This paper investigates the extent to which existing structural commitments constrain the human parser's search for analyses of new incoming material, specifically whether a Reanalysis as a Last Resort (RALR) strategy applies to sentence parsing. Two self-paced reading experiments investigated this issue using a structural ambiguity in which a local, easy reanalysis parse is pitted against a non-local attachment requiring no reanalysis. This ambiguity is created by embedding classic noun phrase/sentential complement ambiguities inside a relative clause modifying a subject NP, as in strings like The woman who knows the man wrote some articles himself/herself..., and examining whether readers parse the ambiguous phrase wrote some articles himself/herself as a matrix clause or as an embedded clause. The results of both experiments indicate that readers' existing structural commitments do constrain their subsequent parsing decisions: non-local analyses which avoid reanalysis are consistent...

Ray Jackendoff is well qualified to talk about the trend towards increasing specialization and fragmentation of the science of language. For over 30 years he has been a prolific contributor to a number of different topics in syntax and semantics, and has also made notable contributions to other areas of cognitive science, including music, consciousness, spatial

Head-driven processing of verb-final structures Published by

Head-driven processing of verb-final structures Published by