UALL2004

PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
LECTURE 8
LEXICAL AMBIGUITY & SENTENCE PROCESSING
 A SPECIAL PROBLEM FOR THE MENTAL
LEXICON: LEXICAL AMBIGUITY
• No strict one-to-one mapping between words and meaning.

• A word can have multiple meanings (bank, right, drill).

• One meaning of an ambiguous word can be more common than the

others.

• Ambiguous words may foil comprehension because of their multiple

meanings. 2
 A SPECIAL PROBLEM FOR THE MENTAL
LEXICON: LEXICAL AMBIGUITY
• However, we seldom encounter words in isolation; they tend to appear in
sentences, and these sentences often provide a CONTEXT for determining
which of several meanings of a lexically ambiguous word is intended.

• Sentence context usually constrains which interpretation an ambiguous word

receives.

1. The canoeist rowed up to the bank.

2. The sergeant ordered the men to drill before they had recovered from
morning exercises.
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 A SPECIAL PROBLEM FOR THE MENTAL
LEXICON: LEXICAL AMBIGUITY
• “The men started to drill before they were ordered to do so.”
• The sentence context does not specify which interpretation of the
word is intended.
• It thus makes subjects ambiguous (Simpson & Burgess, 1988).

• There are 2 theoretical camps about the role of context in influencing

which of several meanings of lexically ambiguous words are activated.

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A SPECIAL PROBLEM FOR THE MENTAL
LEXICON: LEXICAL AMBIGUITY
• Selective access view
• Context biases the interpretation of an ambiguous word, so that only
intended meaning is accessed (Glucksberg, Kreuz, & Rho, 1986;
Schvaneveldt, Meyer, & Becker, 1976; Simpson, 1981).

• Exhaustive access view

• Even with context provided in a sentence, multiple meanings of a lexical
ambiguous term are activated (Onifer & Swinney, 1981; Seidenberg,
Tanenhaus, Leiman, & Bienkowski, 1982; Swinney, 1979; Tanehaus,
Leiman, & Seidenberg, 1979). 5
 TIME COURSE OF ACTIVATION

• Simpson and Burgess (1985) attempted to test pure lexical access with a
lexical decision task using prime-target pairs (for example, bank-money or
bank-river) without any sentence context.

• At 16-millisecond interstimulus interval (ISI) - the target appeared

immediately after the prime went off – only dominant meanings were
facilitated.

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 TIME COURSE OF ACTIVATION
• The word “money” would be recognized faster when it appeared after bank
because money is related to the most common meaning of bank.

• However, with a 300-millisecond delay before the target appeared on the screen,
both meanings were equally activated, and even the subordinate meaning
(river) was primed.

• At longer ISIs, the dominant meaning appears to remain active while the less-
frequent meaning subsides. Moreover, results showed an inhibition of meanings
associated with the less-frequent meaning (Simpson & Burgess, 1988).
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 TIME COURSE OF ACTIVATION

• It appears that multiple meanings of a word may be activated in parallel,

with the dominant meaning “popping up” first. Evidence supports
that this is an automatic process not influence by subject intentions.

• Context sometimes may speed access to one of several meanings, but

does not restrict access to all interpretations of an ambiguous word
(Prather & Swinney, 1998).

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 THE TIME COURSE OF SENTENCE
CONTEXTS VS. WORD PAIRS
• Tanenhaus et al. (1984) and Swinney (1979) found immediate activation
of multiple word meanings after reading a sentence, but only the
contextually specified meaning of an ambiguous word remained by 200
milliseconds.

• Ambiguity may begin activating a word unit prior to its interpretation, so

access to multiple meanings is available sooner than in word-pair
studies.

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 SUMMARY

• Overall, the evidence suggests that activation of all meanings of

ambiguous words takes place even in the face of biasing contexts.
(Supports the exhaustive view)

• It thus appears that lexical ambiguity is a dynamic process, with the

various interpretations of a word racing against each other based on (1)
frequency of meaning and (2) the degree to which context biases one
interpretation over the other.

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 SUMMARY

• Studies on lexical ambiguity are an effective way to determine the link

between words and meanings. And findings will clearly have
implications for the models of lexical access.

• Lexical ambiguity provides :

• a window into the complex processes that the human mind uses to
navigate between our conceptual and linguistic systems.
• A vivid illustration of how language serves both communication and
symbolic functions. 11
 SENTENCE PROCESSING

• What happens after we recognise a word?

• When we access the lexical entry for a word, two major types
of information become available:

• information about the word’s meaning, and

• information about the syntactic and thematic roles that the word can
take. 12
 STRUCTURAL PROPERTIES OF
SENTENCES
• We can define language structure in terms of rules that tell us
how words strung together can form a sentence and convey
meaning.

• The speaker and the listener must share a common

knowledge base, and each must have access to the same
knowledge sets and rules.
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 STRUCTURAL PROPERTIES OF
SENTENCES
➢Example

• The student read the book.

• The teacher graded the test.
• The teacher heard the student.

