Garden-Path Sentences
Garden-path sentences are sentences whose early structure leads comprehenders toward an interpretation that proves wrong, requiring reanalysis.
Definition
Sentences containing a temporary ambiguity that biases the parser toward an incorrect analysis, producing measurable processing disruption at the point of disambiguation.
Scope
This topic covers the canonical garden-path constructions, the processing difficulty they elicit, and what that difficulty reveals about how the parser commits to and recovers from structural analyses. It includes the methods used to detect garden paths and the theoretical use of these sentences to adjudicate between parsing models.
Core questions
- Why do certain sentences induce a strong garden-path effect?
- How does the parser detect and recover from a misanalysis?
- What do garden-path effects reveal about the timing of parsing decisions?
Key concepts
- temporary ambiguity
- reanalysis
- point of disambiguation
- reduced relative clause
- processing cost
Key theories
- Perceptual strategies
- Bever's early proposal that comprehenders use heuristic strategies (such as treating the first noun-verb-noun sequence as agent-action-patient) that can misfire and produce garden paths.
- Minimal-attachment garden paths
- The garden-path model's account that the parser's initial least-effort attachment is what leads it astray, with eye-movement disruption marking reanalysis.
History
Bever's 1970 'horse raced past the barn' example became the textbook illustration of a garden path. Frazier and Rayner's 1982 eye-tracking study and subsequent reanalysis research, including work questioning how completely the misanalysis is undone, refined understanding of the phenomenon.
Debates
- How complete is reanalysis?
- Whether comprehenders fully revise the initial misanalysis or sometimes retain a lingering, 'good-enough' interpretation after a garden path.
Key figures
- Thomas Bever
- Lyn Frazier
- Fernanda Ferreira
Related topics
Seminal works
- bever1970
- fraziernrayner1982
- ferreirahenderson1991
Frequently asked questions
- Why is 'The horse raced past the barn fell' so hard?
- Readers initially treat 'raced' as the main verb, but 'fell' forces a reanalysis in which 'raced past the barn' is a reduced relative clause modifying 'horse', producing the garden-path difficulty.