Construal

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Construal Frazier, Lyn.; Clifton, Charles MIT Press 0262061791 9780262061797 9780585341170 English Cognitive grammar, Grammar, Comparative and general-Sentences, Psycholinguistics. 1996 P165.F73 1996eb 415 Cognitive grammar, Grammar, Comparative and general-Sentences, Psycholinguistics.

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Construal Lyn Frazier and Charles Clifton, Jr.

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© 1996 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Times Roman by Asco Trade Typesetting Ltd., Hong Kong and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Frazier, Lyn, 1952 Construal / Lyn Frazier and Charles Clifton, Jr. p. cm. "A Bradford book." Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-262-06179-1 1. Cognitive grammar. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general Sentences. 3. Psycholinguistics. I. Clifton, Charles, 1938 II. Title. P165.F73 1995 415dc20 95-4856 CIP

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Page v Contents Acknowledgments

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Chapter 1 Introduction

1 1

1.1 Overview 3 1.2 Orientation to Parsing 8 1.3 The Garden Path Theory of Human Sentence Processing 14 1.4 In Defense of the Garden Path Model Chapter 2 The Construal Hypothesis

29 30

2.1 Relative Clause Attachment: The Initial Construal Hypothesis 35 2.2 Other Structures Subject to Construal 40 2.3 Summary and General Proposal Chapter 3 Attachment versus Association: Adverbial Clauses

53 53

3.1 Introduction 53 3.2 Attachment versus Construal: Adverbial Attachment Sites within a Processing Domain versus in Different Domains

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Page vi 57 3.3 Experiment 1 63 3.4 Questionnaire Study: Effects of Length on Interpretation 65 3.5 Other Studies of Adverbials 67 3.6 Conclusions Chapter 4 Association and Thematic Domains: Relative Clauses

69 69

4.1 Background 73 4.2 Construal of Relative Clauses 77 4.3 On-Line Evidence about Relative Clause Attachment 83 4.4 Association of Semantically Obligatory Constituents 88 4.5 Other Work on Relative Clauses 92 4.6 Conclusions Chapter 5 Directionality, (Non)finality, and Adjacency: Extraposed Relative Clauses

93 93

5.1 Nonfinal Adjuncts 94 5.2 Directionality 96 5.3 Extraposition from NP 103 5.4 Summary and Implications Chapter 6 Indirect Subject-Predicate Binding: Adjunct Predication

107 107

6.1 Introduction

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Page vii 111 6.2 Searching for Garden Paths 119 6.3 Indirect Binding 125 6.4 Conclusions Chapter 7 Empty Categories and Extended Domains: Adjunct Extraction

129 130

7.1 The Grammar of Adjunct Extraction 132 7.2 Analyzing an Adjunct Phrase 135 7.3 Reading Biased Adjunct Questions 142 7.4 Interpretive Preferences 145 7.5 Association and the Postulation of Traces 148 7.6 Summary Chapter 8 Conclusions

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8.1 Summary 160 8.2 On the Relation of Structure and Interpretation 163 8.3 Relations to Previous Theory 164 8.4 Questions for Further Research 167 8.5 Relations to Other Proposals 169 8.6 Why Construal, Revisited

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Page viii Appendix: Sentences Used in Experiments

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Notes

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References

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Index

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Acknowledgments We want to thank our colleagues and students in the Department of Linguistics and Psychology at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. The ideas in this book have been shaped and informed over the years by conversations with many people, especially Emmon Bach, Manuel Carreiras, Janet Fodor, Elizabeth Gilboy, Roger Higgins, Angelika Kratzer, Don Mitchell, Barbara Partee, Keith Rayner, Tom Roeper, Lisa Selkirk, Josep Sopena, Michael Tanenhaus, and Edwin Williams. We also thank our wonderful students, past and present. The ones who have most directly contributed to this work include Christine Bartels, Marica De Vincenzi, Veena Dwivedi, Shelia Kennison, Paul Portner, Janina Radó, René Schmauder, Sara Sereno, and Sue Tunstall. We owe a special debt of thanks to Janina Radó for her careful and thoughtful reading of an earlier version of this manuscript and for her excellent work in preparing the index. Anne Mark deserves our praise and thanks for all the improvements she made to the style and accuracy of the book. We also thank the publishers' reviewers, who gave us extensive and helpful comments on earlier versions of this book. They include Marica De Vincenzi, Mark Steedman, and several anonymous reviewers. We want to single out Ted Gibson for special thanks for his careful critical reading of a near-final version of the manuscript. We do hope that these readers find the changes we made in response to their criticisms to be, at least, intriguing. Parts of the book have been presented at various conferences, including the Linguistic Society of America's Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, the Language Processing Symposium at the Experimental Psychology Society of Great Britain, and the Lake Geneva Language Processing Conference, and in talks at the CNR in Rome and at the University of Geneva. We wish to thank the audiences for the criticisms and suggestions.

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Many of the data reported here were gathered by students at the University of Massachusetts, including Oni Cooper, Mike Dickson, Toni Gaffron, Rich Gobeil, Linda Jarmulowicz, Deborah Rogers, Brett Steinberg, and Rachel Wolfe. In chapters 4 and 6 we report work conducted jointly with Elizabeth Gilboy and Josep Sopena (a comparative study of English and Spanish relative clause attachment) and studies conducted with Tova Rapoport on adjunct predicates. The work reported in this book was supported by NIH research grant HD-18708 and NIH training grant HD 07327 to the University of Massachusetts.

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Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Overview The past two decades have seen a remarkable growth in our understanding of how people compose the meanings of sentences from words they read or hear. The period began with the realization that this process of composition had to be constrained by readers' and hearers' knowledge of the grammar of their language (see Fodor, Bever, and Garrett 1974 for a thorough treatment of the work done in the early part of the period). It quickly became clear that the theoretical task of understanding how people use their knowledge of language to understand sentences was a daunting one, far beyond the capacity of the behavioral theories that existed before the cognitive revolution. Still, the task was worth undertaking. The ability to use language is one of the most distinctive and universal of human cognitive abilities. Many psychologists assumed that understanding how this ability works would give them deep insights into the nature of human cognitive functioning, and many linguists hoped that it would inform them about why language takes the shape it does. The middle part of these two decades witnessed the appearance of interesting, specific, and testable theories of how people use their knowledge of language to understand sentences. Some theories took the form of principles of parsing (the process of identifying the parts of a sentence and the relations among these parts) that made explicit predictions about such things as the difficulty of comprehending some sentences and the errors that would be made in comprehending them (e.g., Bever 1970; Ford, Bresnan, and Kaplan 1982; Frazier 1978, 1987a; Kimball 1973, 1975). Other theories took the form of computer programs that assigned an explicit structural analysis to a string of words, again following principles for applying the grammar of a language (e.g., Marcus 1980; Wanner and

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Maratsos 1978). Theories of both kinds contrasted as a class with the orientation that prevailed earlier in the period, according to which language comprehension was a top-down, knowledge-based process, in which a reader or listener searched the form and content of a sentence for cues that would permit the message it conveyed to be identified (e.g., Riesbeck and Schank 1978; Schank 1972; Wanner 1973; Winograd 1972). They led to a wealth of experimental findings about the factors that affect the process of sentence comprehension (see Frazier 1987a; Mitchell 1994; Tanenhaus 1988, for summaries) and provided economical and illuminating ways of integrating the experimental data and (at times) giving insight into the processes underlying sentence comprehension. As experimental research continued through the latter part of the period, a variety of findings were reported that many took to be challenges to the simple, structurally based principles that constituted theories such as that of Frazier (1978). We will review and evaluate some of these challenges below and argue that they do not invalidate the structural parsing principles (which we will also describe in some detail in the next sections). However, our purpose in this volume is neither to defend the structural parsing principles nor to attack them. Rather, it is to go beyond them. We will suggest that although they may have value and validity across a wide range of languages when applied to the types of grammatical constructions for which they were developed, there are grammatical relationships among phrases in English and presumably other languages for which structural parsing principles are unsuited. We will propose a distinction among types of grammatical constructions. We will argue that relations involving some types of phrases are identified by following the structural principles but that relations involving other types of phrases (which themselves may be constructed following the structural principles) are identified by a new process, which we will call construal. We will make some explicit proposals about what factors affect the construal process and about what principles it follows. We will provide evidence from several previously unstudied constructions to show that construal does not follow structural parsing principles but that it does follow the principles we claim for it. And we will speculate about why the human sentence-processing mechanism might honor this distinction between purely structurally based parsing and construal. What is significant about our proposal is its introduction of a very specific and constrained form of indeterminacy of commitment in parsing. It also explicitly raises questions about how adjuncts are processed. Much

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recent work has utilized a ''favor arguments over adjuncts" principle (Abney 1989; Gibson 1991; Pritchett 1988, 1992), but essentially nothing has been done to determine exactly how an adjunct is processed once it has been discovered to be an adjunct. Finally, the proposal leads to a novel view of why the processor takes the particular shape it does. In the remainder of this chapter we provide an overview of the framework in which our proposal is developed. In chapter 2 we lay out the Construal Hypothesis explicitly. In subsequent chapters we flesh out the hypothesis and provide empirical tests of it, and we propose and present evidence for various interpretive principles that guide sentence analysis. 1.2 Orientation to Parsing We assume that readers and listeners understand a sentence by identifying the words it contains, combining these words into phrases in ways that honor the grammar of the language, and composing the meaning of the sentence out of the meanings of the words and phrases in ways that honor their structural combination. We take it to be crucial that, barring errors, readers and listeners do not violate their knowledge of grammar in arriving at an interpretation of a sentence: each module consults all within-module information before making a decision (see, e.g., Frazier 1983, 1990a), and each module is sensitive to fine grammatical distinctions. It is easy to demonstrate the very large effect on meaning that very small differences in grammatical formatives can have. (1)

a. The umpire helped the child to third base. b. The umpire helped the child on third base.

(2)

a. He showed her baby the pictures. b. He showed her the baby pictures.

(3)

a. Beware of rich men's friends and shysters. b. Beware of rich men friends and shysters.

Readers and listeners can arrive at an interpretation that violates their beliefs about the message being conveyed, their feelings of plausibility or contextual felicity, and their wishes and expectations. They do not arrive at interpretations that violate grammar. Language, as Garrett (1976) once noted, is designed to permit us to say improbable things. Of course, within the constraints of grammar, readers and listeners generally arrive at the most plausible and contextually appropriate

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meaning (Crain and Steedman 1985; Frazier 1987a; Marslen-Wilson and Tyler 1987; Rayner, Carlson, and Frazier 1983). The serious challenge, it seems to us, is to construct a theory that forces readers and listeners to honor the grammatical constraints imposed on a sentence (globally, spanning the entire sentence, despite severe immediate memory limitations) while permitting them to be sensitive to the unbounded range of factors that influence plausibility and felicity. Ultimately, psycholinguistic theories that focus on just one or the other will not be adequate. Much of the progress that has been made toward developing a potentially adequate theory has come from examining how the human sentence-parsing mechanism responds to the local or temporary structural ambiguities that are so common in sentences. We will focus on ambiguities in which a string of words can be syntactically analyzed in various ways. We will not focus on ambiguities in which a word can have different meanings or in which a word can belong to different syntactic categories (Frazier 1987a; Rayner and Morris 1991; see MacDonald, Pearlmutter, and Seidenberg 1994a, and Trueswell and Tanenhaus 1994, for an approach that collapses the different types of ambiguities). For present purposes, we assume that a reader or listener assigns a structural analysis to a sentence in which each word is assigned to a single immediate phrase and in which each phrase is related to all the other phrases in a sentence in a branching tree structure that specifies the hierarchical relations among the phrases. (We will relax this assumption when we introduce the concept of association and the Construal Principle.) This tree structure may be augmented by traces and other empty elements, linking discontinuous parts of the tree and providing phrases with required elements that are not present in the string of words that is read or heard (Chomsky 1977, 1981; see Clifton and Frazier 1989 and Fodor 1989, 1993, for reviews of psycholinguistic research on parsing sentences with empty elements). The sentences in (4) and (5) illustrate a few ways in which the structural analysis of a sentence can be temporarily or permanently ambiguous. The examples in (4) illustrate temporary ambiguities, disambiguated by the boldfaced material; those in (5) are not grammatically disambiguated (although one meaning may be favored by content). Bracketing is used to show some of the relevant structure. (4) a. John [VP knew [NP the answer] very well]. b. John [VP knew [S[NP the answer] was wrong]]. c. The [NP horse] [VP raced past the barn and fell]. (Bever 1970) d. The [NP horse [S' e raced past the barn]] [VP fell].

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(5) a. I [VP saw [NP the man] with the binoculars]. b. I [VP saw [NP the man with the binoculars]]. c. John [VP said [S the man died yesterday]]. (Kimball 1973) d. John [VP said [S the man died] yesterday]. The human sentence parser must be able to compute both analyses of each string of words and to arrive at the grammatically determined (or more plausible) one. How can it do this? Most attempts to formulate an adequate theory of the parser have considered two different (but not fully independent) parameters that could characterize the parser (Frazier 1978; Inoue and Fodor 1994; Marcus 1980). The first parameter involves the logical and temporal relations among the various analyses: the parser could compute all the distinct analyses of a sentence in parallel, so that it can choose from all of them; or the parser could compute a single analysis and maintain it until it is contradicted; or the parser could delay computation when a point of ambiguity is identified, building an analysis only when no ambiguity remains. The second parameter involves the information used to resolve ambiguities in building an initial analysis or analyses of a sentence: to choose among alternative analyses, the parser could consult all available information immediately, including knowledge of the discourse and of the world, or it could use a restricted domain of information (e.g., grammatical information, or even more specifically, grammatical information relevant to sisterhood). Problems arise for any of the three alternatives associated with the first parameter. If the parser computed all analyses in parallel, it might well exceed human memory capacity by computing all combinations of the multiple ambiguities that are common in sentences. If the parser computed only one analysis at a time, it would be faced with disruption when the analysis it computed proved to be the wrong one. If the parser delayed, memory capacity might be stretched (given the limited capacity for unstructured material in memory); worse, if the parser did not assign an analysis to the ambiguous material, it is quite unclear how the parser could recognize disambiguating material when it arrives. A great deal of empirical evidence (some of which will be reviewed below) has now been obtained concerning the processing of syntactic ambiguities, most of it indicating that momentary, often minor, disruptions in processing are observed at points of disambiguation. This finding is evidence against parallel analysis: if all analyses are computed, and disambiguating material is used to choose among them, there would seem to be no reason to expect disruption at the choice point. It is also evidence against delay:

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since the disruption is asymmetrical, appearing only when the disambiguating information forces one interpretation but not when it forces the other, one cannot claim that processing is disrupted whenever a delayed analysis must be created. The evidence is consistent with a single-analysis parser: if the parser typically commits itself to one particular analysis, disruption would be expected whenever disambiguating material indicated this analysis was wrong. 1 Models intermediate between these extremes also exist, in particular, models exhibiting constrained parallelism. Perhaps the most explicit of these is the model of Gibson (1991), where multiple analyses can be presumed, providing they are within a fixed cost from the cheapest analysis. This leads to the extremely interesting but counterintuitive and untested prediction that an extremely costly analysis may lie beyond the capacity of the parser if there is an alternative analysis that is very easy to compute but lie within the parser's capacity if (despite its expense) it is the cheapest analysis to compute. Apart from untested predictions like this one, the major issues in evaluating the relative merits of constrained-parallelism models versus serial models concern whether the principles determining the cheapest analysis correctly characterize initially preferred analyses of a sentence2 and whether, as predicted, sentence complexity falls into three basic categories: a cheapest-to-compute preferred analysis, any of a number of equivalent already-computed backup analyses within the complexity "beam search" constraint, and the impossible-to-analyze structures that lie outside the complexity limits of the parser. We are aware of no empirical evidence arguing for the validity of this three-way (cheap, already-computed, impossible) distinction. (For discussion of various other limited parallel models, see Frazier 1987a.) The position one takes regarding the first parameter (serial/parallel/delay) affects one's attitude toward the second, the question of what information is used to resolve ambiguity. In order for fully ambiguous sentences like (5a d) to be understood in their most plausible sense, a reader or listener must eventually take into account all information relevant to the plausibility of a sentencewhich is potentially all information he or she possesses. Thus, all types of information must be used eventually to resolve ambiguities. If one accepts a parallel-analysis model, in which all possible analyses are arrayed for choice, one is likely to accept a model of information use in which all relevant information is used to choose among alternative analyses. If all information must be used eventually, and if using only a portion of the relevant information would serve no

