Abstract
Using the single-word self-paced reading task, three experiments investigated parsing of temporarily ambiguous sentences containing complement verbs. The verbs differed in the likelihood with which they are typically followed by a direct object (NP-bias verbs) or a clausal complement (clausal-bias verbs). When the potential direct object was short, readers were "garden-pathed" after NP-bias verbs, but not after clausal-bias verbs. The pragmatic plausibility of the potential direct object also only influenced responses in sentences containing NP-bias verbs. The results suggest that lexical expectations may determine the initial structural assignment made by the reader in these sentences. It was argued that models of parsing should incorporate a role for lexical expectations at an early stage of syntactic decision-making.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 668-689 |
Number of pages | 22 |
Journal | Journal of Memory and Language |
Volume | 28 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1989 |
Externally published | Yes |