The Role of Lexical Heads in Parsing: Evidence from German

Theories of sentence processing can be classified by the role that lexical heads play in first-pass parsing. In some theories, syntactic structure cannot even be built before it is licensed by a head (Abney, 1989; Prichett, 1992), whereas in other models, at the opposite extreme, only major category information in lexical items is used during the rule-based initial structure building process (Ferreira & Henderson, 1990; M itchell, 1987). In this paper, we will introduce a fully increm ental model that accounts for attachment preferences by the linear order of lexical heads in the surface structure and their thematic properties. The principle of "parameterised head attachment" and a serial variant, the SOUL mechanism, will be discussed on the basis of three on-line experim ents on NP- and PP-attachment in German verb-second and verb-final sentences.

[1]  L Frazier,et al.  Constraint satisfaction as a theory of sentence processing , 1995, Journal of psycholinguistic research.

[2]  C. Clifton,et al.  Filling gaps: Decision principles and structure in sentence comprehension , 1983, Cognition.

[3]  Don C. Mitchell,et al.  Lexical guidance in sentence parsing , 1991 .

[4]  Maryellen C. MacDonald,et al.  Probabilistic constraints and syntactic ambiguity resolution , 1994 .

[5]  Susan M. Garnsey,et al.  Semantic Influences On Parsing: Use of Thematic Role Information in Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution , 1994 .

[6]  John C. Trueswell,et al.  The role of thematic structures in interpretation and parsing. , 1989 .

[7]  Julie C. Sedivy,et al.  Resolving attachment ambiguities with multiple constraints , 1995, Cognition.

[8]  Don C. Mitchell,et al.  Verb guidance and other lexical effects in parsing , 1989 .

[9]  M. Coltheart.  Attention and Performance XII: The Psychology of Reading , 1987 .

[10]  Matthew W. Crocker,et al.  A logical model of competence and performance in the human sentence processor , 1992 .

[11]  Steven P. Abney,et al.  Parsing arguments: Phrase structure and argument structure as determinants of initial parsing decisions. , 1991 .

[12]  Lyn Frazier,et al.  Syntactic processing: Evidence from dutch , 1987 .

[13]  Steven Abney,et al.  A computational model of human parsing , 1989 .

[14]  Christoph Scheepers,et al.  SOUL-Processing: Semantik-orientierte Prinzipien menschlicher Sprachverarbeitung , 1992, KONVENS.

[15]  Lyn Frazier,et al.  ON COMPREHENDING SENTENCES: SYNTACTIC PARSING STRATEGIES. , 1979 .

[16]  M. Just,et al.  The psychology of reading and language comprehension , 1986 .

[17]  Janet D. Fodor,et al.  The sausage machine: A new two-stage parsing model , 1978, Cognition.

[18]  Lyn Frazier,et al.  Against lexical generation of syntax , 1989 .

[19]  J. Henderson,et al.  Use of verb information in syntactic parsing: evidence from eye movements and word-by-word self-paced reading. , 1990, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[20]  Lyn Frazier,et al.  Lexical Expectations in Sentence Comprehension. , 1984 .

[21]  Edward Gibson,et al.  A computational theory of human linguistic processing: memory limitations and processing breakdown , 1991 .

[22]  Lyn Frazier,et al.  Sentence processing: A tutorial review. , 1987 .

[23]  K. Rayner,et al.  The psychology of reading , 1989 .

[24]  Bradley L. Pritchett.  Grammatical Competence and Parsing Performance , 1992 .

[25]  M K Tanenhaus,et al.  A constraint-based lexicalist account of the subject/object attachment preference , 1994, Journal of psycholinguistic research.

[26]  G. Hickok,et al.  Recency preference in the human sentence processing mechanism , 1996, Cognition.

[27]  K. Rayner,et al.  Making and correcting errors during sentence comprehension: Eye movements in the analysis of structurally ambiguous sentences , 1982, Cognitive Psychology.

[28]  M. MacDonald.  Priming effects from gaps to antecedents , 1989 .

[29]  Maryellen C. MacDonald,et al.  The lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity resolution , 1994 .

[30]  Mark Steedman,et al.  On not being led up the garden path : The use of context by the psychological syntax processor , 1985 .