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advantage but only potentially lead the processor astray, there seems to be no reason to doubt that all relevant information will be used to choose among alternatives. 3 If one accepts a delay model, much the same logic holds so long as the analysis is delayed until full disambiguating information is available. Of course, this brings one up against the problem mentioned earlier. It is not clear how a reader or listener can know that full disambiguating information is available if no analysis has been made of the ambiguous material in the first place. In the single-analysis model, one analysis is constructed as soon as a certain type of information becomes available. It is both a logical and an empirical question what type of information will support the construction of an analysis and the resolution of any ambiguity that may be present. One strong reason for favoring a single-analysis model in the first place is that such a model gets on with the task of providing some analysis of a sentence as soon as possible. Of course, a constrained-parallelism model will also share this attribute if one syntactic analysis is granted priority, allowing it to undergo semantic interpretation. We assume, along with others in the field, that the processor does not have the capacity to develop multiple semantic interpretations of full sentences simultaneously. A syntactic analysis is generally necessary to provide support for semantic interpretation, presumably a precursor to the evaluation of plausibility, discourse coherence, and the like. Syntactic structuring can also aid in the identification of other syntactic analyses. Further, syntactically structuring a string of words should increase success in holding the input in memory, given the clear benefit structuring has for human memory (e.g., Epstein 1961; Miller 1956; see Frazier 1987a, for discussion of all these points). These considerations strongly suggest that information relevant to syntactic structuring will be the information used initially to resolve a syntactic ambiguity and assign a syntactic analysis to a string of words. Grammatical information is the purest case of information that is relevant to syntactic structuring. Such information can be identified in advance of any given sentence as being relevant to the task of comprehending a sentence. It would not be surprising to find the parser initially consulting only limited information, known in advance to be relevant to the task at hand. Adopting a single-analysis model based on the pressure for rapid analysis encourages one to propose that the initially constructed analysis will be based on grammatical information. Of course, it is far from enough to say that grammatical information will be used initially to resolve a syntactic ambiguity. The presence of a structural ambiguity

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means that grammatical information was inadequate to determine a unique analysis. Thus, either some principles for applying grammatical information in parsing must be posited, or extragrammatical information must be allowed to influence structural choices. Further, appealing to "grammatical information" invites a plethora of fascinating questions: Specifically, what syntactic theory is being assumed? What kinds of grammatical information does it make available, and in what form is this information represented? Are there distinct subclasses of grammatical information that may be differentially used? And answering these questions will raise deep questions about the structure of the human mind: What is its functional architecture? What distinct processing units does it have (if distinct processing units, or modules, exist in the first place) and how are they distinguished? How are the distinct modules coordinated, and how do they communicate with one another? To what extent is language a uniquely specialized human ability? We turn to one specific proposal regarding these questions that we and our colleagues have developed over the past several years (Clifton, Speer, and Abney 1991; Ferreira and Clifton 1986; Frazier 1978, 1983, 1985a, 1987a, 1990a; Rayner, Carlson, and Frazier 1983). 1.3 The Garden Path Theory of Human Sentence Processing The garden path theory, as we have developed it, claims that the parser assigns a single immediate analysis to an ambiguous fragment of a temporarily or permanently ambiguous sentence. The analysis assigned is determined by very general parsing principles that appeal to the nature of the structure being built, not by nonstructural considerations such as meaning or plausibility. Decisions can be made quickly in cases of temporary ambiguity without waiting for evidence pointing to the correctness of one analysis or the other. The parsing principles that have been advanced are particular instantiations of a very general principle, "Choose the first available analysis" (Frazier 1987a). Such a principle honors the considerations discussed above regarding the need to determine the syntactic relations among words and phrases in order to evaluate their semantic relations and the fact that structured material is better held in immediate memory than unstructured material is. The most-studied particular parsing principles (which may be seen as developments of, or reactions to, earlier parsing proposals by Kimball

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(1973) and Bever (1970); cf. Frazier 1978) are Minimal Attachment, Late Closure, and the Minimal Chain Principle (a generalization of the Active Filler Strategy) (Frazier 1978, 1987b; De Vincenzi 1991). (6)Minimal Attachment Do not postulate any potentially unnecessary nodes. (7)Late Closure If grammatically permissible, attach new items into the clause or phrase currently being processed (i.e., the clause or phrase postulated most recently). (8)Minimal Chain Principle Postulate required chain members at the earliest point grammatically possible but postulate no potentially unnecessary chain members. (De Vincenzi 1991) Since, as noted, all three principles may be seen as consequences of a deeper principle, they need not be specifically stipulated. 4 Rather, they follow from the claim that the parser constructs syntactic representations by applying rules (like phrase structure rules) that create a single enriched tree structure. If all rules are applied in parallel to incoming words (and to existing structure), and if the first way of relating each new word to the existing structure is chosen as the initial analysis, the initial analysis generally will be that which relates the new material to the most available old material using the smallest number of new nodes (or links in a chain; see Frazier and Fodor 1978). 1.3.1 Empirical Evidence for the Principles The primary kind of evidence that has been presented for these principles comes from measures of the difficulty of processing sentences that have a temporary ambiguity, but that are eventually resolved in favor of the preferred Minimal Attachment/Late Closure/Minimal Chain reading rather than in favor of the other, presumably unpreferred, reading. Difficulty of processing the latter kinds of sentences is taken as evidence for garden-pathing. The parser presumably assigned an initial interpretation in line with the relevant principle, but then (having been led down the garden path) had to revise the interpretation at a measurable cost in processing time or difficulty. Early evidence for the first two processing principles was given by Frazier (1978). We present some of this evidence here, because it is not

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easily available in the published literature. Frazier used a simple visual presentation task in which words of a sentence were presented for 300 or 350 ms per word, noncumulatively, and subjects were required to respond at the end of a sentence by indicating whether or not the sentence was grammatical. In experiment 3, faster decision times were found for a variety of classes of sentences when they were resolved in favor of a late closure interpretation than when they were resolved in favor of early closure. Examples 9 13 illustrate the classes of sentences Frazier used. In the (a) (late closure) version of each, the temporary ambiguity was resolved (by the boldfaced word or phrase) in favor of an analysis in which the temporarily ambiguous phrase must be attached into the phrase being processed when it was encountered, the late closure interpretation. In the (b) (early closure) version of each, the temporary ambiguity was resolved in a way inconsistent with late closure. The mean end-ofsentence grammaticality decision times for several instances of each kind of sentence are indicated for both forms. In experiment 4, significantly faster decision times were observed to two out of three classes of sentences when they were resolved in favor of a minimal attachment interpretation (the interpretation in which the disambiguating (boldfaced) material was consistent with the attachment of the preceding ambiguous phrase that required the smallest number of new nodes) than when they were resolved in favor of nonminimal attachment (items (14) (16); (a) forms are minimal attachment, (b) forms are nonminimal attachment, and the difference was significant in items of types (14) and (16)). (9) a. Though George kept on reading the story Sue bothered him. (1160 ms) b. Though George kept on reading the story still bothered him. (1545 ms) (10) a. Without her contributions the funds are inadequate. (973 ms) b. Without her contributions would be very inadequate. (1985 ms) (11) a. In this race to touch the wire she will win. (1612 ms) b. In this race to touch the wire is to die. (2306 ms) (12) a. Mary kissed John and his brother when she left. (1065 ms) b. Mary kissed John and his brother started to laugh. (1667 ms) (13) a. Anne was watching you she laughed and nobody knew why. (1037 ms)

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b.Anne was watching you were laughing and nobody knew why. (1598 ms) The teacher told the children the ghost story that she knew would frighten (14)a. them. (1359 ms) b.The teacher told the children the ghost story had frightened that it wasn't true. (3150 ms) Sally was relieved when she found out the answer to the physics problem. (15)a. (1224 ms) b.Sally found out the answer to the physics problem was in the book. (1647 ms) Because a blizzard had been forecast the guests left before the evening meal. (16)a. (1187 ms) b.Because of the blizzard the guests left before the evening meal was finished. (1237 ms) Since Frazier's initial work, more sophisticated techniques have yielded information about the details of how the parsing strategies are used. Frazier and Rayner (1982) used eye movement measurement to identify the precise point in a sentence where the difficulty occasioned by disambiguating material began in order to trace out the reader's response to the difficulty. Rayner, Carlson, and Frazier (1983) showed that evidence for the parsing principles could be obtained in the face of semantic information favoring the reading that was inconsistent with the processing principles, even when the semantic information was sufficiently clear and powerful to determine the final interpretation of the sentence. Many others (including Clifton, Speer, and Abney 1991; De Vincenzi 1991; Ferreira and Clifton 1986; Ferreira and Henderson 1990; Flores d'Arcais 1990; Frazier and Clifton 1987; Kennedy and Murray 1984; Mitchell and Holmes 1985; Rayner and Frazier 1987) have used various techniques, including eye movement measurement, self-paced reading, grammaticality judgment, and other end-of-sentence techniques to demonstrate the effects being discussed in a wide variety of sentence constructions. In (17) we list a sampling of these constructions involving structural attachment ambiguities, to emphasize the breadth of sentence types whose parsing is illuminated by the parsing principles. 5 (17)

a. Main clause/reduced relative The horse raced past the barn (fell).

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b. NP versus S complement John knew the answer to the physics problem was wrong/very well. c. Direct object versus subject of S2 While Mary was mending the sock (it) fell off her lap. d. NP conjunction versus S conjunction Jacob kissed Miriam and her sister (laughed). e. PP attachment to VP/NP Sandra wrote a letter to Mary. f. Complement/relative clause John told the girl that Bill liked the story. g. Attachment of NP as second object/relative on first object Fred gave the man the dog (bit the package). h. Purpose clause versus rationale clause Nixoni bought a 1960's version of Trivial Pursuitj (proj/proi) to amuse his friends. i. Attachment of PP to lower clause/higher clause I put the book that you were reading in the library (into my briefcase). j. Attachment of S to lower clause/higher clause Fred will realize that Mary left when the party starts/started. k. Attachment of Adverb to lower clause/higher clause We remembered that the assignment will be due yesterday/tomorrow. l. Left-branching versus right-branching N-N compound The [butter cream] factory/the concrete [cream factory]. m.(In Italian) Prefer pro to trace reading, supporting the Minimal Chain Principle Ha chiamato Giovanni. 'Giovanni has called,' or 'Someone has called Giovanni.' Although most of these examples are from English, significant work has been done in other languages and has been found generally to support the parsing principles (e.g., De Vincenzi 1991, in Italian; Cuetos and Mitchell 1988 and Carreiras 1992, in Spanish (see chapter 4); Frazier 1987b, in Dutch; Bader and Lasser 1994 and Schriefers, Friederici, and Kühn 1994, in German; Inoue and Fodor 1994 and Nagai 1995, in Japanese).

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1.3.2 Beyond the Parsing Principles Sentence comprehension does not end with the application of parsing principles. The language comprehension system must be able to revise an initial analysis when late-arriving grammatical information indicates that it was wrong. It must also be able to revise an initial analysis when extragrammatical information indicates that some grammatically legitimate interpretation is preferred to the interpretation of the first analysis on grounds such as plausibility or pragmatics. In order to do this, it must have some mechanism for evaluating the interpretations of multiple possible, not developed, analyses. Rayner, Carlson, and Frazier (1983) propose the existence of a thematic processor that would serve this role, and Frazier (1987a, 1990a) develops the idea further. In Frazier 1990a the thematic processor takes the form of one of four processing modules, a theta-predication module that operates in parallel with the module responsible for creating the single constituent structure analysis discussed above. The theta-predication module identifies heads of phrases that can bear thematic role frames and evaluates all phrases within the grammatical domain of the head. It compares all possible assignments of phrases to positions in the thematic frame of the head in terms of plausibility, using all available information (including real-world and discourse information). If some assignment other than that corresponding to the syntactic analysis assigned by the constituent structure module (and a binding module not discussed here) is more plausible, then that fact is made available to the other modules so that they can determine whether they can provide an appropriate analysis. Frazier (1990a) proposes that no special claims need be made about how the modules can communicate with one another in arriving at the most plausible grammatical analysis, other than to note that a module can perform computations only on inputs that are phrased in terms of its computational vocabulary. The different modules overlap to a limited degree in terms of computational vocabulary. For example, the constituent-structureprocessing module and the theta-predication module share vocabulary concerning theta-assigners and thetaassignees or arguments. The internal arguments of a head must be the syntactic sisters of the head, and the phrases that take thematic roles must be arguments of the thematic role assigner. Because sisterhood is defined in constituent structure terms, this permits the constituent structure module to make use of information provided by the theta-predication module in reanalyzing a less-preferred analysis. If a phrase P should (should not) be an internal

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argument, then it must (must not) be assigned as a sister to the theta-assigner. In summary, the garden path model has several arguments in its favor. It can account for the existence and direction of asymmetries in comprehension difficulty between different ways of resolving temporary ambiguity, and it predicts the point at which difficulties arise. It can account for how the language comprehension system can be sure of arriving at interpretations of sentences that are globally consistent with the grammar, at least if it abides by the ''No-Bookkeeping Constraint" proposed by Frazier (1990a) that prohibits making decisions before checking them against all within-module information. It can account for how real-world and discourse information can be accessed in the first place (by identifying phrases and their heads, a minimal prerequisite for semantic interpretation) and for how such information can affect the eventual comprehension of a sentence. Nonetheless, the model has been the subject of much critical discussion, to which we now turn. 1.4 In Defense of the Garden Path Model The existence of the asymmetries in processing complexity predicted by the garden path model has itself seldom been challenged. Numerous controversies exist, however, concerning (1) the serial nature of the parser (i.e., the issue of whether any but the preferred analysis of the sentence is computed before evidence disconfirming the preferred analysis is detected) and (2) the proper explanation for the asymmetries that have been observed in processing complexity. 1.4.1 Single versus Multiple Analyses There is no guarantee that the structurally preferred analysis of a sentence will correspond to the intended, or the semantically/pragmatically most plausible, analysis of the sentence. Therefore, alternatives to the first analysis must be computed sometimes, according to a serial model, or always, according to a parallel model. Parallel models are tempting. If all possible analyses are available, either by being computed on the fly or by being retrieved from storage, the main task of sentence processing must be to use all available information to choose among the available analyses. The problem with fully parallel models is that they traditionally have not been able to explain the empirical evidence favoring certain syntactic analyses of temporarily ambiguous structures. Why should one contin-

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uation of a sentence fragment be easier than another if the analyses needed for both continuations have already been computed? Proponents of parallel models may not simply assume that a particular analysis of the sentence has been chosen by the processor in experiments where complexity asymmetries have been established but that no commitment to a particular analysis has occurred otherwise. A consistent and explicit principle must guide the commitment process, its timing and its actual choice. Otherwise, the theory will only provide a post hoc description of data. Serial models have their own weakness, to be sure. A serial model must have some way of accounting for how people generally manage to arrive at the most plausible analysis of a sentence, even when it goes against the presumably preferred initial analysis. No complete and explicit model of reanalysis (or identification of noninitial analyses) has yet been proposed (though see Crocker 1990, 1994; Ferreira 1991; and Frazier 1987a, 1994; and see Pritchett 1992, for a proposal about separation between unconscious and conscious difficulties). One promising development is the recent work by Inoue and Fodor (1995). They suggest that structural choice points are tagged along with the time when the existence of each alternative possibility was discovered (even though only one possibility is, in general, fully developed). At any choice point, earlier times are presumed to correspond to preferred or easier syntactic analyses. The garden path theory is left virtually intact if second or structurally less preferred analyses are tagged during the first parse (Inoue and Fodor 1995) or even developed in circumstances where not all evidence favors the first analysis. If locally permissible alternatives are tagged but not developed as the parser goes along, this would force one to abandon the No-Bookkeeping Constraint or to code the alternatives in a distinctive manner. But it would not require the considerable computational load and high memory burden associated with the development and maintenance of the many temporarily permissible analyses of a sentence. The crucial point, according to a garden path theory, is that only one globally consistent analysis is developed at a time, and that this analysis guides semantic interpretation. (See Fodor and Inoue 1994 and Frazier 1994, for alternatives based on error diagnosis models that maintain strictly serial parsers.) We believe that the argument above, that parallel models have difficulty accounting for the existence of asymmetries in processing different grammatical constructions, effectively rules out most parallel symbolic computational models. However, at least one class of parallel models

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offers an alternative account for the asymmetries. Constraint satisfaction models, as developed by Tanenhaus and his colleagues (e.g., Trueswell and Tanenhaus 1994) and by MacDonald and her colleagues (e.g., MacDonald, Pearlmutter, and Seidenberg 1994a,b), assume that multiple alternative analyses are available and that their availability is continuously modified by the strength and relevance of probabilistic syntactic and nonsyntactic cues or constraints and the availability of the alternative analyses (based, perhaps, on their frequency). Constraint satisfaction models have attracted a great deal of attention for several reasons. They can be cast in terms of connectionist models, which (it has been claimed) could in principle permit a combined model of language learning and language processing. They encourage researchers to study the effects of a variety of factors on sentence comprehension, broadening the experimental palette beyond the factors that have previously been emphasized in sentence-parsing research. Finally, they fit nicely with the intuitions most people have, according to which all sorts of information can jointly determine one's final interpretation of a sentence. 6 Several types of experimental evidence have been presented in support of constraint satisfaction models. One type uses questionnaire data to prepare materials that are biased in favor of, or against, minimal attachment (or late closure) preferences; this type demonstrates faster reading time when disambiguating material favors the normatively preferred interpretation as opposed to the normatively unpreferred interpretation (Taraban and McClelland 1988). If structural preferences exist, they are overridden by the factors (whatever they may be) that contribute to normatively assessed plausibility. If this is so, then, it is claimed, parsing cannot initially be guided only by structural preferences; it must also be guided by other factors. Another type of evidence places sentences that are presumably favored or disfavored by structural preferences in discourse context and shows that the structural preferences can be made to disappear (Altmann and Steedman 1988; Altmann, Garnham, and Dennis 1992; Trueswell and Tanenhaus 1992). A third type of evidence shows that sentences that are temporarily ambiguous but eventually disambiguated in favor of the structurally unpreferred interpretation are read no more slowly than initially unambiguous controls if the verb is chosen to be biased in usage frequency counts or production norms in favor of the structurally unpreferred interpretation (MacDonald 1994; MacDonald, Pearlmutter, and Seidenberg 1994a). Similar effects are found when the normatively preferred thematic relation between the verb and its

