Syntactically motivated parsing repairs: Consequences for syntax and semantic

Syntactically ambiguous and unambiguous sentences were studied in three experiments to examine strategies for making parsing repairs. Experiment 1 assessed subjects' interpretation of ambiguous sentences (off line), Experiment 2 examined subjects' reading speed and comprehension of ambiguous and unambiguous sentences in isolation (on line), and Experiment 3 investigated subjects' reading speed and comprehension of ambiguous sentences in biasing contexts (on line). The results of Experiment 1 suggested that subjects' preferred interpretation of ambiguous sentences with locative verbs and three potential arguments (e.g., Brian put the silverware in the chest in the closet.) was to attach the final prepositional phrase (PP) to the location argument as a modifier (e.g., in the chest in the closet). The data from Experiment 2 supported a series of parsing repair strategies that were used to process ambiguous and unambiguous sentences in isolation. A Model of Syntactic Parsing Repairs (i.e., Strategy (1) Attach the final PP to the highest node (the sentences node) first, Strategy (2) if Strategy (1) does not meet some semantic criteria, then attach the final PP to the immediately preceding noun phrase (e.g., in the chest in the closet), and Strategy (3) if Strategy (2) does not meet some semantic criteria, attach the first PP to the theme argument as a sister (e.g., the silverware in the chest) and then attach the final PP (in the closet) as the location) was proposed and supported. Experiment 3 examined ambiguous sentences in biasing contexts to learn whether the context directed the reader to fast parsing repairs. The data indicated that subjects did not use the biasing context to alter initial parsing strategies or repair strategies. However, there was more benefit to the post-target sentence in context that biased toward the less-preferred reading than in context that biased toward the preferred reading. There was no effect of individual differences in reading ability relative to parsing repairs.