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WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT SENTENCE COMPREHENSION Local vs. Global Ambiguity Sentence comprehension deals with Lexical , Structural , and Semantic ambiguities. Within the comprehension MODERN RESEARCH AND METHODOLOGIES ISSUES IN LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION Modular vs. Interactive Modular: takes only syntactic properties of words into account at first Interactive: takes word meaning, general knowledge, and context into account right from the start. Serial vs. Parallel Serial constructs only one of the possible interpretations at first, and tries another only if that one turns out to be wrong. Parallel constructs multiple interpretations at the same time and waits for evidence about which one is correct. Figurative Language There is a question in the comprehension of figurative language in its relation to the mind. Linguistics isn't certain whether one is creating new links between concepts or simply referencing pre-existing conceptual metaphors. Those who belief the former are said to follow a Pragmatic model; the later, the Conceptual Metaphor model. There are also some proposed models of Language Comprehension, of varying degrees of agreement: Garden Path Model Is a very influential serial modular parsing model. Parsing is executed by a syntactic module. Contextual factors influence comprehension at a later state (reanalysis stage). It's two principles are late closure and minimal attachment. Late closure is the concept that, whenever possible, one attaches new items to the current clause (wait as long as possible to close a clause). Thus Late Closure Strategy proposes that people prefer all of their terms to apply, when in doubt, to the last mentioned possibility. Minimal Attachment Strategy Build the simplest syntactic structure (fewest phrase-structure nodes) possible. So given the choice Constraint-Based Model Parallel and interactive We do generate more than one syntactic analysis, based on evidence provided against Constraint-Based Model: Garden path sentences seem to refute this: "The florist sent the flowers was very pleased." Evidence for the Constraint-Based Model: Comprehenders do use their lexical knowledge. Lexical Preferences lexical meaning influences sentence comprehension. “she saw her duck and some eggs” is a garden path sentence, makes one think of duck eggs; “She saw her duck and fall down” is different. (Boland 1997). second is slower response time (you have to build two VPs) Incomplete or Inaccurate Representations Christianson et al (2001) asks, Do we construct structural representations of a sentence that are complete and accurate as we parse? While Anna dressed the baby played in the crib Did the baby play in the crib? (reader response 100%) Did Anna dress the baby? (errors) Ferreira (2003) People don't immediately read and comprehend a sentence. With active sentences, readers have 100% accuracy. With passive sentences (the man was bitten by the dog, the dog was bitten by the man) had 75% accuracy. Studies of incomplete representations emphasize the influence of expectations in sentence comprehension. REFERENCES Carroll, David, The Psychology of Language( Wadsworth Publishing, 2003)) |
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