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subject (e.g., agent vs. patient) is congruent with the thematic relation assigned under the structurally unpreferred interpretation (Trueswell, Tanenhaus, and Garnsey 1994). A fourth type of evidence shows that a verb's subcategorization preference can override structural preferences in NP/S complement ambiguities (Trueswell, Tanenhaus, and Kello 1993). A final type of evidence seems to show that whether structurally preferred forms of PP-attachment sentences are favored in reading speed depends on such factors as the semantic category of the verb (action verb vs. psych-verb) and the definiteness of the NP in V-NP-PP sentences (Sedivy and Spivey-Knowlton 1994). In some cases it is not clear whether the evidence convincingly shows that nonstructural factors can override structural preferences. For example, whereas some authors show that discourse factors eliminate structural preferences, others (e.g., Ferreira and Clifton 1986; Mitchell, Corley, and Garnham 1992; Murray and Liversedge 1994; Rayner, Garrod, and Perfetti 1992) find that structural preferences persist in the face of supposedly effective discourse contexts. In other cases the relevance in addition to the adequacy of the evidence is not clear. For example, some advocates of structurally based parsing theories have hypothesized that subcategorization information is used only to guide reanalysis (evaluation of the analysis), not to guide initial analysis (formation of the analysis) (Adams, Clifton, and Mitchell 1994; Ferreira and Henderson 1990; Frazier 1987a; Mitchell 1989), and have provided evidence in favor of their hypothesis. However, whether or not subcategorization information is used is not crucial to garden path theories; subcategorization is grammatical information that could be available to a modular, structural parser. The only thing that is crucial to such theories is that verb-disambiguated subcategorization information is not necessary for parsing a sentence (Frazier 1989). A parser of the sort assumed in garden path theories need not wait until a verb carrying relevant subcategorization information is received or disambiguated with respect to its intended subcategorization before building structure. Demonstrating that verb subcategorization information can be used when it is available does not entail that it must be present before parsing of the input may begin. Even though some of these types of evidence can be disputed, in the aggregate they do suggest that frequency of usage of different forms, their plausibility and discourse appropriateness, and other factors must affect the processing of sentences. No viable theory could deny that. Two things seem to be at issue: first, whether these factors guide the initial parse of a

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sentence or its reanalysis (Frazier 1987a, 1990a,c), and second, whether structural preferences such as Minimal Attachment can be reduced to them. It may be very hard to answer the first question experimentally. When reanalysis begins very quickly after an initial analysis is made and proceeds smoothly, the experimental techniques now available may not be able to resolve any small effect of an initial commitment to an incorrect analysis. This is especially likely to be true of techniques using relatively slow self-paced reading with disambiguation coming at a clause boundary (e.g., Taraban and McClelland 1988) but may be true of all techniques, including eyetracking. Some evidence suggests a negative answer to the second question. For example, McElree (1993) presents data from a speed-accuracy trade-off task, and S. Speer (personal communication) presents data from an auditory comprehension difficulty task, that suggest very strongly that a late closure preference persists even without a lexical bias. Even more, some preferences that have been attributed to Minimal Attachment (e.g., the preference to attach a PP to a verb as opposed to a noun) are consistently found even though they represent a preference for the analysis that seems to be less frequent in corpus studies (Hindle and Rooth 1993). 7 Rather than searching for a technique that is specifically sensitive to difficulty caused by initial misanalysis (in an attempt to distinguish initial analysis effects from reanalysis effects), it may be more productive to develop explicit theories of how all sorts of information are used in constructing initial analyses of sentences, and equally explicit theories of how this information can be used in reanalysis, and test the particular predictions of these theories. This has not been done (but see Frazier 1994, for some steps toward such a theory of reanalysis). Nonetheless, some predictions are at least strongly suggested by existing theoretical claims. For example, the constraint satisfaction theories that are currently most widely known and best worked out (e.g., MacDonald, Pearlmutter, and Seidenberg 1994a) are lexically based parsing theories and clearly claim that all structure is projected from heads of phrases. This means that, in head-final languages, phrases that are arguments of a head cannot be assigned to their argument roles until the head is received, since their structural roles will not exist until then. This seems as if it would put speakers of head-final languages at a substantial disadvantage, and is contradicted by some fairly convincing experimental evidence (Bader and Lasser 1994; Frazier 1987b; cf. Inoue and Fodor 1994). To be sure, not all constraint satisfaction theories must suffer from this problem (see the discussion in

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section 1.4.3 of how some principle-based parsers suffer from a similar problem, and how some newer licensing parsers are being developed to overcome it). However, it is not our aim to argue that no empirically adequate constraint satisfaction theory can ever be devised. We simply argue that no constraint satisfaction theory exists currently that is both explicit and empirically adequate. To take another example of apparent predictions of current constraint satisfaction theories, most of the studies that have shown effects of non-structural factors in parsing have concentrated on the structurally non-preferred form, showing that its difficulty can be alleviated by factors that favor it. Garden path theories also predict this effect, attributing it to reanalysis processes. However, the types of theories differ in a critical way that has not yet been adequately tested. A garden path theory would predict that factors such as frequency of verb usage or typicality of a verb-theme relation would not induce a garden path when the structurally favored form (e.g., a main verb instance of the horse raced ambiguity) is used. This form should be posited initially and maintained (barring anomaly, implausibility, or discourse incoherence, of course). However, if a constraint satisfaction theory claims that a factor eliminates apparent garden-pathing by eliminating the preference for the structurally favored form, it would seem to have to predict that this factor would have exactly the mirror-image effect on the presumably preferred form. Since parsing is a competition among alternatives, anything that favors one alternative has to disfavor other alternatives. Consider a structurally unfavored form, such as a reduced relative clause (18a). It will be read more slowly than an unambiguous form, such as (18b). Now, imagine that some factor exists that eliminates the difference between these two forms (e.g., relative frequency of verb usage, MacDonald, Pearlmutter, and Seidenberg 1994a; or appropriateness of the subject as theme of the verb, Trueswell, Tanenhaus, and Garnsey, 1994; or use of a quantifier such as only rather than the definite determiner, Ni and Crain 1990; cf. (18c) and (18d)). If the difference between the ambiguous and unambiguous form is eliminated by this manipulation, then a constraint satisfaction theory would have to claim that essentially all the information provided by the ambiguous form prior to disambiguation supports the "structurally unpreferred" form (since this has to be the case for the unambiguous form, and the two forms are read equivalently). 8 If this is the case, then the bulk of the information provided by the corresponding "structurally preferred"

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form (19b) must as well. Since this is the incorrect analysis, garden-pathing type phenomena should be observed in forms like (19b). (18)

a. b. c. d.

The horse raced past the barn fell. The horse that was raced past the barn fell. Only horses raced past the barn fell. Only horses that were raced past the barn fell.

(19)

a. The horse raced past the barn today. b. Only horses raced past the barn today.

To the best of our knowledge, such garden-pathing in what we claim to be the structurally preferred form has almost never been reported. The only salient exception is provided by Taraban and McClelland (1988), who showed what appeared to be an absolute preference in some sentences with the sequence V-NP-PP for the presumably nonminimal attachment in which the PP modifies the NP, not the V. However, Taraban and McClelland used a self-paced reading task that resulted in rather slow reading times (which might give substantial weight to factors affecting the difficulty of reanalysis and obscure the effects of initial analysis), and there has been a notable lack of published replications of the crucial observations of this experiment (while there has been no lack of replications of the original observation (Rayner, Carlson, and Frazier 1983) of apparent garden-pathing when the minimal attachment preference was violated in V-NP-PP sentences). Pearlmutter and MacDonald (in press) claim to have shown that readers are garden-pathed in simple main clause sentences in which probabilistic constraints favor an alternative analysis (e.g., The soup cooked in the pot but was not ready to eat). But since they presented no reduced relative clause sentences, it is unclear that what they showed was that main clause analyses take longer than reduced relative clause analyses when constraints favor the latter analysis. Instead, what they showed was that temporarily ambiguous simple main clause sentences can take longer to read than their unambiguous counterparts. Given that sentences are read more quickly when the actual analysis is consistent with the most frequent subcategorization of the verb (see Clifton, Frazier, and Connine 1984, for one example), this is not surprising. It need not indicate garden-pathing. Further, the effect held only for one-third of their subjects, those who were independently identified as having a high reading span (which we suspect may reflect motivation both in the reading experiment and in

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the memory span assessment procedure, as well as reflecting intrinsic cognitive capacity). We suggest that the evidence that has been presented to date in favor of constraint satisfaction models, although it obviously must be explained by any parsing theory, does not convincingly demonstrate the correctness or inadequacy of any theory. The theoretically crucial predictions have not yet been tested. The theories must be developed further, and tested further, before any can be rejected. We believe that the constraint resolution style of integration will ultimately not prove to be as theoretically satisfying or illuminating as the structurally based theories we favor. In a constraint satisfaction theory, the theorist's task has changed from trying to identify general principles of language processing to identifying very specific factors that affect processing in specific cases; it has changed the focus from trying to devise a theory to trying to sort out the empirical facts. 1.4.2 The Explanation for Complexity Differences The garden path theory attributes the asymmetries observed in the human sentence-processing mechanism to universally present memory and time pressures resulting from the properties of human short-term memory: humans must quickly structure material to preserve it in a limited- capacity memory. Alternative explanations of the asymmetries typically attribute parsing preferences to an argument preference principle (Abney 1989; Crocker 1994; Pritchett 1991, 1992) or local violations of the Theta Criterion (Gibson 1991) or Predicate Proximity (Gibson et al. 1993), to the presuppositions carried by alternative structures and in particular whether those presuppositions fail to be satisfied in a null discourse context (Crain and Steedman 1985), or to the frequencies with which particular lexical items have appeared in specific structures (MacDonald 1994; Mitchell, Cuetos, and Corley 1992; Trueswell and Tanenhaus 1994). We can examine the adequacy of these alternatives, abstracting away from whether the theory that contains a given alternative is a version of a serial or a parallel (even a constraint satisfaction) theory. We have already argued briefly that although frequency may affect sentence comprehension in some fashion, it cannot provide a full account of sentence-parsing asymmetries. Therefore, we turn to a principle favoring attachment of a phrase as an argument, and note that it is at odds with the empirical data. Clifton, Speer, and Abney (1991) compared sentences like those in (20) and showed that verb attachment preferences

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(i.e., a Minimal Attachment preference), not argument preferences, are observed in the earliest stages of parsing. (20) a. The saleswoman tried to interest the man in a wallet. b. The man expressed his interest in a hurry. c. The man expressed his interest in a wallet. d. The saleswoman tried to interest the man in his fifties. Sentences in which the PP must be attached as an argument or adjunct of a verb, such as (20a) and (20b), show less initial parsing difficulty than those in which the PP must be attached to an NP, as in (20c) and (20d). The intuitively apparent preference to take the PP as an argument ((20a) and (20c)) rather than an adjunct ((20b) and (20d)) appears only later in processing. Yet another problem for an argument preference principle stems from intuitions concerning the ease with which appropriate but novel lexical properties may be supplied to a word or nonsense syllable in a wellformed syntactic structure. This ease suggests that syntactic structure can readily be used to identify argument structure, and not just vice versa. For example, Epstein (1961) shows that subjects read and remember strings of grammatically inflected nonsense syllables more easily than uninflected ones, strongly suggesting that they are parsing the string. However, the nonsense "lexical items" in these strings carry no argument structure. The argument structures must be assigned by general principles, which must be equally available when parsing real language. We take up still other problems with the descriptive coverage of an argument preference principle in chapters 3 and 8. Consider now whether presuppositional factors can explain the asymmetries observed in parsing (e.g., Crain and Steedman 1985). Crain and Steedman claim that restrictive modifiers presuppose that a set (corresponding to the modified noun) has already been established in context and the modifier serves to delimit a relevant subset. Hence, in a null discourse context the presuppositions of a restrictive modifier analysis of a phrase will not be met. 9 This favors a main clause analysis (21a), not a reduced relative clause analysis (21b), and an argument analysis (22a), not a modifier analysis (22b). (21)

a. The horse raced past the barn. b. The horse raced past the barn fell.

(22)

a. The woman hit [the man] [with a hat]. b. The woman hit [the man with a hat].

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But the data on this issue are far from clear. For example, Sedivy and Spivey-Knowlton (1994) show that a PP preferably attaches to a VP containing an active verb, not as a modifier of a preceding NP, even when the NP is indefinite. In a self-paced reading task, (23b) was read more quickly than (23a) even when the NP was indefinite and thus the preference could not be attributed to a conflict between the uniqueness presupposition of the definite determiner and taking the PP to modify the NP. (23) a. The fireman smashed down the/a door with the/a rusty lock . . . b. The fireman smashed down the/a door with the/a heavy axe . . . Another problem with the presuppositional approach, as noted by Portner (1989), is that presuppositional violations can be easily accommodated and/or attributed to the experimental set-up, especially when all sentences are presented in isolation without discourse referents for definite expressions. A final problem for this approach is that many asymmetries have been observed beyond those potentially explained by presuppositional factors (e.g., NP vs. S complements, NP vs. S conjunctions; see (17)). (See section 1.4.1 for citations of additional data suggesting that parsing preferences cannot be reduced to referential discourse factors.) 1.4.3 What Is the Underlying Grammar? The last and perhaps most serious criticism of the garden path model is the claim that it is not working with or based on the correct grammar. The criticism is really twofold. First, it is suggested that we have assumed an incorrect structure for nominal modifiers by assuming a structure like (24a) instead of (24b) (see Smith 1988). 10

We think that this criticism is misguided in that, under our claims, analyzing PP as a nominal modifier would be a nonminimal attachment analysis if either (24a) or (24b) were adopted. In many forms of linguistic theory, vacuous structure is not permitted (Speas 1990) or cannot be distinguished from phrase markers omitting the vacuous structure (Lasnik and Kupin 1977). In our theory, nonbranching X' nodes (a case of

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immediate self-domination) are not entered in the phrase marker. For example, the N' node in (24b) would not be constructed unless it was needed. Since linguistic theory does not require nonbranching nodes to be present, Minimal Attachment eschews them. The result is that adding a PP modifier to a Det-Nom sequence involves the addition of a new nominal node, whether it is the node, circled in (24a) or the one circled in (24b). Only in a system where N' was already present when the N was entered into the phrase marker would a modifying PP involve a mere addition to the postulated phrase. Hence, the complexity predictions involving Verb-Det-N-PP sequences remain the same for either of the structures in (24). In addition, we note that linguistic theory may need to allow (24a) in addition to (24b) to accommodate phrases like the girl and the boy in the park. There is no evidence, prosodic or otherwise, that this phrase involves a deletion; instead, it must have the structure in (25) to permit the determiner (Spec) before boy. 11 Hence, it must derive from the structure in (24a), which under any analysis requires the addition of an NP node to permit the PP to serve as a nominal modifier.

The second criticism of the representational basis of the garden path model stems from its assumption that grammatical principles are precompiled into something resembling phrase structure rules or templates, or at least used jointly to allow inferable structure to be postulated in advance of the lexical items it dominates. The idea that something like phrase structure templates or rules might be used during parsing has received considerable criticism. Since Stowell 1981 a goal of much of linguistic theory has been to derive the actual structures exhibited by sentences from the principles of X' theory (X-bar theory), Case theory, theta theory, and the like, rather than explicitly encoding them in phrase structure rules. From the perspective of current Government-Binding (GB) Theory, the actual explanatory principles of grammar are the prin-

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ciples of the various grammatical modules. The permissible phrase structures of language have no particular status in the theory other than as theoretically uninteresting surface manifestations of the underlying grammatical principles requiring each phrase to have Case, each argument to have a unique theta role, and so on. From this perspective, a transparent relation between the grammar and the parser requires the principles of grammar to themselves participate in the parsing process. Transparency is violated by assuming that some theorem derived from the principles (e.g., a phrase structure template) is used immediately in parsing. Our assumption that precompiled rules or templates are used in parsing is motivated by substantial evidence that a phrase, XP, may be postulated by the parser before the head is received when the phrase in question is head final (see Bader and Lasser 1994; Frazier 1987b; Adams, Clifton, and Mitchell 1994). We believe that this evidence contradicts models that specify that phrases are only projected from their heads, because such models incorrectly predict delays in postulating phrase structure for head- final phrases. However, models that assume precompiled parsing templates are not the only alternatives to such head projection models. Licensing grammars, based on current versions of GB Theory, may be developed so that they provide attractive alternatives. The idea of a licensing grammar is that each element in a structure must be licensed (by X' theory, Case theory, theta theory, etc.). In one promising version of such a model, Crocker (1992) uses licensing requirements other than X' theory to identify phrases before their heads are encountered. He proposes that the requirements of functional nodes are used to project structure. This results in top-down postulation of some phrase structure before the head of the phrase is received. We agree with Crocker that top-down use of grammatical requirements is empirically warranted. We are skeptical, however, that requirements of only functional nodes project top- down, as he proposes. We think this is a mistake. There is no evidence that the nominal node dominating men is postulated later in (26b), where it is preceded by a lexical item predicting a following nominal, than in (26a), where it is a functional node that supports the prediction of a following nominal. (26)

a. b.

