Understanding a Sentence

1
Understanding a Sentence

• Parse left to right
• Immediacy Principle
• Build structures as words are encountered
• Assume you have a grammatical sentence
• (Requires reanalysis for Garden
• Path Sentences)

Carroll, David W. 1999. Psychology of Language,
third edition. Pacific Grove Brooks/Cole
Publishing Company, p. 131 ff.
2
Left to Right Parsing Ambiguities

• The old yellow ship can float .
• Art N N N N N
• Adj Adj V V V
• V Mod

3
Garden Path Sentences

• 1. The florist sent the flowers was very
  pleased
• 2. Since Jay always jogs a mile seems like a
  very short distance to him.

Carroll, David W. 1999. Psychology of Language,
third edition. Pacific Grove Brooks/Cole
Publishing Company, pp. 132-133.
4
Late Closure

• 1. Tom said that Harry took the trash out
  yesterday.
• 2. James put the book Marie was reading in
  the library
• on the table.
• 3. Fiona discovered on Monday the penguin had
  hurt
• its foot.
• 4. The man the girl the boy met believed
  laughed.

Carroll, David W. 1999. Psychology of Language,
third edition. Pacific Grove Brooks/Cole
Publishing Company, p. 133. Aitchison, Jean.
1998. The Articulate Mammal An Introduction to
Psycholinguistics. London Routledge, pp.
211-212.
5
Late Closure(Newspaper Headline)

• Ban on Nude Dancing on Governor's Desk

Leno, Jay. Headlines.
6
Late Closure (Frank and Ernest)
Ashcraft, Mark H. 1994. Human Memory and
Cognition, second edition. New York Harper
Collins College Publishers, p. 432.
7
Minimal Attachment

• 1. Ernie kissed Marcie and her sister
• 2. The city council argued the mayor's position
• forcefully.
• 3. The city council argued the mayor's
  position
• was correct.
• 4. The lion paraded through the town escaped.

Carroll, David W. 1999. Psychology of Language,
third edition. Pacific Grove Brooks/Cole
Publishing Company, p. 134. Aitchison, Jean.
1998. The Articulate Mammal An Introduction to
Psycholinguistics. London Routledge, p. 211.
8
Summary of Sentence Processing Strategies

• 1. "Divide each sentence up into sentoids by
• looking for NPV (NP) sequences
• ('canonical sentoid strategy')
• 2. Interpret an NPVNP sequence as
• actor action object.
• 3. Interpret the first clause as the main
  clause.
• 4. Use your knowledge of the world to pick the
• most likely interpretation. "

Aitchison, Jean. 1998. The Articulate Mammal An
Introduction to Psycholinguistics. London
Routledge, p. 209.
9
Sentences Violating a Sentence Processing
Strategy

• 1. After rushing across the field the bull
  tossed
• Harry.
• 2. The van was hit by the bus, and the car was
• rammed by a taxi.
• 3. The postman bit the dog, and the baby
• scratched the cat.
• 4. The shark pushed through the seaweed was
• attacked by the tadpole.

Aitchison, Jean. 1998. The Articulate Mammal An
Introduction to Psycholinguistics. London
Routledge, pp. 209-210.
10
Modularity vs Interactive Parsing

• Interactive support
• 1. If you walk too near the runway, landing
  planes ARE/IS
• 2. If you've been trained as a pilot, landing
  planes IS/ARE
• Modular support
• 3. The florist sent the flowers was very
  pleased.
• 4. The performer sent the flowers was very
• pleased.

11
Sentence Comprehension Model

• 1. Parse the sentence
• 2. Look words up in mental lexicon as they are
  presented
• 3. Access meaning and grammatical categories
  (activating related nodes along the way)
• 4. Construct a syntactic representation we use
  trees when we diagram them
• 5. Sentence meaning is built up from the meaning
  of the component words and sentence structure

12
Grice's Maxims of Conversation

• 1. Quantity Be informative
• 2. Quality Be truthful
• 3. Relation Be relevant
• 4. Manner Be clear

Carroll, David W. 1999. Psychology of Language,
third edition. Pacific Grove Brooks/Cole
Publishing Company, p. 139.
13
Speech Acts Function and Form

• Speech Act Sentence Type
• Function Form
• assertions declarative
• questions interrogative
• orders imperative
• requests imperative

14
Stage Model of the Interpretation of Indirect
Speech Acts(Searle, 1975)

• 1. Listener extracts literal meaning.
• 2. Listener decides if the literal meaning is
  what
• was intended
• 3. If not, listener computes intent using
  context
• and communicative conventions

Carroll, David W. 1999. Psychology of Language,
third edition. Pacific Grove Brooks/Cole
Publishing Company, p. 141.
15
Stage Model of the Interpretation of
Metaphors(Grice, 1975 Miller, 1979 Searle,
1979)

• 1. Listener recognizes that sentence is not
• literally true
• 2. Listener searches for another possible
• meaning using convention of quality

Carroll, David W. 1999. Psychology of Language,
third edition. Pacific Grove Brooks/Cole
Publishing Company, p. 143.
16
Factors in Memory for Sentences -1

• 1. We store the meaning (or "gist")
• 2. We do not seem to retain the exact form
• (except for "pragmatically striking"
  utterances)
• 3. We tend to draw (non-linguistic) inferences
• and store these
• 4. Stored inferences tend to be remembered as
• WHAT we heard rather than an inference
• based on what we heard.

17
Factors in Memory for Sentences -2

• "All of these considerations suggest that a
  linguistically based representational system
  (such as deep structure in transformational
  grammar) is a poor candidate for a model of
  sentence memory."

Carroll, David W. 1999. Psychology of Language,
third edition. Pacific Grove Brooks/Cole
Publishing Company, p. 151.
18
Propositions

• (61) George hit Harry.
• (62) Hit (George, Harry)
• (63) Harry was hit by George.
• (64) It was Harry who was hit by George.
• (65) The one who hit Harry was George.

Carroll, David W. 1999. Psychology of Language,
third edition. Pacific Grove Brooks/Cole
Publishing Company, p. 151.
19
Form of Propositions

• PREDICATE ( Arg1 (,Arg2) (,Arg3) )
• Predicate V, Adj, Conj
• Argument N, ProN

Carroll, David W. 1999. Psychology of Language,
third edition. Pacific Grove Brooks/Cole
Publishing Company, p. 396.