Table_2_Does a walk-through video help the parser down the garden-path? A visually enhanced self-paced reading study in Dutch.docx

The human language processing mechanism assigns a structure to the incoming materials as they unfold. There is evidence that the parser prefers some attachment types over others; however, theories of sentence processing are still in dispute over the stage at which each source of information contributes to the parsing system. The present study aims to identify the nature of initial parsing decisions during sentence processing through manipulating attachment type and verbs’ argument structure. To this end, we designed a self-paced reading task using globally ambiguous constructions in Dutch. The structures included double locative prepositional phrases (PPs) where the first PP could attach both to the verb (high attachment) and the noun preceding it (low attachment). To disambiguate the structures, we presented a visual context in the form of short animation clips prior to each reading task. Furthermore, we manipulated the argument structure of the sentences using 2- and 3-argument verbs. The results showed that parsing decisions were influenced by contextual cues depending on the argument structure of the verb. That is, the visual context overcame the preference for high attachment only in the case of 2-argument verbs, while this preference persisted in structures including 3-argument verbs as represented by longer reading times for the low attachment interpretations. These findings can be taken as evidence that our language processing system actively integrates information from linguistic and non-linguistic sources from the initial stages of analysis to build up meaning. We discuss our findings in light of serial and parallel models of sentence processing.

人类语言加工机制会在输入信息逐步展开的过程中为其赋予结构。已有研究证实，句法分析器（parser）对部分句法附着（attachment）类型存在偏好；然而，关于各类信息源何时作用于句法分析系统，句子加工理论仍存在诸多争议。本研究通过操控句法附着类型与动词论元结构（argument structure），旨在揭示句子加工过程中初始句法分析决策的本质。为此，我们采用荷兰语中的全局歧义句式，设计了自定步速阅读任务（self-paced reading task）。该类句式包含双重方位介词短语（prepositional phrases，PPs），其中首个介词短语既可附着于动词（高附着），也可附着于其前的名词（低附着）。为消解该类句式的歧义，我们在每项阅读任务前，呈现了以短动画片段为载体的视觉语境。此外，我们通过选用二元动词与三元动词，操控了句子的论元结构。结果显示，句法分析决策受语境线索的影响，且该影响依赖于动词的论元结构。具体而言，仅在使用二元动词的句式中，视觉语境能够抵消对高附着的偏好；而在三元动词句式中，该偏好依然存在——表现为低附着解读对应的阅读时长更长。上述发现可作为佐证，表明人类语言加工系统从分析初始阶段起，便会主动整合语言与非语言来源的信息，以构建完整语义。最后，我们结合句子加工的序列模型（serial model）与并行模型（parallel model），对本研究的发现展开讨论。