Some men . . . Happy men . . .

Similarly, in a CP lacking an overt complementizer or inflection, an IP adverb may well lead the parser to postulate the IP node. Thus, although

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Crocker's distinction between requirements imposed by functional elements (top-down node postulations) and requirements imposed by lexical ones (bottom-up postulation) is interesting, we think that at present there is no empirical support for the bottom-up postulation restriction. Crocker's system differs from the system we assume in one more interesting and fundamental way. Crocker assumes that the individual content- based principles of Case theory (e.g., Case adjacency) and X' theory are used to parse sentences and that the parsing strategies are stated over content notions (an argument preference principle, called Argument AttachmentA-Attachmentand a Principle of Incremental Comprehension) and levels of representation (Deep-Structure AttachmentDS-Attachment). He argues that this system is more in line with a principle-based grammar than is the garden path model, where formal structures (not content-based principles) are the basis for the parser's strategies. In the garden path model, complexity is defined with respect to the formal structures. We think that Crocker's line of argument is extremely interesting and in some ways appealing. But there are problems. First, it must be shown how the principles that depend on formal properties of the phrase marker such as Late Closure can be handled. Second, as noted earlier, the argument attachment principle that Crocker assumes, AAttachment, does not seem to be correct empirically. Third, DS-Attachment is not really motivated. In support of the principle, Crocker notes that German readers avoid scrambling when the potentially scrambled phrase could be analyzed in some other (canonical or unscrambled) position. Since the independently motivated Minimal Chain Principle accounts for the avoidance of scrambled structures just as well as DS-Attachment, the latter is not really needed. Fourth, the ranking Argument > Modifier > Movement that results from A-Attachment and DSAttachment in Crocker's system is undermotivated and probably incorrect. Since Chomsky 1977 it has been recognized that in English, relative clauses and topicalization involve movement whereas left dislocation does not. Hence, Crocker's system predicts that (27a b) should garden-path perceivers equally and that both should contrast sharply with (27c), where no movement is necessary. Intuitions do not support these predictions. (27)

a. Beans I like are hard to find in this country. b. Beans, I like. c. Beans, I like them.

So where does this leave us? In our view, the current empirical evidence still favors representations governing the operations within subsystems.

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We think this is consistent with a principle-based grammar providing one avoids the temptation, popular when Frazier's 1987a critique was published (and as we noted earlier, popular in some current constraint satisfaction theories of parsing; e.g., MacDonald, Pearlmutter, and Seidenberg 1994a), to project phrases only from their lexical heads and only when these heads have already been received in the input. Turning to our grammatical assumptions, we do assume a principle- based grammar. We assume Williams's (1980, 1993) general approach to theta roles: internal arguments are sisters to the head, and the one external argument is outside the head's maximal projection. We assume that the external role is obligatory, though we take no stand on whether its presence is required by predication theory, by the Extended Projection Principle (Chomsky 1981), or perhaps by AgrP (Speas 1993). As noted earlier, we assume that X' theory requires only the head and its categorially identical maximal projection. X' nodes are not required unless they branch or are needed to satisfy some other principle of grammar. Following Grimshaw (1991, 1993), we assume that functional projections can be viewed as extensions of lexical projections. Thus, CP and IP can be viewed as extensions of VP, for example, and DP is an extended projection of the noun that heads NP, thereby eliminating the need to separately and redundantly subcategorize each transitive verb for both NP and DP. We assume the taxonomy of empty categories of GB Theory: PRO, pro, NP, and wh-trace. The issue of NP-trace and levels of representation deserves much closer psycholinguistic scrutiny than it has received to date, we think, but resolving that issue goes beyond the scope of this project. Most of the work reported here was carried out before the Minimalist Program was outlined (Chomsky 1993). Whether the proposed parsing theory will prove to be compatible with the ultimate shape of the theory emerging from that program remains to be seen. As discussed above, we assume that either the principles of grammar are precompiled (separately for ''sister" principles and for "c-command" principles; see Frazier 1985a) or the principles in each set can be used online together, in a mutually constraining fashion permitting inferable structure to be postulated in a (partially) top-down manner possibly before the lexical content of the structure has been received by the parser. Crucially, as will become clear in subsequent chapters, the system is not lexically driven in the sense of Abney or Pritchett (see also Bader and Lasser 1994, for discussion and supporting evidence from German).

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Page viii Appendix: Sentences Used in Experiments

173

Notes

201

References

211

Index

225

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Chapter 2 The Construal Hypothesis The view of syntactic processing assumed in chapter 1 maintains that parsing a sentence involves recovery of a fully determinate phrase marker, one with structural dominance and subject-predicate relations fixed for all elements in the input string. This view could in principle be challenged on either linguistic or psycholinguistic grounds. In linguistic theory, it might be shown that phrase markers do not have these properties (i.e., that certain relations are not fixed in a syntactic representation of a sentence). Alternatively, from a psycholinguistic perspective, the parser might not recover all aspects of a fully determinate structure during ordinary comprehension processes. In the remainder of this book we explore the possibility that although the traditional view is correct for a large and interesting set of syntactic constructions that are quickly and fully recovered by the human sentenceprocessing mechanism, a different process, which we call construal, applies to another set of constructions. We will suggest that certain phrases, instead of being attached into a fully determinate syntactic phrase marker using only structural information, are associated with a particular structural domain and interpreted using both structural and nonstructural information. The parser need not initially specify a fully disambiguated structure for such constructions. Further analysis, including semantic analysis, will result in a representation that is equivalent to the analysis implicit in a disambiguated structure. 1 In section 2.1 we lay out the problem and the motivation for the construal proposal, examining the processing of relative clauses; we also informally indicate some ways in which this proposal contrasts with our previous theoretical claims. In section 2.2 we briefly explore a construal analysis of a few other constructions; this section serves as a preview of topics to be discussed at length in later chapters. In section 2.3 we give a precise initial statement of the construal proposal, compare it to related

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proposals, and lay out a general hypothesis about why certain aspects of structure may be indeterminate in the syntactic phrase marker constructed by the human sentence-parsing mechanism. 2.1 Relative Clause Attachment: The Initial Construal Hypothesis Given a standard phrase marker 2 and general principles of syntactic parsing (Right Association in Kimball 1973; Late Closure in Frazier 1978), one would expect a structural preference for low attachment of the relative clause in (1) whereby the relative will modify the second nominal (the colonel).

However, Cuetos and Mitchell (1988) investigated the Spanish counterpart to (1) and argue that high attachment is preferred. In English there is no evidence for a high attachment (N1) preference, but neither is there clear evidence for the predicted late closure (N2) preference (see Clifton 1988; Mitchell and Cuetos 1991; Carreiras and Clifton 1993). Instead, whether the relative clause is preferred to modify a projection of the first or the second noun depends on a variety of factors, N2 preference being strongest when N2 has its own overt determiner and is introduced by a preposition with its own lexical semantic content (Clifton 1988; Frazier 1990c). In both Spanish and English it appears that the type of the relative clause head influences the preferred attachment of the relative clause, as illustrated in (2) (see Gilboy et al. 1995, and chapter 4 of this book). (2)

a. Material the table of wood that was from Galicia

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b.Quantity the glass of wine you liked c.Relational (friend, enemy, son, and other argument-taking NPs, e.g., pictureNPs) the son of the woman that was dying d.Possessive the car of the company that was falling apart e.Nonaccompaniment with the girl with the hat that looked funny There appears to be a "hierarchy" of preferences, with material and quantity NPs (2a b) showing the strongest N1 preference, NPs with a contentful PP (2e) showing the strongest N2 preference, and relational (2c) and possessive (2d) NPs being intermediate. As we will argue in chapter 4, the preferences in (2) are strongly affected by such factors as whether a potential host noun is referential and whether it is in the same thematic processing domain as the relative clause. The assumption that relative clauses are parsed according to the predictions of general structural parsing strategies (e.g., Late Closure) does not account for the behavior of relative clauses with complex heads. Instead, a relative clause may be construed with the last nominal maximal projection. Later we will suggest that this explains why Late Closure does not uniformly apply in this structure and why NP type matters, along with the nature of the preposition, the presence of a determiner, and the headedness of the NP. What does it mean to construe a relative clause? By hypothesis, construal consists of a syntactic operation of association to a domain, indicated throughout this book by a dashed line (see, e.g., (5)), and an interpretation process. Association differs from attachment because it is not governed by general attachment principles that favor structurally defined "target" sites. Further, unlike attachment, construal may leave certain sisterhood and dominance relations unspecified, to be determined using nonstructural as well as structural information. The Relative Clause Construal Hypothesis is summarized in (3). (3)Relative Clause Construal Hypothesis a.Associate a relative clause to the current thematic processing domainthe (extended) maximal projection of the last theta assigner. 3

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b.Interpret the relative clause with any grammatically permissible material in the associated domain using structural and semantic/pragmatic information. To illustrate the principles in (3), we will take up three cases: (a) the choice of a relative clause head for unmoved relative clauses with complex heads containing more than one nominal, (b) the X' level chosen as head for nominals with modifiers, and (c) the selection of an NP head for extraposed relatives. We can illustrate (a) using the examples in (2). In (2e) the last theta assigner is the preposition with, which, we assume, can assign a theta role to the following maximal projection, the NP the hat. If a following relative clause is associated with this PP, which constitutes the current thematic domain, then only the hat will be available within the domain to head the relative clause. In (2a), by contrast, if wood does not project to a maximal projection (thereby becoming able to be a theta assignee) or if of transmits but does not assign its own theta role, then the entire NP will be contained in the current thematic processing domain. Hence, wood will not be the only nominal available in the current domain to head the relative clause. Turning to questions about the X' level of the preferred head, note that a fragment like (4) has three interpretations. (4) the best students who take linguistics a. [Nmax the [N' best [N' students who take linguistics]]] b. [Nmax the [N'[N' best students] [CP who take linguistics]]] c. [Nmax[Nmax the best students] [CP who take linguistics]] Ignoring the nonrestrictive relative clause in (4c), the question of interest is whether any systematic structural preference leads the parser to opt for (4a), which picks out the best of the students who take linguistics, or (4b), which may pick out the linguistics students from the best students of some presupposed set (e.g., the best students at the university). According to the Relative Clause Construal Hypothesis, the relative clause in (4) will simply associate to Nmax in all cases, and the interpretation can be determined by semantic and pragmatic factors such as whether a restriction on the domain for best students (in (4b)) is already available, say, from the discourse context. 4 No systematic or invariant structurally determined preference is predicted to occur. Consider next what the Relative Clause Construal Hypothesis predicts about parsing a simple extraposed relative clause, like (5).

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The relative clause is predicted to associate into the current thematic processing domain (as stated in (3)), which is the extended VP, as illustrated in (5) by the asterisks on the node labels of the extended VP projection. Recent work in syntactic theory (e.g., Grimshaw 1991, 1993) allows functional projections to be viewed as extensions of their lexical complements. Thus, CP or IP may be seen as an extension of VP. On this view, the VP and the IP in (5) do not count as completely distinct projections. The verb projects to the lexical projection VP and on to the functional levels IP and CP. Considerable recent work in linguistics suggests that functional elements (Determiner, Preposition, Inflection, Complementizer) may project but do not form projections that are totally distinct from the projections of the lexical elements (Noun, Verb, Adjective) that occur as their complements. This basic idea is currently taking expression in several types of work beyond the initial proposal by Grimshaw (1991, 1993). For example, Li (1993) exploits it in the characterization of extraction domains (see chapter 7 for further discussion), and Epstein (1993) argues that at LF, after inflectional features are checked, their projections may be "erased," thereby becoming further projections of the VP. In any case, to ensure that phrase markers are exhaustively parsed into thematic processing domains, we assume that projections may be extended to include higher dominating nodes, provided that no assigner of a primary theta role structurally intervenes and provided that the syntactic category features of the nodes are compatible (V, I, and C are compatible with each other, as are N, D, and P). This allows the formation of extended projections, as in (6) and (7) (where all phrases, including DP, are fully expanded for purposes of illustration, and where a * is appended to a node label to indicate that it is part of an extended projection of some category).

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Returning to the extraposed relative clause example in (5), it is clear that the current thematic processing domain will be the extended VP headed by slapped, that is, the entire IP. Hence, either NP, the subject or the object, should be available to head the relative clause without a structural revision of an initial attachment of the relative clause. No structural garden path is predicted to occur in either (8a) or (8b), which are disambiguated toward having the subject or the object head the relative clause. See chapter 5 for more discussion. (8)a.Some girl slapped some boy yesterday who was angered by his behavior. b.Some girl slapped some boy yesterday who angered her with his behavior. Note that deleting the yesterday from (8) results in a strong preference for the relative clause to take the more recent object NP some boy as head. This may be because the parser prefers to avoid chains (the Minimal Chain Principle, discussed in chapter 1). If the relative clause were to take the subject as host, it would have to have been extraposed from within the subject NP, but such extraposition is not needed when the relative clause is immediately adjacent to an object NP host. Introducing yesterday before the relative clause requires it to be analyzed as extraposed, reducing the difference in acceptability between (8a) and (8b). See chapter 5 for further discussion.

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Construal of relative clauses by associating the relative clause to the current thematic processing domain thus accounts for the processing preferences observed for relative clauses with complex heads and for the absence of structurally governed garden paths in examples like (4) and (8). Simply abandoning Late Closure in general to account for the availability of high attachments would not solve these problems since the principle is needed for a variety of other structures discussed in chapter 1. It also would not do to assume that Early Closure, not Late Closure, applies to attach modifiers into complex NPs. This would incorrectly predict that early closure should be preferred in all NP types. Construal, by contrast, predicts that the cases where normal parsing strategies do not hold for initial attachments (secondary relations) exhibit structural indeterminacy, not some different structural preference. Construal also predicts that processing preferences, even initial ones, will be influenced by semantic factors in the case of structural indeterminacy. By contrast, in the case of primary relations such as argument assignments, semantic or pragmatic considerations may still have a rapid effectthe point is simply that they do not guide initial hypothesis formation in this case. 2.2 Other Structures Subject to Construal 2.2.1 Conjoined Structures Does Construal apply in processing any structure other than relative clauses? One candidate is the processing of conjoined structures. Cowart (1991) has shown that binding into a conjoined object NP reveals asymmetries between the first and second conjuncts in terms of the relative acceptability of a local versus a distant antecedent for a reflexive. He showed that in a written questionnaire, systematically collected acceptability judgments assign higher ratings to a nonlocal antecedent (9d) than to a local one (9b) for a reflexive in the second conjunct of a sentence like (9b,d) but not for one in the first conjunct (9a,c). (9)a. Amy believes the two commissioners admire themselves and the mayor. b.Amy believes the two commissioners admire the mayor and themselves. c. The two commissioners believe Amy admires themselves and the mayor. d.The two commissioners believe Amy admires the mayor and themselves.

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Imagine that a conjoined phrase is associated to the current thematic processing domain, resulting in the structure in (10).

Given (10), one would expect the relation between the second conjunct (and himself) and the larger structure to be mediated by semantic factors. Perhaps this leads to the observed bias for a nonlocal semantically determined (logophoric?) antecedent for the reflexive. The parser might interpret the associated phrase with reference to LF or a semantic representation of the phrase marker, for example, thus applying conditions of that level to get an interpretation. (Also see Munn 1993, where it is argued that noninitial conjuncts are adjuncts at surface structure.) Note that the prediction of a preference for conjoined NPs, not conjoined Ss (see chapter 1), will remain under the present account, since by Minimal Attachment the IP node that is needed only for S conjunction will not be postulated by the parser in the absence of evidence requiring that the node be postulated. Cowart himself argues that conjoined phrases are not integrated into the syntactic structure at all. This idea has several drawbacks, however. For example, a pronoun in a conjoined phrase should always manage to satisfy Principle B of the binding theory ("A pronoun cannot be bound within its domain") on this view even when coindexed with the subject of its own clause. Examples like (11a) suggest that there is something odd at least about a conjoined pronoun being coreferential with a local phrase.

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(11)

a. ?Maryi pinched Sam and heri. b. Maryi pinched Sam and herselfi.

