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Cited by 278Neurobiology of Language and BilingualismSyntax, Semantics, Linguistic VariationReading and Literacy Development

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The Role of Lexical Frequency in Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution

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Trueswell, John C.·1996·Journal of Memory and Language
DOI 10.1006/jmla.1996.0030
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Abstract

The role of lexical frequency in syntactic ambiguity resolution was explored in two self-paced reading studies of ambiguous reduced relative clauses. Recent constraint-based models of syntactic ambiguity resolution have proposed that for a reduced relative clause (e.g., “The room searched by the police was . . .”), both the participle and past tense forms of the ambiguous verb (“searched”) are made available in parallel and that local syntactic and semantic information are used to resolve the ambiguity within a parallel constraint-satisfaction process (MacDonald, Pearlmutter, & Seidenberg, 1994a; Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Garnsey, 1994). A crucial prediction of these models is that the frequency with which the verb is used as a participle form in the language should affect a reader's ability to consider the relative clause alternative. This prediction was confirmed in two self-paced reading experiments that directly manipulated participle frequency while controlling for the degree of contextual constraint. Implications for constraint-based lexicalist accounts of sentence comprehension are discussed.

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FIG. 1 Mean reduction effects in milliseconds (reading times for reduced relatives minus reading times for unreduced relatives) summed across words for each region (Experiment 1).
FIG. 1 Mean reduction effects in milliseconds (reading times for reduced relatives minus reading times for unreduced relatives) summed across words for each region (Experiment 1).CC-BY-NC-ND · From the PDF
FIG. 2 Mean reduction effects in milliseconds (reading times for reduced relatives minus reading times for unreduced relatives) summed across words for each region (Experiment 2).
FIG. 2 Mean reduction effects in milliseconds (reading times for reduced relatives minus reading times for unreduced relatives) summed across words for each region (Experiment 2).CC-BY-NC-ND · From the PDF

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Metadata

Authors
Trueswell, J. C.
Affiliations
University of Pennsylvania (US)
Corresponding author
Trueswell, John C.
ORCID
Trueswell, John C.
Venue
Journal of Memory and Language
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
1996-08
Volume
35
Issue
4
Pages
566-585
ISSN
0749-596X (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1006/jmla.1996.0030
OpenAlex
W2087315543
Cited by
277
References
2
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 26 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 11
FWCI
7.31
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
Journal of Memory and Language (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
Keywords
word frequency, syntactic ambiguity resolution, reduced relative clauses, constraint-based modeling, constraint satisfaction, sentence comprehension, self-paced reading, verb forms

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