Nicol J L, Pickering M J
Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona, Tucson 85721.
J Psycholinguist Res. 1993 Mar;22(2):207-37. doi: 10.1007/BF01067831.
In this paper, we report the results of a study which investigates the processing of syntactically ambiguous sentences. We examined the processing of sentences in which an embedded clause is interpretable as either a complement clause or as a relative clause, as in, for example, "The receptionist informed the doctor that the journalist had phoned about the events." The embedded clause in such sentences is typically analyzed as a complement to the verb informed, rather than as a relative clause modifying the doctor. A number of models parsing predict this is the only analysis ever considered, while others predict that both interpretations are computed in parallel. Using a cross-model semantic priming technique, we probed for activation of doctor just after the embedded verb. Since only the relative clause analysis contains a connection between the doctor and the embedded verb, we expected reactivation of doctor at that point only if the relative clause analysis were a viable option. Our results suggest that this is the case: Compared to priming in an ambiguous control sentence, a significant reactivation effect was obtained. These results are argued to support a model of parsing in which attachment of a clause may be delayed.
在本文中，我们报告了一项关于句法歧义句处理的研究结果。我们研究了这样一种句子的处理情况：其中一个嵌入子句既可以被解释为补足语从句，也可以被解释为关系从句，例如 “接待员告知医生，记者就这些事件打了电话”。在这类句子中，嵌入子句通常被分析为动词 “告知” 的补足语，而不是修饰 “医生” 的关系从句。许多句法剖析模型预测这是唯一被考虑的分析方式，而其他模型则预测两种解释是并行计算的。我们使用跨模型语义启动技术，在嵌入动词之后立即探测 “医生” 的激活情况。由于只有关系从句分析在 “医生” 和嵌入动词之间存在联系，所以我们预期只有当关系从句分析是一个可行选项时，在那个时间点 “医生” 才会被再次激活。我们的结果表明情况确实如此：与在一个歧义控制句中的启动相比，获得了显著的再次激活效应。这些结果被认为支持了一种句法剖析模型，即在该模型中，子句的附着可能会被延迟。
