentence?

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 Discourse Context What are Non-minimally Attached PPs? –They modify the NP they follow –When does an NP need modification? –When it wouldn’t be clear in context who or what it refers to If you see/hear The doctor examined the patient with... –In a context where there are several patients in the waiting room –You may expect what follows to tell you which patient is meant –i.e., context may lead you to expect a Non-minimal Attachment

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 Altmann & Steedman (1988) Contexts: A burglar broke into a bank carrying some dynamite. He planned to blow open a safe. Once inside, he saw that there was... 2-safe context:... a safe with a new lock and a safe with an old lock. 1-safe context:... a safe with a new lock and a strongbox with an old lock. Target Sentences: MA: The burglar blew open the safe with the dynamite and... NMA: The burglar blew open the safe with the new lock and...

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 Prediction –If people use discourse context immediately, –they'll read new lock faster than dynamite after the 2-safe context –because they need new lock to know which safe is meant Results (Moving-Window RT) –People did read new lock faster than dynamite after 2-safe context –i.e., the Non-Minimally Attached sentence was easier than the Minimally Attached sentence So, suggests people don’t always try the simpler structure 1st –What they try first seems to depend on the discourse context –BUT, these results have been notoriously difficult to replicate! What if the context comes from the world rather than the discourse? –If that influences parsing, the system is clearly very interactive

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 Tanenhaus, Spivey-Knowlton, Eberhard & Sedivy (Science, 1995) Head-mounted eyetracker Track eyes while people look at visual scenes & hear spoken instructions –They usually look at objects before reaching for them So eye movements can show what they’re thinking of reaching for, based on how they’re understanding a sentence so far

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 Procedures People looked at displays of 4 objects while hearing instructions like: –Put the apple on the towel in the box. –Ambiguous between: Put the apple on the towel in the box. towel = destination (MA) Put the apple on the towel in the box. towel = modifier (NMA) The visual scene had either 1 or 2 apples present –If visual context influences parsing, then when there are 2 apples: They should think PP modifies it, to pick out which apple So they should not think the towel is a destination & thus should not look at it (much) - i.e., They should prefer the Non-Minimal Attachment

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 Typical Result in 1-Ref Condition Only 1 apple in display Unambiguous version Ambiguous version

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 Typical Result in 2-Ref Condition Ambiguous version Unambiguous version 2 apples in display

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 Overall Results

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 Interpretation When there were 2 apples, people rarely looked at the empty towel –Suggests rarely considered it as a possible destination Thus, that they did not always try MA first? –So, non-linguistic visual context immediately constrained interpretation –So, sentence comprehension processing is Interactive Whether you believe this interpretation –Depends on whether you think people would move their eyes to the empty towel if they briefly mis-parsed the sentence & thought it was a destination ???

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 The next section has slides from a talk of mine about a study with Reduced Relatives, showing some individual difference effects. I will talk about this study when we talk about memory and language processing, so don’t worry if you can’t figure it out from just the slides.

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 Individual Differences in the Effect of Yet-to-be-Fixated Words during Sentence Reading With thanks to: Elizabeth Myers Neal Pearlmutter Kate Pirog Mike Tanenhaus John Trueswell Gary Wolverton

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 My Very Favorite Example of a Garden-Path Sentence “A University student charged with threatening to kill the President via was arrested Thursday, following issuance of a complaint and warrant, officials said.” - Daily Illini, 2/27/94

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 “A University student charged with threatening to kill the President via X Y

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 You may not have noticed that there was another opportunity for garden-pathing in this example with threatening to kill the President … ” “A University student charged who was ^ “Reduced Relative”

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 The Most Famous English Garden-Path Sentence The horse raced past the barn fell. What makes this one so much harder? 1. Horses are good racers 2. The word past is no help after raced vs A University student charged with

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 Dual Purkinje Eyetracker For the font size and distance we use, spatial resolution is ~1/4 character

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 First-pass ReadingTime = Sum of all fixations in a region before leaving the region - Used as a measure of “initial processing”

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 Example Stimulus Set for All of the Studies that Follow Animate = Good Agent The witness (who was) examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable. Inanimate = Bad Agent = Possible Passive Patient The evidence (that was) examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable. Scoring Regions: The evidence / (that was) / examined / by the lawyer / turned out /… Disambiguating Region

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 We thought there were some problems with the materials: e.g., The trash smelled by the dog was laying on the sidewalk. The questions asked about the murder could not be answered. The stories told about the incident were a great source of concern.

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3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 Daneman & Carpenter’s (1980) Reading Span Test At the conclusion of the musicians' performance, the enthusiastic crowd applauded. Without any hesitation, he plunged into the difficult mathematics assignment blindly. The devastating effects of the flood were not fully realized until months later. When I got to the big tobacco field I saw that it had not suffered much.

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 What does the test measure? - Verbal working memory capacity? - Ability to focus attention? - Skill with language and reading? -... ? For some purposes, it doesn’t matter - As long as it reliably identifies subgroups of people - Who can then be tested for differences in other tasks - Which may help us figure out what the test measures

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3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 Parafoveal Preview in Reading Burgess (1991) - Self-paced moving window reading time study - Varied window size from single to several words - Found an animacy effect only when people saw the disambiguating preposition “by” chunked together with the verb preceding it examined by the lawyer turned out … e.g., The evidence Ferreira & Clifton used a 40-character wide display - Sometimes the preposition was on the next line

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 We created sentences with verbs at least 8 characters long - So we could analyze data contingent on whether or not people were likely to get preview of “by” while still fixating on verb The professor confronted by the student was not ready to … If last fix before “by” was here, trial coded as “Preview Unlikely” If last fix before “by” was here, trial coded as “Preview Likely” If last fix before “by” was here, trial not used

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 48 item sets with 4 versions each: The professor (who was) confronted by the student was not ready for an argument. The professor (had) confronted the student but was not ready for an argument. All animate – Want people biased toward main clause interpretations - So sentences are fairly hard, so there’s a better chance to see how much preview of “by” can help

3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 Participants - 23 high-span (>=3.5, 13 female) - 20 low-span (<=3.0, 10 female) (More would be good, since breaking it down by both span & critical fixation locations & dropping some trials)

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3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

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3/5/08Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08 - People are differently abled when it comes to making rapid use of cues that can help in understanding hard sentences - In Trueswell et al. (1994), - We probably just happened to get a high proportion of high-span subjects - And something about the display &/or materials happened to make it easy to get preview of “by” - Presenting sentences one word at a time in ERP studies (among others) may yield unrepresentative results especially for highly skilled readers