句子加工中语义关联性和句法歧义性实验研究

采用自定速移动视窗技术,探讨语义关联性和句法歧义性对汉语直接宾语、宾语小句类暂时句法歧义句理解加工的影响。结果发现：语义关联性和句法歧义性对歧义区和解歧区的阅读时间有显著影响,并在解歧区产生了显著的交互作用,表明语义信息即时参与对句子的理解加工并同句法信息一起共同影响句子的认知加工过程。     

句法歧义消解影响因素、认知机制及其神经基础

句法歧义消解主要是指人们在面临多种句法分析可能性的情况下,句法分析器抑制不正确的句法分析而选择正确句法分析的认知过程。研究表明,该过程受到工作记忆、认知控制能力、语言分布频率、语境、韵律等因素的影响。为有效说明人们是如何完成句法歧义消解的,研究者们建构了诸如花园路径模型、约束满意理论、弱交互作用句法分析理论等相关模型。另外,基于脑成像技术研究表明,左侧额下回、左侧颞叶后部、中部和前部在句法消歧任务中都有显著激活。未来研究当围绕着句法消歧中的语义效应、句法和词汇歧义消解机制的异同、句法消歧中抑制能力的效应等方面展开。     

The influence of semantic fit on on-line sentence processing

The interactive influence of verb complement preferences and noun phrase semantic fit on resolution of temporary syntactic ambiguity was investigated in an eye movement experiment. The present semantic fit manipulation included noun phrases that fit well as direct objects of the verbs that they followed and noun phrases that were possible but less likely direct objects of the verbs in question. This contrasted with existing research on the use of verb complement preferences and semantic fit during sentence processing, in which processing of noun phrases that are possible direct objects has been compared with processing of noun phrases that are not possible direct objects of the verbs that they follow. Verb complement preference information and noun phrase semantic fit interacted at early stages of on-line sentence processing. Implications of these results for interactive and structural models of sentence processing are discussed.     

句法歧义句理解加工中的语义关联性效应研究

通过实验探讨了汉语直接宾语(DO)/宾语小句(SC)类暂时句法歧义句理解加工中的语义关联性效应。实验采用自定速动窗技术。实验1发现在汉语暂时句法歧义句理解加工中存在语义关联性效应。实验2发现语义关联性与句法歧义性因素在解歧区产生了显著的交互作用。结果表明,语义关联性因素显著影响对句子的理解加工,并且与句法歧义因素共同作用于句子的理解加工过程。     

Evoked potentials and the study of sentence comprehension

Evoked brain potentials were used to monitor moment-by-moment decisions during language comprehension. Subjects read sentences containing temporary syntactic ambiguities for which one of the possible interpretations was semantically implausible. The N400 component of the evoked potential, which is sensitive to implausibility, was used to discover when during a sentence subjects made a decision about the ambiguity. The results demonstrate that readers try to interpret a syntactic ambiguity early in a sentence rather than waiting for disambiguating information. This introduces a new way to use brain activity to study sentence comprehension processes.     

Priming prepositional phrase attachment: Evidence from eye-tracking and event-related potentials

Three syntactic-priming experiments investigated the effect of structurally similar or dissimilar prime sentences on the processing of target sentences, using eye tracking (Experiment 1) and event-related potentials (ERPs) (Experiments 2 and 3) All three experiments tested readers' response to sentences containing a temporary syntactic ambiguity. The ambiguity occurred because a prepositional phrase modifier (PP-modifier) could attach either to a preceding verb or to a preceding noun. Previous experiments have established that (a) noun-modifying expressions are harder to process than verb-modifying expressions (when test sentences are presented in isolation); and (b) for other kinds of sentences, processing a structurally similar prime sentence can facilitate processing a target sentence. The experiments reported here were designed to determine whether a structurally similar prime could facilitate processing of noun-attached modifiers and whether such facilitation reflected syntactic-structure-building or semantic processes. These findings have implications for accounts of structural priming during online comprehension and for accounts of syntactic representation and processing in comprehension.     

