TY - JOUR
T1 - Utilization of prosodic information in syntactic ambiguity resolution
AU - DeDe, Gayle
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments Preparation of this manuscript was supported in part by NIA Grant AG00961, NIDCD grant DC007564, and a research grant from the Dudley Allen Research Fund at Boston University. These experiments were conducted in partial fulfillment of the author’s doctoral dissertation. Very special thanks are due to Gloria Waters and David Caplan for advice and support throughout this project. I am also grateful to Stephanie Shattuck-Hufnagel and Neil Pearlmutter for their helpful comments on this project.
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - Two self paced listening experiments examined the role of prosodic phrasing in syntactic ambiguity resolution. In Experiment 1, the stimuli consisted of early closure sentences (e.g., "While the parents watched, the child sang a song.") containing transitive-biased subordinate verbs paired with plausible direct objects or intransitive-biased subordinate verbs paired with implausible direct objects. Experiment 2 also contained early closure sentences with transitively and intransitive-biased subordinate verbs, but the subordinate verbs were always followed by plausible direct objects. In both experiments, there were two prosodic conditions. In the subject-biased prosodic condition, an intonational phrase boundary marked the clausal boundary following the subordinate verb. In the object-biased prosodic condition, the clause boundary was unmarked. The results indicate that lexical and prosodic cues interact at the subordinate verb and plausibility further affects processing at the ambiguous noun. Results are discussed with respect to models of the role of prosody in sentence comprehension.
AB - Two self paced listening experiments examined the role of prosodic phrasing in syntactic ambiguity resolution. In Experiment 1, the stimuli consisted of early closure sentences (e.g., "While the parents watched, the child sang a song.") containing transitive-biased subordinate verbs paired with plausible direct objects or intransitive-biased subordinate verbs paired with implausible direct objects. Experiment 2 also contained early closure sentences with transitively and intransitive-biased subordinate verbs, but the subordinate verbs were always followed by plausible direct objects. In both experiments, there were two prosodic conditions. In the subject-biased prosodic condition, an intonational phrase boundary marked the clausal boundary following the subordinate verb. In the object-biased prosodic condition, the clause boundary was unmarked. The results indicate that lexical and prosodic cues interact at the subordinate verb and plausibility further affects processing at the ambiguous noun. Results are discussed with respect to models of the role of prosody in sentence comprehension.
KW - Plausibility
KW - Prosody
KW - Syntactic ambiguity resolution
KW - Verb transitivity bias
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U2 - 10.1007/s10936-009-9139-x
DO - 10.1007/s10936-009-9139-x
M3 - Article
C2 - 20033849
AN - SCOPUS:77954533918
SN - 0090-6905
VL - 39
SP - 345
EP - 374
JO - Journal of psycholinguistic research
JF - Journal of psycholinguistic research
IS - 4
ER -