Further, in adjuncts the conjunct would not be interpreted at all, on this view, since it could not be integrated using subcategorization frames or argument structures as Cowart (lecture notes) suggests happens when the conjoined phrase is an argument (see (9)). These observations suggest that the conjoined phrase must somehow be integrated with the larger syntactic structure. Instead of treating conjoined phrases as being completely unintegrated with the syntactic representation as Cowart suggests, we might pursue the idea that their relation to the larger phrase marker is not fully determinate (at least initially) but consists of an association that is further specified or interpreted using nonstructural information. 5 In short, conjoined phrases may provide another structure interpreted by construal. Indeed, the hypothesis that conjoined phrases are associated into a structure rather than attached in a strictly determinate fashion squares well with the intuition that parallelismsemantic as well as syntacticgoverns the preferred analysis of conjoined elements. Experimental evidence also indicates that semantic parallelism plays a role in parsing conjoined phrases. Altmann, Henstra, and Garnham (1993) show that subjects take a relative clause to modify both NPs in a conjoined NP without any modifiers (90%) (12a), but interpret the relative clause as modifying the second conjunct (77% of the time) when the first conjunct contains a PP modifier (12b). (12)a.Tom saw a boy and a girl that was/were walking down the road. b.Tom saw a boy in a smart suit and a girl that was/were walking down the road. Rather than develop the analysis of conjunction here, we leave it open and turn instead to the processing of adjunct predicates. 2.2.2 Adjunct Predication Consider (13), for example, which is in principle at least three ways ambiguous. One reading involves a causative interpretation of the verb and resultant state (13a). (13) Sam hammered the metal flat. Resultant state: Sam caused the metal to be flat by hammering. a. Object: Sam hammered the metali (already) flati. b. Subject: Sami hammered the metal flati. c. Whenever a causative interpretation of the verb and resultant-state interpretation of the adjective phrase is possible, it is this reading that seems to

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be preferred. The resultant-state reading requires the adjective to modify the object (Levin and Rapoport 1988). On this reading, the adjective (flat in (13a)) is not really an adjunct; instead, it functions as part of the complement to the verb (and thus should be preferred because of the preference to analyze a phrase as a primary relation; see below). By contrast, in (13b) and (13c) the adjective functions as an adjunct predicate, specifying the already existing state of the object (13b) or subject (13c) at the start of the event described. Once the resultant-state reading (13a) is eliminated, it is unclear whether the preference for the (adjunct) predicate to modify the object still exists. In a series of psycholinguistic studies (Clifton, Frazier, and Rapoport 1994; see also chapter 6), unambiguous subject-adjunct sentences (14a) took no longer to read than unambiguous object-adjunct sentences (14b). (14)

a. b.

John ate the broccoli naked. John ate the broccoli raw.

The final interpretation preference data for ambiguous adjunct sentences show a somewhat unstable object preference. Imagine that subject-adjunct sentences have the structure in (14a) and object-adjunct sentences the structure in (15b).

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What we would expect in this case is a consistent preference for the low attachment in (15b) because of Late Closureand thus a consistent object-adjunct preference and slow reading times for subject-adjunct sentences, where a revision of analysis will be required. Counter to this prediction, semantically disambiguated subject-adjunct sentences show no evidence of a structural misanalysis. Thus, much as in the relative clause attachment example, we see that a general structural preference for low attachment is not confirmed. However, a general high attachment preference is not observed either. Instead, semantic and aspectual factors (expressed in ed vs. ing) influence the complexity of processing the structures and the preferences in cases of ambiguity. We might therefore conclude that the processor associates either a subject or an object adjunct predicate into the partially indeterminate sentence structure shown in (16).

Several linguistic observations support the existence of a structure like (16) or, more generally, the claim that adjunct predicates are subject to construal. First, adjunct predication structures are somewhat exceptional in that they exhibit a semantic or thematic constraint on the possible host or subject (external argument) for the adjunct predicate. Williams (1980) presents examples like those in (17) to show the existence of a constraint that limits within-VP hosts to the theme or affected object (dog, not the goal Bill), thereby excluding nonthemes as the subject for the adjunct predicate. (17)

a. John gave a dogi to Billj deadi/*j. b. John gave Billj a dogi deadi/*j.

If the subject of the sentence is chosen as the subject of the adjunct predicate, no such constraint holds. The existence of a semantic/thematic constraint on the choice of subject of the adjunct predicate is consistent with the idea that semantic information is brought to bear on the interpretation of the indeterminate structure in (16) to determine the subject of the adjunct predicate.

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The remainder of this book explores these (and other) constructions more fully and evaluates the extent to which their processing can be understood by appeal to the Construal Hypothesis. Before embarking on this enterprise, however, we must carefully specify the nature of the hypothesis we are exploring. 2.3 Summary and General Proposal Low attachment preferences predicted by Late Closure are not systematically confirmed in relative clause attachment and adjunct predication structures. Similarly, high attachment of these structures also is not systematically preferred. In both relative clause and adjunct predication structures, nonstructural information appears to influence initial interpretation. It does not appear that the preferred interpretation follows as a consequence of a syntactic representation being chosen on purely structural grounds. At least, purely structural preferences cannot be established with the same methods used to study the processing of other (primary) syntactic relations, and the preferences that do exist with these constructions are best understood in terms of nonstructural factors. To account for this pattern, it was proposed that the ambiguous phrase is analyzed by construal. Construal consists of associating (to be contrasted with attaching) a phrase to some domain in the phrase marker. The relevant domain seems to be the current thematic processing domain, regardless of whether the structure in question is adjunct predicates, relative clauses in ''extraposed" or "intraposed" position, or noninitial conjuncts of a conjoined phrase. Once associated into the structural representation, the structure may be interpreted in any manner consistent with syntactic and semantic conditions (e.g., the theme constraint for VP-contained object-host adjuncts) and the conditions imposed by the relevant interpretation principle (e.g., sisterhood for modificationsee Williams 1993; the Complement Principle for extraposed relative clausessee Culicover and Rochemont 1990, and chapter 5). Examining the structures discussed here, one might wonder why Construal applies in these particular cases. Relative clauses and adjunct predicates may be viewed as instances of secondary predication (where an NP participates in a second predication or thematic chaina thematic chain that could be deleted without sacrificing the well-formedness of the sentence). Perhaps the generalization is simply that constituent structure

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does not in all cases uniquely determine the subject of a secondary predicate. There are several indications that Construal applies more widely than in just these cases, however. Conjunction, one potential example of construal, straightforwardly defies analysis in terms of a subject-predicate relation, at least given current theories. 6 All of the examples to be discussed, including conjunction, do fall together into a class of construal structures if we distinguish primary relations from other structures. Let us define primary relations as the main subjectpredicate relation together with any obligatory positions defined by those relations or their instantiation, as stated in (18). (18)

Primary phrases and relations include a. the subject and main predicate of any (+ or -) finite clause b. complements and obligatory constituents of primary phrases.

The subject and predicate in a small clause complement or a prepositional complement of the main predicate will thus count as primary phrases. But elaborations of argument positions through adjunct predicates, relative clauses, or conjunction will not; they are secondary or nonprimary phrases. A phrase that can never be a primary phrase, in any context (e.g., a relative clause), or that has no potential licenser in its local context (e.g., a prepositional phrase attached to a subject NP headed by a noun that assigns no theta role), cannot be taken to instantiate a primary phrase. We will assume that only phrases that cannot, even temporarily, be taken to instantiate a primary phrase or relation are treated as nonprimary phrases and parsed using the Construal Principle. Of course, the status of a phrase may have to be revised if it is initially but incorrectly taken to be a primary phrase. We propose that primary phrases are immediately attributed fully determinate syntactic structures by the parser and thus initially receive the interpretation specified by these structures. This is not true for nonprimary phrases. Instead, a phrase that cannot be analyzed by the parser as primary without violating the grammar of the language is construed by being associated with some region of the structure and interpreted using additional structural and nonstructural information and interpretive conditions. The Construal Hypothesis is summarized in (19). (19)a.Construal Principle i.Associate a phrase XP that cannot be analyzed as instantiating a primary relation into the current thematic processing domain.

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ii.Interpret XP within that domain using structural and nonstructural (interpretive) principles. b.Current thematic processing domain The current thematic processing domain is the extended maximal projection of the last theta assigner. To illustrate the proposal, (20) (copied from (17) of chapter 1) lists some of the structural ambiguities arising in English that we have claimed are first analyzed using only structural information and structural parsing principles. The ambiguities in (21) are some of those we propose are instead analyzed following the Construal Principle. In fact, as mentioned in chapter 1 and discussed further in chapter 8, we now attribute some of the garden path ambiguities in (20)most notably (20i k)to the "current processing domain" claim of the Construal Hypothesis, not to the structural parsing principle of Late Closure. These ambiguities involve nonprimary phrases, which are subject to construal, rather than primary phrases, subject to the structural parsing principles. Nonetheless, in contrast to the ambiguities in (21), they result in garden path effects for reasons discussed below. (20) Structural attachment ambiguities a. Main clause/reduced relative The horse raced past the barn (fell). b.NP versus S complement John knew the answer to the physics problem was wrong/very well. c. Direct object versus subject of S2 While Mary was mending the sock (it) fell off her lap. d.NP conjunction versus S conjunction Jacob kissed Miriam and her sister (laughed). e. PP attachment to VP/NP Sandra wrote a letter to Mary. f. Complement/relative clause John told the girl that Bill liked the story. g.Attachment of NP as second object/relative on first object Fred gave the man the dog (bit the package). h.Purpose clause versus rationale clause Nixon bought a 1960's version of Trivial Pursuit to amuse his friends. i. Attachment of PP to lower clause/higher clause I put the book that you were reading in the library (into my briefcase).

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j. Attachment of S to lower clause/higher clause Fred will realize that Mary left when the party starts/started. k.Attachment of Adverb to lower clause/higher clause We remembered that the assignment will be due yesterday/tomorrow. l. Left-branching versus right-branching N-N compound the butter cream factory/the concrete cream factory (21)Structural association ambiguities a.[N1 (of) N2] RC (Relative clause with complex head) A table of wood that was from Galicia . . . b.[NP V NP Adv] RC (Extraposed relative clause) Some girl hit some boy last night who was . . . c.[NP V NP] AP (Secondary predication) John ate the broccoli raw/naked. d.[XP] and XP (Conjunction) The nurse weighed John and Mary (both/together). e.[NP VP] because S (Adjunct clause attachment) The doctor didn't leave because he was angry. The structures in (20) have for the most part been studied extensively (see chapter 1). Ambiguities like The horse raced past the barn fell (20a) fall under attachment (determinate structural analysis selected by purely structural principles) because the predicate may be interpreted as instantiating a primary relation involving the main predicate. Examples (20b e) involve competition between two (potential) arguments and thus constitute primary relations. Examples (20f h) prefer an analysis as an argument or subcategorized element over a nonprimary relation. Examples (20i k) show garden path effects because they involve attachments in two distinct thematic domains and therefore association to the lower domain disambiguates the sentence. Example (201) cannot be analyzed as association/construal since, by hypothesis, only phrases, not individual words (those that cannot be analyzed as phrases), may undergo construal. The structures in (21) have already been discussed here except for the ones in (21b), extraposed relatives, and (21e), because clauses attached to VP versus S. The proposal in (19) predicts that these structures too should show the behavior of construal, that is, early use of semantics coupled with an absence of structural revision effects in semantically unambiguous high attachments. These structures are discussed in chapters 3 through 7.

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Proposals sharing some features of our construal proposal exist in the literature. Early heuristic approaches to comprehension suggested that D-Structure was constructed directly (see Bever 1970), perhaps without construction of a fully specified S-Structure representation (for discussion, see Frazier 1978). More recently Marcus, Hindle, and Fleck (1983) proposed D-theory, according to which the parser recovers a description of the phrase marker in which partial syntactic descriptions are available. For example, a phrase X may dominate Y without any commitment about whether this entails immediate domination. Since then, Perfetti (1990) and Weinberg (1993) have made proposals according to which less-than-complete syntactic structures are initially created. We will return to these proposals in chapter 8. Here we will discuss just one hypothesis regarding the postponement of certain parsing decisions, delayed binding, which contrasts in interesting ways with the Construal Hypothesis proposed here. Church (1980) suggests that the parser performs pseudoattachment of prepositional phrases and other phrases. Essentially, it constructs a syntactic phrase marker that is indeterminate with respect to which of several grammatically permissible attachments of the phrase corresponds to the correct or intended (disambiguated) analysis of it. Church's Pseudoattachment Principle claims that certain phrases are attached to more than one position, indicating that the syntax alone does not adjudicate among the alternative syntactic attachments. Pseudoattachment differs fundamentally from the Construal Hypothesis in terms of its intended domain of application. Church illustrates Pseudoattachment in the examples in (22). (22) a. Put the block in the box on the table. b. He carried nothing to indicate that he was one of the group. c. We sighted the man with the binoculars. d. We never fought a bull with real courage. e. He hit the man with the stick. f. He seemed nice to her. In (22) the PP pseudoattaches, according to Church. By contrast, the Construal Hypothesis claims that the first PP is taken to instantiate the locative arguments of put, since it may be analyzed as instantiating a primary relation. Hence, Pseudoattachment predicts that only semantic factors will choose between the analyses shown in (23). The Construal Hypothesis, by contrast, predicts a structural preference for the analysis in (23b).

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(23)

a. Put [the block in the box] [on the table]. b. Put [the block] [in the box on the table].

Similarly, in (22c f) the Construal Hypothesis predicts that the final PP will preferentially be minimally attached to VP, where it will be interpreted as an argument, rather than attached to the preceding phrase, as a modifier in (22c e) or as an argument in (22f). (See Clifton, Speer, and Abney 1991 for empirical evidence supporting these predictions.) Examples like (22b), which to our knowledge have not been studied in the psycholinguistic literature, are not straightforwardly covered by the current proposal. In principle, there might be a preference to associate to a lower node (NP) rather than to a higher node (VP). Alternatively, the semantic content of the infinitival clause may determine whether it is taken to be a relative clause and thus associated low (to NP) or high (to VP/S). 7 Besides applying to phrases that potentially instantiate primary relations, Pseudoattachment differs from the Construal Hypothesis in a more subtle way. In Church's presentation of Pseudoattachment, the parser actually builds two different syntactic representations. Thus, the principle appears to reduce to the claim that a limited amount of syntactic parallelism is found in the natural-language parser. In terms of empirical predictions, Pseudoattachment thus seems to predict that processing complexity should vary with the number of possible syntactic attachments. By contrast, the Construal Hypothesis specifies that only one (underdetermined) structure is built. Processing complexity thus should not vary with the number of grammatical structures that could be assigned to the input, but should vary as a function of the number of interpretations. See Clifton, Frazier, and Rapoport 1994 and chapter 6, for one example where the number of structures is varied independently of the number of interpretations. 2.3.1 Why Construal? The processing theory advocated here breaks down into the separate claims enumerated in (24), each of which requires an explanation. (24)a.The parser distinguishes two classes of processing decisions (the analysis of primary vs. nonprimary relations). b.One class of decisions (primary) involves an immediate determinate attachment and exhibits a general preference for a particular structurally defined analysis.

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c.The structural preference can be described by Minimal Attachment and Late Closure. d.For the second class of decisions (nonprimary), no general structural preference is observed. e.For the second class, semantic information can contribute to the identification of the (initial) preferred determinate analysis. f. For the second class, an input must still be related to a fixed domain rather than being left entirely unrelated to the larger structure. g.This domain is defined in thematic terms. To begin with (24a), why should processing decisions fall into two classes? One possibility is that the processor is simply honoring obligatory grammatical requirements first, using them to guide fast obligatory decisions. Decisions concerning optional elements may then follow, being made at a more leisurely pace in terms of the constraints or guidelines emerging from obligatory decisions. For the most part, this simple account of (24a) would suffice since nonprimary phrases are indeed optional. They include adjunct clauses, secondary predicates, and noninitial conjuncts of conjoined phrases. There is a difficulty with this account of (24a), however. There exist optional arguments that fall under the class of primary relations, for example, the object of an optionally transitive verb like read or sing. Similarly, the predicate of a small clause is not obligatory in any context where its potential subject could be the direct object of the matrix verb, as in I saw Bill fall. Thus, the simple assumption that obligatory decisions take precedence or priority over optional ones is not fully adequate to explain (24a). Although primary relations can be either obligatory or optional, nonprimary relations are essentially always optional. In particular, the presence of a nonprimary phrase is not required bynor does it interact withsyntactic properties of individual lexical items. Put bluntly, to determine the grammatical properties of the lexical items in a sentence, one could ignore nonprimary relations. However, the primary relations that are identified determine whether a verb is transitive or intransitive, whether it has one or two objects, whether an NP is theme or agent, and so on. We think this is the key to explaining (24a), in particular, and in essence the key to the entire system proposed here. The syntactic processor must rapidly fix the properties of the lexical items in the input string in some manner consistent with a syntactically well formed analysis of previous items.

