The use of context in resolving syntactic ambiguity: structural and semantic influences

ABSTRACT

Verb bias facilitates parsing of temporarily ambiguous sentences, but it is unclear when and how comprehenders use probabilistic knowledge about the combinatorial properties of verbs in context. In a self-paced reading experiment, participants read direct object/sentential complement sentences. Reading time in the critical region was investigated as a function of three forms of bias: structural bias (the frequency with which a verb appears in direct object/sentential complement sentences), lexical bias (the simple co-occurrence of verbs and other lexical items), and global bias (obtained from norming data about the use of verbs with specific noun phrases). For reading times at the critical word, structural bias was the only reliable predictor. However, global bias was superior to structural and lexical bias at the post-critical word and for offline acceptability ratings. The results suggest that structural information about verbs is available immediately, but that context-specific, semantic information becomes increasingly informative as processing proceeds.

KEYWORDS:

• Verb bias
• syntactic complexity
• local ambiguity
• surprisal

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health (Debra Long, PI; $01HD073948) and the National Institute on Aging (Tamara Swaab;R56AG053346).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available on the UC Davis Cognitive Neuroscience of Language Laboratory website at https://swaab.faculty.ucdavis.edu.

Notes

1 Although it is possible that the sentence could be an SC with an embedded prepositional phrase (e.g., “The assistant wrote the answer that was on the board would be important to know”), the DO structure is preferred because it is the simplest structure that is consistent with the current input.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health (Debra Long, PI; $01HD073948) and the National Institute on Aging (Tamara Swaab;R56AG053346).