- The first two sentences are not reversible.

• Only the third sentence is reversible.
• Some actions are possible, and some are not.
• Real-world knowledge can supply constraints that operate as part of the
structure of our language. 14
 STRUCTURAL PROPERTIES OF SENTENCES

❖Irreversible Sentence

• The student (subject) read the book (object). - with meaning

• The book (subject) read the student (object). – no meaning

 STRUCTURAL PROPERTIES OF SENTENCES

❖Reversible Sentence

• The teacher (subject) heard the student (object). – with meaning

• The student (subject) heard the teacher (object). – with meaning

 SYNTACTIC PROCESSING
• During the 1960s, some researchers attempted to use transformational
grammar to increase the speaker’s and listener’s knowledge of language
structure.

• A language analysis system that recognises the relationship among the various
elements of a sentence and uses rules/transformations to express these
relationships, which are in the mind or brain of a native speaker.

• The transformation process of the syntactic structures can be best summarised

by adding, deleting, moving, and substituting words.

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 SYNTACTIC PROCESSING
• Noam Chomsky believed that grammar has recursive rules allowing
one to generate grammatically correct sentences repeatedly.

• These attempts made two important points relevant to syntactic

processing

❑The difference between surface structure and deep structure

❑The difference between competence and performance

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 SURFACE STRUCTURE (SS) VERSUS DEEP
STRUCTURE (DS)

• The surface structure of a sentence is represented by the words you hear

spoken or read – the actual spoken sentence comprising phonemes,
syllables, words, phrases, and sentences.

• The specific words we have chosen to convey the meaning of what we wish to
say.

• The listener must “decode” this SS to discover the meaning that underlies the
utterance – the “deep structure” of the sentence
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 SURFACE STRUCTURE (SS) VERSUS
DEEP STRUCTURE (DS)
• DS and SS tell us that sentence processing is conducted in two steps: the listener
analyses the SS and uses this information to detect DS.

• A single idea constituting a deep structure can be expressed in a number of

surface structures (and conversely similar surface structures can have completely
different deep structures).

• Some sets of sentences have different SS but the same DS.

• Example
❖The boy threw the ball.
❖The ball was thrown by the boy.
• Both sentences focus on the fact that a boy threw a ball.
• Two sentences have different SS, but they convey
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the same meaning.
 SURFACE STRUCTURE (SS) VERSUS DEEP
STRUCTURE (DS)

• Some sentences have the same SS but different DS.

• Example:
❖Flying planes can be dangerous.
• This sentence could mean that being a pilot or living near an
airport can be dangerous.
• The sentence has the same SS, but it conveys a different
meaning.

• The distinction between DS and SS makes an important point for our

understanding of sentence processing. 21
 SURFACE STRUCTURE (SS) VERSUS DEEP
STRUCTURE (DS)

• One of the problems with deep structure is that it is not always possible
to interpret it unambiguously from surface structure as in the following
newspaper headline - “Drunk gets nine months in violin case.” (The
drunken person who was accused of stealing a violin has been found
guilty and will be jailed for nine months.)

• Another example would be the advert for a Hong Kong dentist – “Teeth
extracted by the latest Methodists.” (The dentists use the latest methods
in their dental practices.)
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 COMPETENCE VERSUS
PERFORMANCE
• The second point is that how people produce language is not equivalent to
their knowledge of language.

• Much of what we say consists of incomplete fragments that do not even

approach a grammatical sentence (Goldman-Eisler, 1968).
• COMPETENCE – what the speaker knows about the structure of the
language
• PERFORMANCE – how we can generate speech, even incomplete and
fragmentary.

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COMPETENCE VERSUS PERFORMANCE
(CONT.)

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 SENTENCE PARSING AND
SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITY
• Sentence parsing - The assignment of words in a sentence to their
relevant linguistics categories.

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 PARSING : OVERVIEW
• Parsing is the analysis of the syntactical or grammatical structure of a sentence.

• It is an important process that readers and listeners use to comprehend the sentences
they read or hear.

• Observing the problems encountered by readers struggling with ambiguous

sentences can provide revealing information about the parsing process.

• One way in which listeners work out grammatical structures of speech is by using
prosodic cues in the form of stress, intonation and duration.
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 PARSING : OVERVIEW

• Prosodic cues are most likely to be used when spoken sentences are
ambiguous.

• The grammar of a language refers to the set of rules according to which

sentences are organised, allowing us to reject unacceptable sentences.

• When sentences are ambiguous in their grammatical structure, prosodic

cues can be used to disambiguate their meaning.
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 PARSING : OVERVIEW

• Example of disambiguation via prosodic features:

➢The (old men) (and woman) - / ði: əʊld | mən || ən wʊmən /

➢The old (men and woman) - / ði: əʊld || mən | ən wʊmən /

➢They rose early (in May) - / ðeɪ rəʊz ɜ:li: || ɪn meɪ /

➢They rose (early in May) - / ðeɪ rəʊz || ɜ:li: ɪn meɪ /
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 PARSING : OVERVIEW
• Syntactic Ambiguity – Cases where a clause or sentence may have
more than one interpretation given by the potential grammatical
functions of the individual words.

