Journal of Memory and Language

land E-m (RALR) strategy applies to sentence parsing. Two self-paced reading experiments investigate this issue structural ambiguity in which a local, easy reanalysis is pitted against a nonlocal attachment requiring analysis. This ambiguity is created by embedding classic noun phrase/sentential complement ambiguities relative clause modifying a subject NP. The results of both experiments indicate that readers’ existing st commitments do constrain their subsequent parsing decisions: nonlocal analyses which avoid reanalysis sistently favored over local analyses which require an easy reanalysis. This conclusion is confirmed by th of a subcategorization-bias manipulation in Experiment 2, which shows that readers show a consisten avoid reanalysis, rather than a general bias for either local or matrix clause attachments. © 2001 Academic Press

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