Predicting garden path sentences

This work is an investigation into part of the human sentence parsing mechanism (HSPM). The major test of the psychological validity of any model of the HSPM is that it fail on precisely those sentences that humans find to be garden paths. It is hypothesized that the HSPM consists of at least two processes. We call the first process the syntactic processor, and the second will be known as the semantic processor. It is hypothesized that the syntactic processor is unconscious, deterministic and fast, but limited. While most ambiguities are resolved on the basis of syntactic information, when the syntactic processor can no longer guarantee a correct analysis, semantic information is used to help resolve the ambiguity. This model leads to a better prediction and explanation of which sentences will cause people to garden path.     

The influence of prosodic structure on the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguities

This paper investigates the influence of prosodic structure on the process of sentence comprehension, with a specific focus on the relative contributions of syntactic and prosodic information to the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. We argue that prosodic structure provides an initial memory representation for spoken sentences, and that information from this prosodic representation is available to inform syntactic parsing decisions. This view makes three predictions for the processing of temporary syntactic ambiguity: 1. When prosodic and syntactic boundaries coincide, syntactic processing should be facilitated. 2. When prosodic boundaries are placed at misleading points in syntactic structure, syntactic processing should show interference effects. 3. The processing difficulties that have been reliably demonstrated in reading experiments for syntactically complex sentences should disappear when those sentences are presented with a felicitous prosodic structure in listening experiments. These predictions were confirmed by series of experiments measuring end-of-sentence comprehension time and cross-modal naming time for sentences with temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. Sentences with coinciding or conflicting prosodic and syntactic boundaries were compared to a prosodic baseline condition.This research was supported in part by NIMH grant R29 MH51768 to the first author and NIMH grant T32 MH19729 to the Northeastern University Psychology Department.     

ERPs reveal comparable syntactic sentence processing in native and non-native readers of English

L2 syntactic processing has been primarily investigated in the context of syntactic anomaly detection, but only sparsely with syntactic ambiguity. In the field of event-related potentials (ERPs) syntactic anomaly detection and syntactic ambiguity resolution is linked to the P600. The current ERP experiment examined L2 syntactic processing in highly proficient L1 Spanish-L2 English readers who had acquired English informally around the age of 5 years. Temporary syntactic ambiguity (induced by verb subcategorization information) was tested as a language-specific phenomenon of L2, while syntactic anomaly resulted from phrase structure constraints that are similar in L1 and L2. Participants judged whether a sentence was syntactically acceptable or not. Native readers of English showed a P600 in the temporary syntactically ambiguous and syntactically anomalous sentences. A comparable picture emerged in the non-native readers of English. Both critical syntactic conditions elicited a P600, however, the distribution and latency of the P600 varied in the syntactic anomaly condition. The results clearly show that early acquisition of L2 syntactic knowledge leads to comparable online sensitivity towards temporal syntactic ambiguity and syntactic anomaly in early and highly proficient non-native readers of English and native readers of English.     

Syntactic and semantic contributions to sentence comprehension in agrammatism

Five aphasic subjects, who demonstrated agrammatic speech, and eight control subjects were presented with a sentence-picture matching task in which the factors of syntactic complexity, semantic reversibility, and sentence plausibility were independently varied. A subset of the sentences was patterned after that presented by A. Caramazza and E. Zurif (1976, Brain and Language, 5, 572-583) who concluded that Broca's aphasics rely on semantic constraints instead of syntactic information for sentence comprehension. Our aphasic subjects showed the same pattern of performance on this subset of sentences. However, the results from the full set of sentence materials we tested show that the aphasic subjects could perform some sentence level syntactic analyses, even when syntactic information conflicted with semantic constraints. The aphasic subjects correctly interpreted most active and passive sentences. They failed, however, to assign thematic roles and adjectives in center-embedded relative sentences, and instead relied on nonsyntactic information. These results show that both semantic and syntactic information contributed to sentence comprehension in the aphasic subjects we tested, in contrast to previous claims that syntactic and semantic processes are completely dissociated in this population.     