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It is desirable, we think, to turn the usual assumption of lexically driven syntactic processing on its head: rapid construction of a single syntactic analysis of the input may be motivated in large part by the need to rapidly find a single lexical description of the input string that is globally consistent with all prior syntactic context. Finding a legitimate grammatical relation between some item, word n 1, and one description of word n, and then finding a legitimate grammatical relation between word n + 1 and some other description of word n will under most circumstances only complicate the parsing process. The parser must find a structure consistent with a single fixed lexical description of the input. To accomplish this, obligatory syntactic requirements must be met by just one single analysis of each word or terminal symbol in the phrase marker. It is the need for rapid analysis, we have argued, that motivates minimal structure postulation and incorporation of new items into the current phrase. This explains (24b,c). It is the fact that rapid analysis entails the need to determine the lexical structures of the words in the input string that motivates (24a). In its boldest form, the present theory claims that the parser takes as its central initial task fully identifying the words or terminal symbols in a syntactic phrase marker, including identifying what lexical structure permitted by the word is realized on a particular occasion of use. This is accomplished, we assume, primarily on the basis of syntactic analysis of local context. Decisions about nonprimary relations do not interact with this task and thus need not be made immediately in the absence of helpful information. From this it follows that no consistent structural (first attachment) preference is observed for nonprimary relations (24d). Without the pressure for lexical disambiguation to an analysis consistent with syntactic context, there is no reason to expect premature or uninformed decisions concerning nonprimary relations. The parser already has an analysis of input items with a potentially correct analysis of each part of the sentence. Hence, only if syntactic theory in all cases demanded determinate relations (e.g., permitting only relations like sisterhood to be stated), would we expect premature or semantically blind decisions about nonprimary relations (see (24e)). Why, then, must a nonprimary phrase be related to the larger syntactic structure at all? Why could it not be left unattached and unassociated until a final, perhaps semantically guided, analysis of this item had been achieved? We think this requirement, stated in (24f), is straightforwardly explained by known properties of human short-term memory. If any in-

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put item is not related to already analyzed material, then it is unlikely to persist in memory, at least without the help of some rehearsal buffer (and we note that placing an item into such a buffer may imply prosodic grouping of that item with others). The need to relate an item to already analyzed material in the current domain does not itself explain why the domain in question should be defined in terms of a thematically interpreted constituent structure domain (the extended projection of the last theta assigner); see (24g). Several lines of work (Williams 1993; Radó 1994) suggest that we need to distinguish between two kinds of representations constructed during on-line language comprehension. One is concerned with NP-movement, binding or theta operations that can be characterized in terms of constituent structures that include or map onto a thematic vocabulary at a stage prior to wh-movement. 8 At this level reference can be viewed, according to Williams, in terms of theta roles (not NPs) referring. NPs simply place constraints on the reference of the theta roles. The other type of representation, often referred to as Logical Form or LF, involves operator-variable structures that are the characteristic output of wh-movement, quantifier raising, and the like. These operator-variable structures are defined with respect to the former (theta-related) syntactic structures. Thus, we do not expect them to be built earlier than theta-related structures. Imagine, as we suggest in chapter 8, that parsing involves ongoing assignment of a surface syntactic structure, with ongoing thematic and logical (LF) interpretation of this structure. It seems reasonable to assume that thematic interpretation may temporally precede logical interpretation of this structure. No explicit or extrinsic principle has to impose this order. Thematic assignments constrain the shape of the grammatical tree structures for a sentence (by determining the number and type of theta roles available), whereas logical interpretation involves an operation on the tree structure, assuming that interpretation of logical relations involves quantifier raising (QR) (May 1986). Considerable empirical evidence also suggests that the thematically related syntactic structure is built immediately during parsing (see Frazier and Rayner 1982, for X' structure; Nicol and Swinney 1989, for coreference involving reflexives; Forster and Stevenson 1987 and Clahsen, Hong, and Sonnenstuhl-Henning 1995, for evidence from sentence matching). Given this assumption, it is natural for immediate association into the current domain to be defined in terms of a domain involving S-Structure and thematic structure, not S-Structure and Logical Form, since the themati-

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cally defined processing unit may systematically be available immediately in the form of the current parse tree. In short, nonprimary phrases associate into interpretive domains. By hypothesis, early in processing these domains are defined by S-Structure (constituent structure) and D-Structure (thematic structure) information, not by the operator-variable structures built from it. 2.3.2 Studying Construal In the remainder of this book, we present empirical evidence for this new theory of sentence processing. We focus particularly on constructions that have not been extensively discussed in the psycholinguistic literature. At the end of each chapter we try to place our results in the context of prior work on the structures examined in the chapter or related constructions. We also attempt to flesh out the details of our Construal Hypothesis by giving an initial formulation of several principles that govern sentence interpretation. We use psycholinguistic techniques that are appropriate to opening up an area of study, not to resolving the finegrained details of phenomena in the area. Our techniques, we believe, are appropriate to the types of questions we address and to the hypotheses among which we are attempting to discriminate. We take up several types of questions. One type concerns whether a structurally determined preference exists at all in the analysis of certain sentences. Sometimes untutored intuitions about the preferred reading of a sentence can provide useful information concerning this question. This is especially the case when we take care to ensure that no nonstructural biases exist in the test materials. Another type of question concerns what principles govern the final interpretation of ambiguous sentences. Intuitive evidence can be of value here, again under the same circumstances. At other times we inquire whether a structural asymmetry or preference can be seen when disambiguating structural or nonstructural information forces the interpretation in one direction versus the other. In such cases online evidence about comprehension times is usually essential. We use on-line tasks, primarily phrase-by-phrase self-paced reading, to address questions about the sources of structural asymmetry. The tasks we use have proven adequate to identify structural asymmetries in the study of garden path sentences, sentences with temporary ambiguities involving primary relations (e.g., Frazier 1978; Clifton, Speer, and Abney 1991; Mitchell 1994). Since our intention is to explore the processing of non-

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primary relations as broadly as possible given the resources available to us, it seems appropriate to use experimental techniques that yield data quickly even if they are crude in the sense of being sensitive to late as well as early stages of processing. Concerns might arise about our use of relatively crude experimental procedures, given arguments we have made elsewhere regarding the need to probe the fine details of reading performance (see Rayner et al. 1989). In fact, we claim that when the context preceding a point of temporary ambiguity conflicts with the structurally preferred resolution, a measure with high temporal resolving power is needed. Crude measures will not discriminate between initial and possibly short-lived effects of structural parsing principles and the powerful but possibly delayed effects of the semantics or the pragmatics of a prior context (and, perhaps, frequency of usage of the constructions involved in the ambiguity). In such cases measures such as eyetracking measurement that provide as much information as possible about the earliest stages of reading, distinct from more global measures of processing difficulty, are needed to make secure inferences about the parser's initial analyses. However, relatively crude online processing tasks have proven to be very effective when material following the point of temporary ambiguity determines the final interpretation of a sentence. In such cases disruption can easily be observed when information after the point of ambiguity forces an interpretation that is inconsistent with structural parsing preferences (see, e.g., Clifton, Speer, and Abney 1991; Ferreira and Clifton 1986; Ferreira and Henderson 1991; Mitchell and Holmes 1985). It seems that if preceding context allows the parser to go down the garden path for some while, sophisticated techniques are not needed to detect the consequences of revising the first analysis (see Frazier 1994 for an account of syntactic reanalysis). In essentially all cases considered here, we examine reading in situations in which disambiguating information follows the point where a processing preference is predicted by the garden path theory (as opposed to the Construal Hypothesis). This is the situation in which crude experimental techniques seem to be capable of detecting garden-pathing. Thus, failure to find any trace of garden-pathing in such cases is informative. However, we do not limit ourselves to showing the absence of garden-pathing. Success in finding effects of variables predicted to be relevant by the Construal Hypothesis, but not specifically treated by the garden path theory, is at least equally informative, and we present evidence of such effects whenever we can.

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Of course, it is possible that our materials contain unidentified factors of semantics, pragmatics, or plausibility early in a sentence that override a small structurally based asymmetry. Later, more sensitive, experiments may thus uncover asymmetries that we overlook, which may suggest a different picture of sentence processing than the one we present. Still, we will argue that any such asymmetries must be different in magnitude, and perhaps in kind, from the structural asymmetries we and others have previously identified in the processing of primary relations. At times the exploratory nature of our research will become painfully obvious. This is especially so when we are studying constructions (e.g., the adjunct extractions of chapter 7) that are nearly impossible to disambiguate syntactically and that have seldom been studied previously in psycholinguistic terms. In studying such constructions, we exploit any kind of evidence we can find, including off-line preference data as well as on-line comprehension data and the relation between the two types of data.

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Page viii Appendix: Sentences Used in Experiments

173

Notes

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References

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Index

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Chapter 3 Attachment versus Association: Adverbial Clauses 3.1 Introduction In this chapter we present an experimental test of a basic prediction of the Construal Hypothesis by applying it to adverbial clauses. We contrast the processing of two classes of adverbials. Adverbials of the first class are predicted to be attached low, in a manner previously attributed to the structural principle of Late Closure (although we now attribute the parsing preference we observe to a different mechanism, as described below). The superficially similar adverbials of the second class are predicted to be associated to VP, where they remain consistent with either an S-attached or a VP-attached interpretation. In both classes of adverbials, the adverbial clause is predicted to be associated initially into the current thematic processing domain. For one class, this disambiguates the structure, resulting in the appearance of low attachmentthe attachment consistent with the postulated association. For the other class, this initial association itself leaves the interpretation ambiguous. Hence, in this class, no general structurally determined bias toward low attachment should be observed. In section 3.2 we describe the experimental materials and predictions, which were tested in a comprehension study reported in section 3.3. In section 3.4 we explore the effect of the length of an ambiguous (adverbial) phrase on structurally determined preferences. In section 3.5 we briefly take up other experimental investigations of processing adverbial clauses, and we discuss them in light of our own results. 3.2 Attachment versus Construal: Adverbial Attachment Sites within a Processing Domain versus in Different Domains We have suggested that two distinct classes of constructions must be distinguished in considering processes of sentence comprehension. The

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constructions of one class, which have been the focus of most psycholinguistic investigations of sentence processing, are parsed into fully articulated syntactic structures using preference principles stated in terms of the shape of the syntactic phrase marker, such as Minimal Attachment and Late Closure. Constructions of the second class are parsed, we propose, according to the Construal Hypothesis, whereby a phrase is merely ''associated" to the current domain. Semantic and other nonstructural factors may influence the further specification of the relation between that phrase and the material in the associated domain. We propose that phrases that may not grammatically be taken to instantiate primary relations are parsed by the Construal Principle, (1). (1)Construal Principle Associate XP, where XP cannot be a primary phrase, into the current processing domainsthe extended maximal projection of the last thematic role assigner. Consider an ambiguous sentence like John didn't leave because he was angry. In structural terms, the because clause will be under the scope of the negative only if it is attached to the VP, not if it is attached to the S. If Late Closure applied to create a determinate structure, the because clause would be attached to the VP, and thus the preferred interpretation of the sentence would place it under the scope of the negative. However, association of the because clause to the extended VP would permit ultimate attachment to either the VP or the S, and thus association is consistent with the because clause being either under or outside the scope of the negative. If it is assumed that the grammar contains an LF scope principle requiring some phrase X, or member of a chain containing X, to be c-commanded by an operator Y in order to be interpreted as being within the scope of Y, then a determinate attachment will be required eventually (at LF) when because is interpreted under the scope of the negative. The Construal Hypothesis predicts that the because clause should be associated to the extended projection of VP since the because clause does not instantiate a primary relation and the VP is the XP dominating the last thematic role assigner leave. This is illustrated in (2), where a dashed line is used to indicate the association of the subordinate clause into its domain. The association indicates that the because clause must be construed with its domain either as a VP adjunct, as in (3a), or as an S adjunct, as in (3b). 1

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Which of the interpretations in (3) is assigned by the processor depends on nonsyntactic factors. In the present example, we think the main clause of the sentence will have been semantically interpreted by the time the adjunct clause is encountered. Unless the sentence is presented in a context where it is already presupposed that John left, leave will be interpreted under the scope of negation. 2 Thus, only the interpretation where the adjunct clause is outside the scope of the negative will be consistent with the already computed assertion that John didn't leave. The Minimal Revisions Principle (Frazier 1990b) states that, other things being equal, the processor favors structures requiring the fewest revisions of already assigned structure and interpretation. Since a high attachment of the because clause requires no revision of the initial interpretation of John didn't leave, it should be preferred. This preference, however, does not come about because high attachment is favored structurally. It arises only because no fully determinate structural attachment of the because clause is made by the processor during initial structural analysis, permitting the initial interpretation of earlier portions of the sentence to be retained. Were it not for the apparent fact that the processor interprets material essentially as soon as possible, together with the Minimal Revisions Principle, no consistent structural preference would be predicted to exist in processing this nonprimary relation (and others). By contrast, in (4) the parser may not simply construe the adjunct adverbial as an adjunct of any verb within the domain of the entire sentence, remaining initially uncommitted to any particular structural analysis.

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(4) Jill claimed Jack fell yesterday. The two possible attachment sites in the sentence are in different clauses. The domain of the lower VP may not be extended to include the higher VP since claim, a thematic role assigner, intervenes. Therefore, the two attachment sites are in distinct thematic processing domains. Hence, in (4) the adverb must be associated with the most recent thematic processing domain, and there is no ambiguity about its interpretation. It will be associated as an adjunct within the lower domain. Given the lack of ambiguity, this amounts to an attachment. Virtual late closure is predicted, but the mechanism is association into the current thematic processing domain. (See Frazier 1987a and chapter 1 for cases where Late Closure rather than Construal applies because primary relations are involved.) To summarize, according to the Construal Hypothesis, certain structural relations may remain indeterminate, namely, those instantiating nonprimary relations involving two or more attachment sites in the same thematic processing domain. In such cases nonstructural factors may govern initial interpretation of the relation. The parser merely associates the phrase to the larger structure (the extended VP in the cases discussed here) and then various interpretation principles govern subsequent processing preferences. Phrases that potentially instantiate primary relations are initially analyzed using just structural information and structural attachment principles. Only in the latter case do we expect to observe systematic complexity differences associated with particular structural configurations. To test the Construal Hypothesis, we performed a reading time study comparing reading times for high (S) versus low (VP) attachment reading of because clauses as in (5a,b) where no low attachment preference is expected, with reading times for high (S1) versus low (S2) attachment of temporal adverbials, as in (6a,b) where virtual late closure (low attachment) should govern the initial parsing of the sentence. (5)a. The secretary didn't quit because of her large raise. b.The secretary didn't quit because of her low salary. c. The secretary disappeared because of her large raise. d.The secretary disappeared because of her low salary. John will explain to the kids that their grandfather died after the operation he (6)a. had. b.John will explain to the kids that their grandfather died after the operation they need.

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c.Apparently the kids' grandfather died after the operation he had. d.Probably John will explain the accident to the kids after the operation they need. The (c) and (d) forms simply control for the lexical differences between the (a) and (b) continuations of the sentences. Of course, it is possible that the presence of two clauses preceding the adverbial in (6) might itself result in greater complexity in processing the sentences in (6) as opposed to the one-clause sentences in (5). But this clausal complexity should hold equally for all sentence forms (6a d) and thus should not obscure the difficulty predicted to occur in (6b), relative to its control (6d), compared to (6a) relative to its control (6c). 3.3 Experiment 1 3.3.1 Method Materials Twenty because sentences were constructed in four versions each, as illustrated in (5) and in table 3.1. Four forms of each sentence were written. Two forms (5a,b) contained a negative main verb followed by a because clause that was disambiguated by pragmatics and plausibility to modify the entire sentence or to modify just the verb phrase (and thus to be within the scope of the negation). Two control forms of each sentence (5c,d) were also written, without a negative matrix verb but with the same sentence-final phrases as the two experimental forms. Two illustrations of the sentences together with the questions asked of them appear in table 3.1 (and all items appear in the appendix, as do the items from all experiments reported in this book). Wh-questions with two answer choices were made up for 12 of the 20 sentences. Six of the questions following experimental sentences offered affirmative answer choices (the A sentences in table 3.1) and six offered negative answer choices (the B sentences). The correct answers are italicized in table 3.1. Sixteen closure sentences, illustrated in (6) and (with questions) in table 3.2, were also constructed. Each sentence ended with a relatively long (an average of 6.4 words for the late closure sentences) temporal phrase (in one case, a because clause). This phrase could in principle modify the embedded sentence (late closure) or the matrix sentence (early closure), but was always disambiguated by the tense of the verbs in conjunction with the content of the temporal phrase.

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Table 3.1 Sample because sentences with questions, used in experiment 1; both question forms illustrated, with correct answers italicized Sentence type Sample item 1Experimental, S modification AThe secretary didn't quit because of her large raise. Why didn't the secretary quit? She DID quit Because of her large raise BThe addict didn't gamble because he couldn't stop.

2Experimental, VP modification

Why did the addict gamble? He DIDN'T gamble Because he couldn't stop AThe secretary didn't quit because of her low salary. Why didn't the secretary quit? She DID quit Because of her low salary BThe addict didn't gamble because he enjoyed it.

3Control for S modification

Why did the addict gamble? He DIDN'T gamble Not because he enjoyed it AThe secretary disappeared because of her large raise. Why did the secretary disappear? She DIDN'T disappear Because of her large raise BThe addict gambled because he couldn't stop.

Why did the addict gamble? He DIDN'T gamble Because he couldn't stop 4Control for VP modification AThe secretary disappeared because of her low salary. Why did the secretary disappear? She DIDN'T disappear Because of her low salary BThe addict gambled because he enjoyed it. Why did the addict gamble? He DIDN'T gamble Because he enjoyed it Wh-questions with two answer choices were made up for 12 of the 16 sentences. Ten of these 12 questions probed the interpretation of the temporal phrase whose attachment was temporarily ambiguous. In some cases the same question was used for all forms; in others, different questions were used. In a few cases (e.g., sentence form 1 in table 3.2), both answers were correct for one form of a sentence, but the answer most immediately appropriate to the intended interpretation of the sentencethe "late closure" interpretation in sentence form 1was scored as correct. In some other cases (e.g., sentence forms 3 and 4 in table 3.2), one of the answers is irrelevant to the sentence and hence can easily be rejected as wrong. For all these reasons, data from question-answering accuracy will have to be viewed with great caution.

