Semantic and episodic constraints on the use of surface-order cues in the comprehension of locative sentences

Comprehension of ambiguous three-term locative sentences such as The book is on the desk in the crate was examined in a verification experiment. Subjects consistently chose a representation in which the spatial ordering of the objects described was congruent with the surface order of terms in the sentence. This rule was overridden, however, by the presence of semantic constraints among the terms (e.g., The shirt is in the house on the chair). When the order of locative clauses within each sentence was reversed in the second half of the experiment, subjects tended to change their representation to conform with the new surface order if the initial coding had been based on surface order. This change occurred more frequently when the objects involved more abstract, geometric shapes. The importance of syntactic, semantic, and episodic information in the comprehension of sentences is discussed.This research was conducted by the second author under the directorship of the first author.