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 TYPES OF SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITY

Local ambiguity
• Refers to cases where the syntactic function of a word/ how to parse a sentence
remains temporarily ambiguous until it is later clarified as we hear more of it.

❑Example:
When Fred passes the ball, it always gets to its target.

• The sentence is temporarily ambiguous / uncertainty about the structure of a

sentence is only temporary when we hear the NP, the ball because it could be
completed in two different ways /two possible syntactic structures
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 TYPES OF SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITY

➢First way:
• When Fred passes the ball, it always gets to its target.

➢Second way/syntactic structure

• When Fred passes, the ball always gets to its target.

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 SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITY

Standing ambiguity
• Refers to cases where sentences remain syntactically ambiguous even when
all of the lexical information has been received, or the sentence is complete.

❖Example: The old books and magazines were on the beach.

• Remains ambiguous.
• It is unclear whether there should be a boundary after books - only the
books were old, not the magazines or whether a boundary should follow
magazines - both books and magazines were old.

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 SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITY

• Another example of standing ambiguity:

“John saw the man on the mountain with a telescope.”

❑John, using a telescope, saw a man on the mountain.

❑John saw a man on the mountain, and the mountain had a telescope on it.
❑John saw a man who had a telescope standing on the mountain.
 MODEL OF SENTENCE PARSING

❖The old man the boats.

❖The horse raced past the barn fell.
• Sentences like this, especially misleading when encountering them, are called
“garden path” sentences.

Frazier and Rayner’s (1982) GARDEN PATH MODEL

• ‘Garden Path’ sentences
• Grammatically correct and misleading sentences when we first encounter them.
• Sentences in which wording invites people to take the wrong interpretive path at a
point of local ambiguity. 34
 MODEL OF SENTENCE PARSING

• According to the model, the parser makes only one initial syntactic
analysis of a word sequence.

• This initial parse is made based on several rules and parsing principles.

The Late Closure Principle

Principles of Garden Path Model The Minimal Attachment Principle

Constraint Satisfaction Model

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 IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES OF GARDEN PATH
MODEL

The Late Closure Principle

• Focuses on how listeners or readers might determine when they have reached a
major clause boundary.

• What is late closure? In sentence processing, late closure is the principle that
new words (incoming lexical items) tend to be associated with the phrase or
clause currently being processed rather than with structures farther back in the
sentence.
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 IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES OF GARDEN PATH
MODEL

• One might attempt to “close” a clause boundary either at the earliest

point possible or to hold off until the latest point possible.

• According to the late closure principle, listeners and readers do the

latter.

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 IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES OF GARDEN PATH
MODEL (CONT.)

❑Tom had said that Bill had taken the cleaning out yesterday.

• Here, the adverb “yesterday” may be attached to the main clause “Tom
said…” or the subsequent subordinate clause “Bill had taken…”

• Frazier and Fodor (1978) argue that we prefer the latter interpretation.

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 IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES OF GARDEN PATH
MODEL

The Minimal Attachment Principle.

• The principle states that listeners or readers attempt to interpret

sentences using the simplest syntactic structure consistent with the
input.

• What is minimal attachment? Listeners and readers initially attempt

to interpret sentences in terms of the simplest syntactic structure
consistent with the input that is known at the moment.
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 IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES OF GARDEN PATH
MODEL
• This is done by using the fewest phrase-structure nodes possible.

➢The girl knew the answer by heart.

• The girl knew the answer was wrong..

• “The answer” is the verb’s direct object “knew.”

• Appropriate for the first sentence but not for the second one.
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 IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES OF GARDEN
PATH MODEL

“I put the book on the

table.”

• We prefer to process
until “book” to
understand the
sentence as that would
have minimal nodes.
We continue
processing when the
sentence does not
make sense or the
meaning remains
unclear.
 IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES OF GARDEN PATH
MODEL

MacDonald et al. (1994) CONSTRAINT SATISFACTION MODEL

• More than one syntactic analysis of a word sequence may be generated

during comprehension.

• Example: The old man the boats.

• Be conscious of the NP (The old man), but the alternative
interpretation of old (Noun) and man (Verb) will be activated.
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 IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES OF GARDEN PATH
MODEL

• According to the model, when we reach the end of the sentence and
discover that we must have made a parsing error, we resolve the
confusion by activating the alternative interpretation.

• Uses multiple sources of information (syntactic, semantic, discourse, and

frequency-based)

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 INTERSTIMULUS INTERVAL
✓ Land alongside a
river

BANK ✓ A high mass of

Interstimulus Interval substance
The time between stimulus presentations that
is usually timed from the end of one stimulus
✓ Tilting sideways in
presentation to the beginning of the next. making a turn

✓ Financial Institution

✓ Similar things
grouped together

✓ Providing
additional power

✓ Heap up a fire with 44

tightly packed fuel