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The Division of Labor Between Structure Building and Feature Checking During Sentence Comprehension

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Grammatical Approaches to Language Processing

Part of the book series: Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics ((SITP,volume 48))

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Abstract

The two-stage architecture of the Garden-Path Theory with its separation of first- and second-pass parsing has been replaced by simpler architectures in certain probability-based models of the human parser, including the Surprisal Theory. Based on evidence from subject-object ambiguities in German, this paper argues that the two-stage architecture still provides a better account of the garden-path strength observed for object-before-subject sentences in German. In the first part of the paper, corpus findings concerning the relationship between animacy and word order are discussed. Although animacy information is an important predictor of word-order in German, the Surprisal Theory does not predict differences in garden-path strength related to this information because animacy constrains word order only in combination with the verb’s argument structure. Because garden-path strength in verb-final clauses, as they are found in German, is a function of the verb’s expectedness according to the Surprisal Theory, verb specific information itself cannot affect garden-path strength in this theory. In the second part of the paper, a specific implementation of a two-stage model of garden-path recovery, the Linking-and-Checking model, is discussed. This model accounts for the dependence of garden-path strength in object-before-subject sentences on animacy as well as for findings concerning the use of subject-verb agreement for garden-path recovery.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Actually, the order among arguments is a function of several factors, including verb semantics, animacy and definiteness (cf. Ellsiepen & Bader, 2018, for recent experimental evidence). Since the question of how the order of arguments is determined is orthogonal to the purposes of this paper, I stick to the simplifying assumption that the argument structure associated with the verb directly determines the order of arguments.

  2. 2.

    More generally speaking, these processes are always invoked when the HSPM detects an ungrammaticality—whether this ungrammaticality is a non-permanent one (garden-path sentences) or a permanent one (ungrammatical sentences). See Meng and Bader (2000) and Hopf et al. (2003) for the relation between garden-path sentences and ungrammatical sentences.

  3. 3.

    Given the simplifying assumption concerning word-order and argument structure, the Argument Linking Step of the LBCA is simplified accordingly. A non-simplified version can be found in Bader and Bayer (2006).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Linguistics, Goethe University Frankfurt, Norbert-Wollheim-Platz 1, 60629, Frankfurt, Germany

    Markus Bader

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  1. Markus Bader
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Correspondence to Markus Bader .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English, Morehead State University, Morehead, KY, USA

    Katy Carlson

  2. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA

    Charles Clifton, Jr.

  3. Linguistics Program, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York City, NY, USA

    Janet Dean Fodor

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Bader, M. (2019). The Division of Labor Between Structure Building and Feature Checking During Sentence Comprehension. In: Carlson, K., Clifton, Jr., C., Fodor, J. (eds) Grammatical Approaches to Language Processing. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, vol 48. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01563-3_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01563-3_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-01563-3

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