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Table 3.2 Low attachment sentences with questions and alternative answers, experiment 1 Sentence type Sample item 1Experimental, John will explain to the kids that their grandfather late closure died after the operation he had.

2Experimental, early closure

What happens after the operation? The kids get an explanation The grandfather dies John will explain to the kids that their grandfather died after the operation they need.

What happens after the operation? The kids get an explanation The grandfather dies 3Control for late Apparently the kids' grandfather died after the closure operation he had.

4Control for early closure

What happens after the operation? The kids get an explanation The grandfather dies Probably John will explain the accident to the kids after the operation they need. What happens after the operation? The kids get an explanation The grandfather dies

These 36 experimental sentences were embedded in a list of 116 sentences of a variety of forms, 44 taken from other experiments not relevant here and the remainder taken from a variety of sources. A practice list containing 16 sentences was also constructed. Four versions of the experimental list were constructed, each containing an equal number of each form of the because and the attachment (closure) sentences. Over all four versions, each sentence was tested in each form. Subjects and Procedures Forty-eight undergraduates at the University of Massachusetts were tested in an end-of-sentence "got it" task (Frazier, Clifton, and Randall 1983; Clifton and Frazier 1986). After receiving instructions and being tested on the practice list, 12 subjects were tested on each version of the list of sentences. Each list was randomized independently for each subject. Each word in a sentence appeared on a computer-controlled video screen for 220 ms plus 15 ms per character in the word. The initial display on a trial showed where the words would appear by displaying an underscore for each letter. The words appeared in a moving-window display, each word replacing its underscore characters and then being replaced by

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Table 3.3 "Got it" response times (in milliseconds) and percentages of "got it" responses, because sentences, experiment 1 S modification VP modification 1224 (89%) Experimental 971 (97%) 994 (95%) Control 989 (93%) them. Subjects were instructed to respond quickly at the end of a sentence, pulling a right-hand trigger if they had understood the sentence to their satisfaction and were willing to answer a question about it (if they had "got the sentence"), and a left-hand trigger if the sentence had confused them and they did not feel they had understood it adequately. The time (from presentation of the last word, including a sentence final stop) to the response was measured, and the response made was recorded. Answers to questions and their response times were also recorded. 3.3.2 Results Because Sentences Table 3.3 contains the response times to make a "got it" (right-hand trigger) response together with the percentages of "got it" responses made. An analysis of variance of the response times indicated significant effects of both factors (experimental vs. control, S vs. VP modification) and their interaction. The interaction (F1(1,47) = 6.86, MSe = 107784, p < .02; F2(1,19) = 5.37, MSe = 38261, p < .04) clearly showed that response times were selectively slowed for the experimental VP-modification sentences, whereas all other conditions were approximately equal. Analyses of the percentage of "got it" responses showed a similar interaction (F1(1,47) = 4.63, MSe = 238, p < .04; F2(1,19) = 10.09, MSe = 47, p < .01), although the main effects were not significant. Subjects were more likely to indicate failing to comprehend the experimental VP-modification sentence than any other sentence. Table 3.4 contains the percentages of correct answers to the questions. Since only six sentences received each type of question, and since subjects received a question only when they indicated comprehending a sentence, formal analyses of variance were not done on these data. It is obvious, though, that accuracy was high except in the case of the experimental VP- modification sentences, the sentences with slow "got it" responses and frequent indications of comprehension failure. Comprehension of these

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Table 3.4 Question-answering accuracy, because sentences, experiment 1 S modification VP modification Affirmative answer questions (type A, table 3.1) 96% 11% Experimental 94% 96% Control Negative answer questions (type B, table 3.1) 65% 38% Experimental 94% 99% Control Table 3.5 "Got it" response times (in milliseconds) and percentages of "got it" responses, closure sentences, experiment 1 Late closure Early closure Experimental 888 (96%) 1070 (90%) Control 972 (92%) 1035 (94%) sentences was obviously marginal, at best (or at least, subjects did not consistently seem to interpret them in the sense we intended). However, surely some of the low accuracy must be attributed to a sort of response bias, namely, subjects' reluctance to choose a response that contradicted the superficial assertion of the sentence (e.g., She DID quit or Not because he enjoyed it; see table 3.1). Attachment (Closure) Sentences Table 3.5 presents the response times for "got it" responses and percentage of "got it" responses for the closure sentences. Although the superiority of the ''late closure" (low attachment) over the "early closure" (high attachment) sentences was 182 ms, compared to a 63-ms difference for their controls, the interaction between closure and experimental versus control response times was not significant (F1(1,47) = 2.03, MSe = 84378, p > .15; F2(1,15) < 1). The main effect of late versus early closure (930 vs. 1053 ms) approached significance (F1(1,47) = 3.66, MSe = 196866, p < .06; F2(1,15) = 7.43, MSe = 23829, p < .02). The analysis of percentage of "got it" responses did indicate the expected advantage for late closure experimental sentences (over early

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closure experimental sentences) in the subjects analysis (F1(1, 47) = 6.29, MSe = 150, p < .02) but not in the items analysis (F2(1, 15) = 2.64, MSe = 119, p > .10). No main effects approached significance. Question-answering accuracy for questions that required disambiguation of the temporal phrase attachment was high in all conditions except the early closure experimental sentences (59% correct for early closure experimentals; 94% correct otherwise). Statistical analyses indicated higher accuracy for late than early closure experimentals, 93 versus 59% (F1(1, 23) = 17.92, MSe = 759, p < .001; F2(1, 9) = 6.07, MSe = 900, p < .05). 3 3.3.3 Discussion As expected, the because clauses showed no late closure (low attachment) advantage. Instead, a comprehension time penalty was observed for the VP-modification sentences, as indicated by the longer times for these sentences than for the S-modification or control VP-modification sentences. The accuracy data also indicated the existence of difficulty in understanding the VP-modification sentences. We attribute the difficulty of these sentence forms to Immediate Interpretation and Minimal Revisions Principles that favor sentence completions consistent with the already computed relation between the subject and predicate of the main clause. (See below for discussion of the Immediate Interpretation Principle.) By contrast with the because sentences, the late closure adverbials did show an advantage, numerically present but not significant in comprehension times and significant in accuracy (percentage got it as well as question-answering performance). Overall, these results are basically what the Construal Hypothesis predicts: a structurally determined preference exists in (6) but not in (5). We suspect that the absence of a significant effect of the Late Closure like structural bias in the "got it" reaction times is due only to the length of the ambiguous phrases in the experimental materials. We used long phrases simply to keep them maximally parallel to the ambiguous because clauses. However, long phrases may leave the processor sufficient time to revise its initial attachment/associations. Alternatively, the long phrase might allow forgetting of information from early in the sentence, making the disambiguation carried by the tense of the final verb less effective. In either case a larger late closure bias and a greater perceived difficulty should appear in disambiguated early closure sentences with short ambiguous phrases.

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Table 3.6 Sample sentences and questions, questionnaire study Condition Sample item Late closure, John will explain to the kids that their grandfather died after the long operation that he had. What happens after the operation? __________ Early closure, John will explain to the kids that their grandfather died after the long operation that they need. What happens after the operation? __________ Late closure, John will explain to the kids that their grandfather died last night. short What happens last night? _______________ Early closure, John will explain to the kids that their grandfather died tomorrow. short What happens tomorrow? _______________ 3.4 Questionnaire Study: Effects of Length on Interpretation To test whether the effect of low attachment/association is more visible in short ambiguous phrases than long ones when the ambiguity is sentence final (see Frazier and Rayner 1990, for nonfinal examples), 4 we conducted a questionnaire study. 3.4.1 Method Four forms of each of 16 sentences were constructed, as illustrated in table 3.6. Each contained a temporarily ambiguous temporal phrase. Two were disambiguated toward a late closure attachment, and two toward an early closure attachment. Orthogonally, two contained relatively long temporal phrases, and two contained short temporal phrases. Each was followed by a single wh-question designed to determine the subject's interpretation of the temporal phrase, and by a 7-point ease-of-comprehension scale in which "1" was defined as "easy, natural to comprehend" and ''7" as "difficult, unnatural." Four versions of a questionnaire were constructed. Each version contained four sentences in each form. Over all four versions, each sentence was tested equally often in each form. The 16 sentences were added to 85 sentences that contained a relative clause whose attachment was ambiguous. Subjects were given a choice between two interpretations of these

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Table 3.7 Proportions of late closure interpretations, questionnaire study Disambiguation Length of temporal phrase Long Short Late closure .777 .810 Early closure .276 .365 relative clause sentences, and did not have to rate them for ease of comprehension. Each version of the questionnaire was independently randomized, and administered to 18 undergraduates at the University of Massachusetts. 3.4.2 Results and Discussion The answers to the wh-questions were scored as indicating an early closure interpretation, a late closure interpretation, or an ambiguous interpretation. Overall, 15.7% of all responses were ambiguous or uninterpretable. The proportions of all responses that indicated a late closure interpretation appear in table 3.7. The effect of disambiguation toward late versus early closure was, of course, highly significant (F1(1, 71) = 199.45, MSe = 0.081, p < .001). The effect of length of temporal phrase was also significant (F1(1, 71) = 8.94, MSe = 0.030, p < .005). Subjects made late closure interpretations 58.8% of the time for short sentences, but only 52.7% of the time for long sentences. This greater bias toward late closure for short than for long sentences provides evidence for our suggestion that revision may have been successfully completed before the end of the sentence more often in sentences with long than with short ambiguous adverbials. Table 3.8 shows the rating scale values, broken down by the interpretation a subject actually indicated for a given sentence. Because of substantial amounts of missing data, it was not possible to perform a conventional analysis of variance on these data. However, it appears that (a) sentences with a late closure/low attachment interpretation are thought to be easier to comprehend than those with early closure/high attachment interpretations; and (b) interpretations that are consistent with the intended bias of a sentence are associated with more favorable ratings than interpretations inconsistent with the intended bias. The apparent difficulty of comprehending the high attachment sentences in

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Table 3.8 Mean difficulty scale values conditionalized on response made (1 = "easy"; LC = late closure; EC = early closure) DISAMBIGUATION INTERPRETATION Long temporal phrase Short temporal phrase Ambig LC EC Ambig LC EC LC 2.93 2.68 3.42 2.12 2.42 2.60 EC 3.27 4.10 3.11 3.73 4.31 3.03 experiment 1 supports the significant question-answering effects and nonsignificant on-line effects observed in the closure sentence portion of experiment 1 in indicating the existence of an apparent late closure bias when selecting between adverbials that may attach in the current processing domain (low attachment) versus a higher one. This conclusion is buttressed by the suggestion seen in table 3.8 that making the temporal phrase short increases the relative difficulty of sentences with a high attachment/early closure interpretation. 3.5 Other Studies of Adverbials Very few studies of the processing of adverbial clauses have been reported in the literature. One exception is the very interesting line of investigation initiated by Bever and Townsend (1979) (cf. Townsend 1983). Their focus is on the deep immediate interpretation of main clauses versus the shallower interpretation of subordinate ones. They claim that maintaining a semantically uninterpreted verbatim representation is necessitated when an (initial) subordinate's interpretation depends on the content of the main clause. With an initial adversative (though) clause, for example, the processor may need to retain a shallow syntactic representation of the clause until the main clause arrives and supplies sufficient information to interpret the though clause. Bever and Townsend present several studies suggesting better verbatim memory performance on initial subordinates (especially for adversatives) than on final subordinates or main clauses. By contrast, better semantic comprehension is observed for the initial main clause than for the initial subordinate. These results imply that (a) immediate interpretation occurs where possible, (b) the type of clause (subordinate vs. main, adversative vs.

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"causal") determines whether it is possible to accomplish interpretation immediately, and (c) the processor holds input in the "highest" representation possible or, equivalently for present purposes, holds the fewest possible representations of the input (see Caplan and Waters 1991, for interesting arguments supporting (c)). Like Bever and Townsend, Marslen-Wilson and Tyler (1980), and others, we assume the existence of an immediate interpretation principle. However, stating precisely an explicit version of this principle is an extremely difficult outstanding problem. Our intent here is to formulate a strong and empirically falsifiable principle. Intuitively, what we intend, and have exploited in accounting for the experiment 1 results, is a version of immediate interpretation in line with that proposed in Frazier and Rayner 1990. The basic idea is that premature semantic decisions, those made in the absence of relevant or biasing information, are not in general forced by the pressure for immediate interpretation. Often the processor may remain neutral. For example, the relative scope of two quantified NPs may remain open at the point where the two quantifiers are first available, permitting their scope to be influenced by, say, the focal structure of the sentence. But, by hypothesis, decisions are forced when an obligatory choice point is reached, where no analysis of the input is possible without choosing a particular option. The parser's immediate tasks include all the following: (a) choose a particular semantic interpretation for each word; (b) find or set up some discourse entity for the head of a phrase (or one of its projections) in a referential (nonpredicative) position; (c) initiate the search for an antecedent of an overt pronoun (possibly a binder for a bound pronoun); and (d) predicate a property or relation of some discourse entity for predicative phrases. All these processes, we hypothesize, take place without delay. We therefore propose the Immediate Interpretation Principle in (7). (7)Immediate Interpretation Principle a.For NPs in referential (nonpredicative) position, a nominal projection is related to a new or existing discourse entity without delay as the NP itself is processed. b.For predicative XPs, a "core" property of X' must be identified and predicated of its subject without delay as the X' itself is processed. (Core property picks out the descriptive content of an item that distinguishes it from members of its lexically or contextually determined contrast set.)

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This principle is not fully explicit, but we think it is a start. It will explain why coreferential processes occur rapidly. 5 It also helps explain the results of experiment 1, since delaying interpretation of V' is prohibited. Whether it is the same principle that Bever and Townsend (or others) have in mind is not clear. We simply observe that they too have argued for immediate semantic interpretation of both main and adverbial clauses, whenever it is possible to interpret them immediately. But, like others, they have not specified when what aspects of the interpretation can or must take place. We have argued that the because clause in experiment 1 is interpreted outside the scope of negation because the main clause is interpreted immediately as it occurs. Analyzing the because clause under the scope of the negative would require a revision of the already assigned interpretation. This account of the English preference is strengthened by the facts of German, where the same ambiguity occurs, as in (8), but the because clause precedes the verb. Since the because clause is available before not quit can be interpreted, we do not expect German to exhibit the same preference as English. Native speakers assure us that this prediction seems to be confirmed by their experience. If anything, the because clause is preferentially interpreted as being under the scope of the negative in a sentence like (8). (8) Die Sekretärin hat nicht wegen ihres Gehalts gekündigt. the secretary has not because her salary quit 'The secretary didn't quit because of her salary.' Finally, we should note that in our study, to the extent that subjects did understand the VP-modification because sentences, they must have maintained either a surface representation of the main clause or some representation from which surface information could be derived. Otherwise, they would have had no basis for reanalyzing the negative predicate (e.g., didn't leave) into something like left not because. Hence, the lesser availability of the surface form of a clause that has already been semantically interpreted (observed in Bever and Townsend's studies) cannot be due to complete loss or complete suppression of the surface information. If it were, reanalysis would presumably be impossible. 3.6 Conclusions We have examined the processing of adverbial clauses that are ambiguous between two interpretations within a given processing domain (because

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clauses in experiment 1) versus the processing of clauses that are ambiguous between two attachment sites, only one of which is compatible with an association of the clause into the current processing domain. The latter show clear structural garden path effects (in sentence-final position, perhaps especially when they are short; see the questionnaire study) whereas the former (the because clauses) do not. Instead, the because clauses show a disadvantage for the low attachment reading, presumably because this is inconsistent with the already computed interpretation of the main clause. 6

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Chapter 4 Association and Thematic Domains: Relative Clauses In this chapter we take up the processing of relative clauses. We address the following questions: 1. What principles govern the identification of a clause as a relative clause? 2. When the relative clause is preceded by a complex NP, how is the head of the relative clause selected (by Late Closure or by Construal)? Is selection determined by thematic structure within the complex NP? 3. When the presence of a relative clause modifying the higher of two potential NP heads is required for semantic reasons (e.g., The one of my students who . . . ), is the relative clause initially attached low and later raised (as would be predicted by Late Closure), or is the correct ultimate attachment site consistent with the first syntactic analysis of the relative clause? 4. What nonsyntactic principles influence relative clause interpretation? As in earlier chapters, we argue for the Construal Hypothesis. The evidence presented here also bears in a novel way on the definition of thematic processing domains, since we examine processing in cases where the current thematic processing domain is not separated from prior domains by a clause boundary. As it turns out, clausal definitions of processing domains would not suffice to characterize all of the data in the present chapter. 4.1 Background The attachment of a relative clause into the syntactic phrase marker has now been studied rather extensively. It is well known (Kurtzman 1985;

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Wanner, Kaplan, and Shiner, n.d.; and see Crain and Steedman 1985) that an ambiguous sentence like (1) (1) John told the girl that Bill liked the story. a. [NP the girl] [CP that Bill liked the story] b. [NP the girl that Bill liked] [NP the story] will preferentially be analyzed as containing a complement clause, as in (1a), rather than a relative clause, as in (1b). This follows from the assumption that the phrase the girl will immediately be minimally attached into the VP as the words of the phrase are encountered, as shown in the phrase marker in (2a).

