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The lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity resolution
Abstract
Ambiguity resolution is a central problem in language comprehension. Lexical and syntactic ambiguities are standardly assumed to involve different types of knowledge representations and be resolved by different mechanisms. An alternative account is provided in which both types of ambiguity derive from aspects of lexical representation and are resolved by the same processing mechanisms. Reinterpreting syntactic ambiguity resolution as a form of lexical ambiguity resolution obviates the need for special parsing principles to account for syntactic interpretation preferences, reconciles a number of apparently conflicting results concerning the roles of lexical and contextual information in sentence processing, explains differences among ambiguities in terms of ease of resolution, and provides a more unified account of language comprehension than was previously available.
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“Thus, the ambiguityis stronglyconstrained bythe frequencywith which the ambiguous verb occurs in transitive and passive structures, of which reduced relative clauses are a special type (MacDonald, 1994; MacDonald, Pearlmutter, & Seidenberg, 1994; Trueswell, 1996).”
From FREQUENCY EFFECTS IN LANGUAGE PROCESSING: A Review with Implications for Theories of Implicit and Explicit Language Acquisition (2002) · cites this paper as MacDonald, Pearlmutter, & Seidenberg, 1994
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Metadata
- Authors
- MacDonald, M. C., Pearlmutter, N. J., & Seidenberg, M. S.
- Affiliations
- University of Southern California (US)
- Venue
- Psychological Review
- Published
- 1994
- Volume
- 101
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 676-703
- ISSN
- 0033-295X (ISSN-L)
- 1939-1471
- OpenAlex
- W2028041302
- Cited by
- 2,259
- References
- 128
- Citations by year
- 2026: 68 · 2025: 41 · 2024: 44 · 2023: 52 · 2022: 95 · 2021: 63 · 2020: 65 · 2019: 150 · 2018: 51 · 2017: 88 · 2016: 85 · 2015: 87 · 2014: 119 · 2013: 94 · 2012: 57
- FWCI
- 16.12
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychological Review (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute on Aging (R01AG010109, AG-10109)
- National Institute of Mental Health (1-F32-MH10592-01, F32MH010592, MH-47566, P01MH047566)
- 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
- syntactic ambiguity resolution, lexical ambiguity resolution, lexical ambiguity, sentence processing, language comprehension, lexical representation, syntactic analysis, contextual information
- MeSH terms
- Cognition, Cues, Discrimination Learning, Humans, Models, Psychological, Speech Perception, Vocabulary
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