Processing local and unbounded dependencies: A unified account

This paper proposes an account of incremental sentence processing and the initial stage of syntactic ambiguity resolution, based on the claim that the processor seeks to provide semantic interpretations for sentence fragments as soon as it possibly can. In this model, there is no fundamental distinction between local and unbounded dependencies. The processor employs a version of categorial grammar based on dependency grammar, in which dependency constituents are derived from dependencies between words and are permitted to overlap. The processor seeks to form dependency constituents as soon as it can, and to give interpretations to these fragments immediately. The initial stage of ambiguity resolution is determined by theprinciple of dependency formation, under which the processor automatically chooses an analysis that allows a single dependency constituent to be formed in preference to one that does not. The motivation is semantic: Such an analysis maximizes the amount of incremental interpretation that is possible. But if more than one analysis is compatible with the formation of a single constituent, the processor can appeal to a range of sources of nonsyntactic information in making its choice. I show how this account can capture a range of psycholinguistic evidence without positing any fundamental distinction between local and unbounded dependencies.     

句子理解的关键——对句法和语义关系的再探讨

对于句子理解中句法和语义的关系,传统的模块化观点认为,句法信息优先于语义信息,句法加工支配着句子的理解过程。近期,这种强调句法优先的理论受到了一系列ERP（Event-related potentials）研究结果的挑战,这些研究从不同角度论证了语义信息对句法加工及句子整合加工的重要作用。基于这些研究发现,研究者提出句子理解过程中句法和语义的关系并非一成不变：一些情况下可能是句法支配语义加工,而另一些情况下则可能是语义引导句法加工     

句法和语义在汉语简单句理解中的作用

两个实验探讨句法和语义在汉语简单句加工中的作用及其相互关系。实验一采用施事判断任务,发现句法作用与语义可逆性的作用都很显著;实验二采用快速句子判断任务,发现句法作用是主要的,语义可逆性无显著作用;两个实验都发现句法与语义可逆性之间的交互作用不显著。这些结果表明：（１）在汉语简单句理解的过程中句法因素的作用是主要的,语义因素的作用是次要的,只要当实验任务更多地强调语义分析时,语义因素才有显著的作用。     

Young children's use of prosody in sentence parsing

Korean children's ability to use prosodic phrasing in sentence comprehension was studied using two types of ambiguity. First, we examined a word-segmentation ambiguity in which placement of the phrasal boundary leads to different interpretations of a sentence. Next, we examined a syntactic ambiguity in which the same words were differently grouped into syntactic phrases by prosodic demarcation. Children aged 3 or 4 years showed that they could use prosodic information to segment utterances and to derive the meaning of ambiguous sentences when the sentences only contained a word-segmentation ambiguity. However, even 5- to 6-year-old children were not able to reliably resolve the second type of ambiguity, an ambiguity of phrasal grouping, by using prosodic information. The results demonstrate that children's difficulties in dealing with structural ambiguity are not due to their inability to use prosodic information.     

Lateralization of auditory language functions: a dynamic dual pathway model

Spoken language comprehension requires the coordination of different subprocesses in time. After the initial acoustic analysis the system has to extract segmental information such as phonemes, syntactic elements and lexical-semantic elements as well as suprasegmental information such as accentuation and intonational phrases, i.e., prosody. According to the dynamic dual pathway model of auditory language comprehension syntactic and semantic information are primarily processed in a left hemispheric temporo-frontal pathway including separate circuits for syntactic and semantic information whereas sentence level prosody is processed in a right hemispheric temporo-frontal pathway. The relative lateralization of these functions occurs as a result of stimulus properties and processing demands. The observed interaction between syntactic and prosodic information during auditory sentence comprehension is attributed to dynamic interactions between the two hemispheres.     

