CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 380Neurobiology of Language and BilingualismSyntax, Semantics, Linguistic VariationReading and Literacy Development

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 45 of the 46 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Probabilistic constraints and syntactic ambiguity resolution

MacDonald, Maryellen C.·1994·Language and Cognitive Processes
DOI 10.1080/01690969408402115
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Natural languages contain probabilistic constraints that influence the resolution of ambiguities. Current models of sentence processing agree that probabilistic constraints affect syntactic ambiguity resolution, but there has been little investigation of the constraints themselves-what they are, how they differ in their effects on processing, and how they interact with one another. Three different types of probabilistic constraints were investigated: “pre-ambiguity” plausibility information, information about verb argument structure frequencies, and “post-ambiguity” constraints that arrive after the introduction of the ambiguity but prior to its disambiguation. Reading times for syntactically ambiguous sentences were compared to reading times for unambiguous controls in three self-paced reading experiments. All three kinds of constraints were found to be helpful, and when several constraints converged, ambiguity resolution was facilitated compared to when constraints conflicted. The importance of these constraint interactions for ambiguity resolution models is discussed.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1080/01690969408402115

Cites

45 of 45 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Show all 46 references

Research works printed but not linked: 17

  1. Altmann G. T. M., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition.
  2. Berg G., 1991, Learning recursive phrase structure: Combining the strengths of PDP and x-bar syntax.
  3. Bever T. G., 1970, Cognitive development of language.
  4. Bresnan J., 1992, The mental representation of grammatical relations.
  5. Burgess, C. and Hollbach, S. C. A computational model of syntactic ambiguity as a lexical process. Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. pp.263–269. pp.
  6. Carlson G. N., 1988, Syntax and semantics, Vol. 21: Thematic relations.
  7. Ford M., 1982, The mental representation of grammatical relations.
  8. Hawkins J. A., 1990, Linguistic Inquiry, 21, 223
  9. 10.1037/0096-3445.111.2.228 · DOI
  10. Kawamoto A., 1988, Lexical ambiguity resolution: Computational, linguistic, and psychological perspectives.
  11. Levin B., 1986, Linguistic Inquiry, 17, 623
  12. Maslin J., 1991, New York Times, C8
  13. 10.1037/0278-7393.18.1.69 · DOI
  14. Pearlmutter, N. J. and MacDonald, M. C. Plausibility and syntactic ambiguity resolution. Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Society. pp.498–503. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. In, pp.
  15. Trueswell, J. C. and Tanenhaus, M. K. Consulting temporal context during sentence comprehension: Evidence from the monitoring of eye movements in reading. 14th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. pp.492–497. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. In, pp.
  16. Trueswell J. C., Journal of Memory and Language.
  17. Tyler L. K., 1989, Lexical representation and process.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 380

Related

Metadata

Authors
MacDonald, M. C.
Affiliations
University of Southern California (US)
Corresponding author
MacDonald, Maryellen C.
ORCID
MacDonald, Maryellen C.
Venue
Language and Cognitive Processes
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Published
1994-05
Volume
9
Issue
2
Pages
157-201
ISSN
  • 0169-0965 (ISSN-L)
  • 1464-0732
DOI
10.1080/01690969408402115
OpenAlex
W2154590657
Cited by
379
References
46
Citations by year
2026: 8 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 11 · 2012: 8
FWCI
5.74
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Language and Cognitive Processes (publishedVersion)
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, chance constraints, constraint interaction, reading time, self-paced reading, sentence processing, ambiguity disambiguation

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review