Sentence Processing and Comprehension
Sentence processing studies how comprehenders build structured interpretations of sentences in real time as words arrive, and how they cope with the ambiguity that pervades natural language.
Definition
The branch of psycholinguistics concerned with the mental processes by which listeners and readers construct meaning from sentences as the input unfolds.
Scope
This area covers how the human parser assigns syntactic structure incrementally, how it resolves temporary and global ambiguities, and how lexical, semantic, discourse, and visual context influence interpretation. It includes garden-path phenomena, the architectures debated to explain them (modular versus interactive, structure-driven versus constraint-based), and the experimental methods (reading times, eye tracking, ERPs) used to study comprehension. It describes the models and evidence rather than prescribing reading or writing practices.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- How does the parser assign syntactic structure incrementally as words are encountered?
- When the input is temporarily ambiguous, which analysis does the parser pursue first, and why?
- Is initial parsing driven only by syntactic structure, or by lexical and contextual constraints in parallel?
- How quickly do non-syntactic sources of information influence interpretation?
Key concepts
- incremental parsing
- syntactic ambiguity
- minimal attachment
- garden-path effect
- reanalysis
- constraint satisfaction
Key theories
- Garden-path (two-stage) model
- Frazier and Rayner's proposal that the parser initially builds a single structure using purely syntactic strategies such as minimal attachment, and revises only when that structure conflicts with later input.
- Constraint-based / lexicalist model
- MacDonald and colleagues' view that multiple analyses are activated in parallel and weighted continuously by probabilistic constraints from lexical, frequency, and contextual information.
- Referential / interactive context effects
- Evidence from visual-world studies that listeners use referential and visual context immediately to guide syntactic commitments, supporting rapid interaction across information sources.
History
Experimental sentence-processing research grew out of the derivational-theory-of-complexity studies of the 1960s and matured with the eye-tracking and reading-time work of Frazier and Rayner in the early 1980s. The 1990s saw constraint-based and visual-world paradigms challenge the strictly modular two-stage view, producing a long-running debate over how soon non-syntactic information shapes parsing.
Debates
- Modular versus interactive parsing
- Whether the first stage of parsing is informationally encapsulated and structure-driven (two-stage model) or whether lexical and contextual constraints shape interpretation from the outset (constraint-based model).
Key figures
- Lyn Frazier
- Keith Rayner
- Maryellen MacDonald
- Michael Tanenhaus
Related topics
Seminal works
- fraziernrayner1982
- macdonald1994
- tanenhaus1995
Frequently asked questions
- What is a garden-path sentence?
- A sentence whose early words lead the parser toward an interpretation that turns out to be wrong, forcing reanalysis, as in 'The horse raced past the barn fell.' Such sentences are used to probe how the parser commits to and revises structure.
- Do we understand sentences word by word or wait until the end?
- Comprehension is largely incremental: readers and listeners build and update structural and semantic interpretations as each word arrives rather than waiting for the sentence to finish.