Semantic Factors in the Production of Number Agreement

This paper examines the role of semantic factors in the production of subject–verb number agreement. As an ostensibly grammatical process, number agreement provides an interesting case for examining the flow and interaction of semantic and syntactic information through the language-production system. Using a sentence-completion task, agreement errors can be elicited from subjects by presenting them with sentence fragments containing a complex noun-phrase, in which the nonhead noun is plural (e.g., The key to the cabinets...WERE missing.). Previous research has demonstrated that the probability of making an error can be affected by varying the properties of the nouns in the complex noun phrase. By investigating which variables do and do not affect error rates, constraints on the flow of information through the production system can be inferred. In three experiments, we investigated the possible effects of three different semantic manipulations of the nouns in the complex NP: animacy, semantic overlap, and plausibility of modification by the sentence predicate. We found that both animacy and semantic relatedness had reliable effects on error rates, indicating that the mechanism involved in implementing agreement cannot be blind to semantic information. However, the plausibility with which each noun could serve as the subject of the sentence predicate had no effect on error rates. Taken together, these results suggest that while semantic information is visible to the agreement mechanism, there are still constraints on when this information can affect the process. Specifically, it may be the case that only information contained within the complex NP is considered for the purposes of implementing agreement.     

The on-line resolution of the sentence complement/relative clause ambiguity: evidence from Spanish

Two self-paced reading experiments investigated syntactic ambiguity resolution in Spanish. The experiments examined the way in which Spanish subjects initially interpret sentences that are temporarily ambiguous between a sentence complement and a relative clause interpretation. Experiment 1 examined whether the sentence complement preference found in English is observed in Spanish speaking subjects. In Experiment 2, verbal mood was manipulated in order to study the influence of verb-specific information on sentence processing. Since subcategorization for a subjunctive complement clause is generally assumed to be a lexical property of some verbs, the manipulation of the mood of the embedded verb affords us an interesting and novel way to examine the influence of lexical information on syntactic ambiguity resolution. Experiment 1 showed that Spanish speakers initially interpret the ambiguous that-clause as a sentence complement. Experiment 2 showed that verb-specific information, in particular, the information that specificies that a verb subcategorizes for a subjunctive complement, is accessed and used rapidly and affects the ambiguity resolution process. The results are discussed in relation to current models of sentence processing.     

What can prosody tell a parser?

In this paper, I consider how a sentence processor might use specific prosodic cues at various points in the processing of particular sentences containing (at least temporary) syntactic ambiguity. In principle, the usefulness of prosodic information depends on what a given cluster of prosodic cues typically signifies, and on which syntactic options exist for a given string: in only some instances can prosodic information provide useful disambiguating information.This work was supported by Grant #DC-01409, a Research and Training Grant funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders to the National Center for Neurogenic Communication Disorders, University of Arizona. I wish to thank Andrew Barss for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

Effect of ambiguity and lexical availability on syntactic and lexical production

Speakers only sometimes include the that in sentence complement structures like The coach knew (that) you missed practice. Six experiments tested the predictions concerning optional word mention of two general approaches to language production. One approach claims that language production processes choose syntactic structures that ease the task of creating sentences, so that words are spoken opportunistically, as they are selected for production. The second approach claims that a syntactic structure is chosen that is easiest to comprehend, so that optional words like that are used to avoid temporarily ambiguous, difficult-to-comprehend sentences. In all experiments, speakers did not consistently include optional words to circumvent a temporary ambiguity, but they did omit optional words (the complementizer that) when subsequent material was either repeated (within a sentence) or prompted with a recall cue. The results suggest that speakers choose syntactic structures to permit early mention of available material and not to circumvent disruptive temporary ambiguities.     

Automatic syntactic computation and use of semantic information during sentence comprehension

Summary The paper represents a contribution to the issue of the differential effects of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic information in the process of sentence comprehension. The results of four experiments are reported, in which sentences containing syntactic, semantic and pragmatic violations were presented with different tasks to see how these violations affected language comprehension, how easily they were detected and whether they affected sentence comprehension even when they were not explicitly recognized. The main results can be summarized as follows. First, the most relevant cues used to comprehend a sentence are not so much syntactic, but semantic or pragmatic. Second, with difficult or anomalous linguistic input, syntactic cues become more important. Third, even when the reader is not aware of syntactic violations, these seem to affect his processing of the linguistic input. This suggests the hypothesis of an automatic computation of syntactic information, the output of which is, however, used only when evidence coming from other sources, semantic or pragmatic, is insufficient or not clear enough.