Effects of Processing Difficulty on Judgments of Acceptability

This paper illuminates the impact of processing difficulty on acceptability. Section 2 reviews evidence showing that parsing problems often reduce acceptability. That processing difficulty may increase acceptability is less obvious, but this possibility is nevertheless borne out, as Section 3 shows, which reports the results of several experiments dealing with locally ambiguous sentences involving discontinuous NPs, NP-coordination, and VP-preposing. The preferred interpretation of a locally ambiguous construction can have a positive influence on the global acceptability of a sentence even when this reading is later abandoned. If the initial analysis of a locally ambiguous construction would, however, render the sentence ungrammatical, the local ambiguity decreases acceptability, as our experiment focusing on long whmovement in Section 4 shows . The global acceptability of a sentence thus turns out to be influenced by local acceptability perceptions during the parsing process.