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Analyzing subsequent material as a complement clause merely requires addition of the CP node as a sister to V and NP (assuming arguments must be sisters to the head). Analysis of this material as a relative clause (2b) requires a new N' node to be postulated between two already connected nodes of the phrase marker (assuming that nodes, such as N', are not postulated unless they branch or are required to satisfy some grammatical wellformedness condition). Thus, an ambiguous fragment will not be analyzed as a relative clause if a complement clause interpretation is possible and consistent with context. 1 This follows from the general structural strategies that apply to input that may be analyzed as instantiating a primary relationin this case, a clausal argument. Relative clauses can participate in another type of ambiguity. If a phrase must be analyzed as a relative clause (and cannot be, for example, a complement clause), its attachment to a head may still be ambiguous. Consider the case where a relative clause follows a complex NP, such as daughter of the colonel. If a relative clause is attached into a syntactic tree structure in a determinate fashion, Late Closure might provide an initial resolution of the ambiguity. Late Closure would predict that lower attachment is preferred to higher attachment. Thus, in a sentence such as (3a), the relative clause who had an accident would initially take the lower NP, the colonel, as its head. (3)a.The journalist interviewed the daughter of the colonel who had an accident. b.Someone shot the servant and the actress who was on the balcony with her husband. c.Peter was looking at the book of the girl who was in the living room watching TV. Cuetos and Mitchell (1988) present some tests of this prediction and argue that their data disconfirm it for Spanish if not for English. They claim that in Spanish early closure (high attachment, in which the entire complex NP is the head of the relative clause) is preferred, whereas in English late closure is preferred. They restrict their claims to relative clauses that follow a complex NP of the form NP1 P NP2, since several studies show that Late Closure applies elsewhere in Spanish. For example, Cuetos and Mitchell themselves provide evidence that it applies when a relative clause follows conjoined NPs; at least, no garden path is present when a singular verb follows a subject gap within the relative clause, precluding high attachment to the conjoined (hence, plural) NP of (3b). Further, Cuetos and Mitchell assume that their disambiguating phrases

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(e.g., the gerundive watching TV in (3c)) obey Late Closure and thus are interpreted in the relative clause rather than as a constituent of the main sentence. (See also Bermudéz 1992 and Gilboy and Sopena 1989, for evidence that Spanish PPs obey Late Closure.) Cuetos and Mitchell do not assume that an Early Closure strategy applies in Spanish in the general case, but they do argue that it applies in the case of relative clauses following a complex NP and they therefore deny the crosslanguage universality of Late Closure. They consider several ways to account for their observations, including the "tuning account" proposal (Mitchell, Cuetos, and Corley 1992) that frequency of usage determines parsing decisions and that, for whatever reason, high attachment of the relative clause following an NP de/of NP phrase is more common in Spanish than in English (see discussion of possessives below). This frequency-based account of high attachment in Spanish is not predictive since it is not embedded in any theory laying out how frequency counts are tallied, and for what structures. In any frequency-based account it is crucial to know precisely what it is that is being counted (and why). Thus, it is unclear, for example, whether the high attachment (early closure) preference for materials like those used by Cuetos and Mitchell is affected by the occurrence of N1 of N2 structures involving inanimate nouns. Does the effective frequency of N1 of N2 include these or only phrases with animate nouns like the daughter of the colonel? Should complex NPs with different determiners than those tested by Cuetos and Mitchell (1988) be counted together with the daughter of the colonel, or phrases lacking overt determiners, or phrases containing an adjective in one or both NPs, or NPs with a relative clause already attached into N2? Without answers to these questions, the account is inexplicit at best. We can infer from their results that Cuetos and Mitchell do not want high attachment of the relative clause to apply in Spanish following a conjoined NP (see (3b)). But this does not follow from any principle for recording frequency of structures that predicts that conjoined NPs should behave differently as potential relative clause heads than other complex NPs do. The absence of a predictive frequency-based account is problematic. This is not only because the frequency-based account is not explanatory and does not specify the mechanisms implied by a frequency account, but also because providing an apparent but vague answer to the problem of relative clause attachment fails to force us to look behind the statistical facts. It invites us to consider the problem already solved rather than probe the reasons for why particular structures and languages behave the way they do.

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The variability observed in the attachment preferences in English for relative clauses with complex heads is unexpected under the tuning account, as it stands. In an English questionnaire study, Clifton (1988) found large differences in attachment preferences depending on details of the examples. Most striking, perhaps, was the difference between complex heads containing of, as in Cuetos and Mitchell's examples, and those containing a true contentful preposition, such as with. Responses ranged from 45% late closure for the of examples to 64% for some with examples (see also De Vincenzi and Job 1993, in press). Below we will argue that many factors influence relative clause interpretation preferences in NPs with complex heads. We focus on three such factors: the syntactic and semantic relation between N1 and N2 in the complex NP, the referential status of the potential heads of the relative clause, and the possible operation of conversational maxims. This dependence of attachment preferences on such a wide variety of factors suggests that relative clauses may not be attached into a determinate syntactic structure when their interpretation is temporarily ambiguous. Instead, they may simply be associated into the current domain, following the Construal Hypothesis. 4.2 Construal of Relative Clauses According to the Construal Hypothesis, a relative clause will associate to the extended maximal projection of the last thematic role assigner. If N2 is an argument of N1, as (e.g.) in the pictureN1 of the girlN2, then the NP headed by N1 will define the current processing domain and the relative clause will associate to the entire NP. Hence, either N1 or N2 (or their projections) will be available as potential hosts for the relative. By contrast, when N2 is not an argument of N1 but an argument of the preceding preposition (the man with the girl), then the PP with the girl will constitute the current processing domain. Hence, only N2 (and its projections) will be available to host the relative clause. The Construal Hypothesis thus predicts more N2 than N1 responses in examples where N2 receives a thematic role from the preposition (e.g., the object of with) but not when N2 is an argument of N1. As described above, Clifton (1988) provides some evidence for this in English. De Vincenzi and Job (1993, in press) provide more extensive evidence for the difference between theta-assigning and non-theta-assigning prepositions in Italian, demonstrating that phrases of the form N1 di N2 RC are more accurately comprehended

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when the relative clause is disambiguated toward modifying N1 than N2, but the difference disappears in phrases of the form N1 con N2 RC (di 'of', con 'with'). 2 When two hosts for the relative clause are available within the current processing domain, which one do perceivers prefer? We think perceivers prefer hosts that are ''referential" in the sense that they introduce or refer to a discourse entity. We cast this as the Referentiality Principle, stated in (4).3 (4)Referentiality Principle The heads of some maximal projections are "referential" in the sense that they introduce entities (e.g., discourse participants) into the discourse model (at least temporarily) or correspond to already existing discourse entities. Restrictive modifiers (e.g., restrictive relative clauses) preferentially seek hosts that are referential in this sense. We assume that the head noun of a maximal nominal projection (or one of its projections) must be related to a discourse entity if it is introduced by a determiner, except when it occurs as a predicate nominal. Finally, conversational maxims influence perceivers' interpretations of utterances in general, including, we suspect, in the examples under discussion (see Grice 1975; Sperber and Wilson 1986). In English the daughter of the colonel who . . . may be expressed unambiguously as the colonel's daughter who . . . when the relative clause is intended to modify N1 (daughter). Hence, the maxim of manner or clarity ("Be clear and unambiguous") implies that cooperative speakers would have chosen the unambiguous prenominal genitive structure if N1 modification were intended. This may result in more N2 interpretations in English than in a language lacking a prenominal genitive, such as Spanish. Gilboy et al. (1995) conducted parallel questionnaire studies in Spanish and in English. They presented subjects with 74 sentences like those in table 4.1. These sentences are ambiguous in terms of which NP is head of the relative clause. Subjects were instructed to indicate their first interpretation of each sentence. Gilboy et al. examined nine different types of relations between N1 and N2 in the N1 P N2 RC construction, as illustrated in table 4.1. These types of relations were chosen to test the three principles under discussion. The type B forms should lead to fewer late closure interpretations than type C forms if relative clauses are associated into the current thematic processing domain, since the PP constitutes the current processing domain in the type C forms. The type A forms should

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Table 4.1 Illustrations of nine types of sentences from Gilboy et al. 1995 Sentence type Sample item A1 Substance Yesterday they gave me the sweater of cotton that was illegally imported. A2 Quantity/Measure John asked for the glass of water that was on the table. B1 Kinship relation The teacher was talking to the relative of the boy that was in the hospital. B2 The explosion deafened the assistant of the inspector Functional/Occupational who was near the warehouse. relation B3 Possessives: Inanimate- The tourists admired the museum of the city that they inanimate visited in August. B4 Inherent possession Birds won't be able to nest in the branch of the tree that we cut last year. B5 Representational I was surprised by the etching of the sculpture that was in the town hall. B' Possessives: Inanimate- The professor read the book of the student that was in animate the dining room. C Nonaccompaniment The count ordered the steak with the sauce that the restrictive with/con chef prepares especially well. lead to fewer late closure interpretations than any other type if a referential NP is preferred as host of a relative clause. N2 in the type A forms is not introduced by a determiner and therefore it is most likely taken as nonreferential. Finally, the type B forms should exhibit fewer late closure interpretations in Spanish than in English, because of the Gricean maxim of clarity ("Avoid ambiguity"): the comprehension system for English should be sensitive to the fact that the prenominal genitive construction provides the English (but not Spanish) speaker with an alternative unambiguous structure when the relative clause is intended to modify N1. The data that Gilboy et al. obtained in their first questionnaire study are presented in table 4.2. These data provide clear support for all three principles (construal within thematic domains, referentiality, conversational maxim of clarity). Type C items elicited a higher proportion of N2 (late closure) interpretations than any other type, supporting the principle that a relative clause will be associated with the current thematic processing domain. Type A forms elicited a lower proportion of N2 than any

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Table 4.2 Percentages of late closure (N2) choices in questionnaire study by Gilboy et al. (1995) Sentence type Spanish English 7 20 A1 Substance 17 43 A2 Quantity/Measure 47 63 B1 Kinship relation 33 35 B2 Functional relation 49 53 B3 Possessives (inanimate) 54 62 B4 Inherent possession 51 50 B5 Representational 64 53 B' Possessive (animate) 83 69 C With/Con restrictive other, supporting the Referentiality Principle. Finally, there were more N2 interpretations of the type B forms in English than in Spanish, as expected if the Gricean maxim of clarity is reflected in comprehension processes. 4 Gilboy et al. report a second study, done only in English, which bolsters these conclusions. Most saliently, as predicted by the Referentiality Principle, adding a determiner to N2 in the type A1 sentences (resulting in sentences like They gave me the sweater of the cotton that was illegally imported) resulted in 55% N2 interpretations, compared with 26% in sentences having no determiner on N2. The determiner makes a referential interpretation of N2 likely, increasing its attractiveness as host of a following relative clause. The questionnaire data reported by Gilboy et al. are not on-line data and thus cannot speak directly to the question of the initial (as opposed to final) interpretation of relative clauses. Nonetheless, they are sensitive to factors that are central to the Construal Hypothesis, which encourages the view that relative clause interpretation obeys Construal rather than following syntactically based attachment into a determinate structure. Upon reflection, this seems to be a reasonable conclusion. Relative clauses are not primary relations, so they need not be processed initially in a purely syntactic fashion. Rather, they are paradigm cases of adjunct clauses, generally optional, which should follow the principles governing construal. Following this line of reasoning, the apparent difference between Spanish and English in how relative clauses are processed does not call

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into question the universality across languages of Late Closure. Rather, it reinforces the proposal underlying the Construal Hypothesis, namely, that syntactic processing principles such as Late Closure do not apply uniformly to all phrase types within a language. 4.3 On-Line Evidence about Relative Clause Attachment It is worth examining the evidence about on-line processing of English and Spanish relative clauses whose attachment is at least temporarily ambiguous. Is there anything in this evidence that seriously questions the proposal that relative clauses are interpreted following the Construal Hypothesis? Further, is there anything in the evidence that may shed light on what factors guide the construal of relative clauses? A variety of experiments have indicated slow reading times for Spanish sentences with a temporarily ambiguous N1 de N2 RC phrase when that phrase is disambiguated in favor of a late closure (N2 host of RC) reading (Cuetos and Mitchell 1988; Carreiras 1992). Although the initial experiments compared N2 host readings with various controls (including phrases that were never ambiguous and phrases that were never disambiguated), they did not compare N2 host readings with N1 host readings. Later experiments have done that, however, and apparently have shown a penalty in reading time for N2 host disambiguations but not for N1 host disambiguations (Mitchell and Cuetos 1991; Carreiras 1992). These experiments are not above criticism. They all use self-paced reading techniques, which may not be optimally sensitive to small, early parsing effects. They are limited by and large to using NP de NP phrases of our types B1 and B2. Many have disambiguation that is not necessarily fully effective and that may permit unintended readings. For instance, in Mitchell and Cuetos 1991, sentences that were intended to have the N1 host reading, but not those with the N2 host readings, have a reading in which the presumably disambiguating material can serve to modify the main verb of the sentence rather than the verb of the relative clause. In El turista fotografió al primo de la campesina que estaba junto a la charca con su esposa 'The tourist photographed the cousin (m) of the peasant (f) who was by the pond with his wife', the with his wife phrase could modify the main verb of the sentence, photograph'The tourist photographed X with his wife'. Subjects may occasionally accept this meaning quickly, speeding comprehension of N1 host sentences. Such concerns notwithstanding, it seems likely that it is relatively difficult in Spanish to interpret

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the relative clause in an N1 de N2 RC construction as modifying N2, resulting in slower reading times when N2 as opposed to N1 modification is required or when the host is left ambiguous. In English the story is much less clear. Cuetos and Mitchell (1988) do present English questionnaire data showing a larger proportion of N2 interpretations in English than in Spanish (although administration of the same questionnaire at the University of Massachusetts produced data on American English speakers that were more similar to the Spanish than the British English data; Clifton 1988). Several unpublished attempts to assess on-line preferences for late closure and early closure in English (personal communication from D. C. Mitchell and M. Corley and from E. Gilboy and J. Sopena as well as research done in our own laboratory) show no difference between N1 and N2 host reading times. Mitchell and Corley used English translations of the Spanish materials used by Cuetos and Mitchell (1988) and found an inconsistent tendency toward slower reading times for the N2 (late closure) than the N1 (early closure) host sentences. Carreiras and Clifton (1993) conducted a series of self-paced reading time experiments in Spanish and English, using sentences that were close translations of each other. Their sentences had very short disambiguating regions and relied on gender stereotypes reflected in the relative clause to choose between N1 and N2 hosts (which differed in gender). Each sentence appeared in two forms, disambiguated toward an N1 or an N2 host interpretation. A sample sentence appears in (5). Sentences were read in a self-paced phrase-by-phrase procedure in which the entire sentence up to the relative clause was presented as one segment and the relative clause itself was presented as a second segment. (5)a.La policía arrestó al hermano|a la hermana de la niñera|del criado que dió a luz recientemente dos gemelos. b.The police arrested the brother|sister of the nursemaid|handyman who recently gave birth to twins. The reading times appear in table 4.3. Very simply, in several experiments, Spanish showed a substantial N1 host (early closure) advantage; English showed no difference. The overall reading times were faster in English than in Spanish, leading to some uncertainty about whether the apparent language difference is really a difference between fast and slow readers. This uncertainty is reduced somewhat by a third Spanish experiment reported by Carreiras and Clifton (1993) that showed a strong N1

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Table 4.3 Mean reading times (in milliseconds) for English and Spanish relative clauses (Carreiras and Clifton 1993) Experiment Host of relative clause N1 N2 1 (Spanish) 2456 2886 2 (Spanish) 2565 3084 3 (English) 1961 1920 4 (English) 1717 1695 host advantage with mean reading times of 2399 ms per phrase, and by a replication of the Spanish experiments carried out by E. Gilboy and J. Sopena that showed a clear N1 host advantage with mean reading times of 2160 ms per phrase. There is one pair of exceptions to the lack of any N1 versus N2 difference in English, observed in our laboratories in experiments using self-paced reading and eye movement measurement. These unpublished experiments used sentences in which the interpretation of the relative clause was disambiguated by a reflexive pronoun it contained, as in (6) ((6a) is N2 host; (6b) is N1 host). (6) a. Fred never met the daughter of the fireman who shot himself. b. Fred never met the daughter of the fireman who shot herself. In the whole-sentence self-paced reading experiment, sentences like (6a) were read faster than sentences like (6b), 3529 versus 3856 ms. In the eyetracking experiment, first-pass reading times (times spent reading a region prior to any eye movements out of or past the region) and total reading times in the regions containing the relative pronoun who, the following verb, and the reflexive pronoun showed the same effect (with much faster reading times than in the whole-sentence reading study), as shown in table 4.4. We have no persuasive account of why these sentences result in an apparent late closure preference in English whereas other sentences, without the reflexive pronoun, do not. To sum up: Spanish generally does seem to show an advantage for N1 hosts of the relative in the N1 de N2 RC construction, even using sentences that in English show no difference between N1 and N2 hosts. There does seem to be a difference between the languages. But there is no need to

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Table 4.4 Mean first-pass and total reading times (in milliseconds per character), selected regions of sentences like those in (6) (unpublished study, Frazier and Clifton) First pass Total time Who + verb Reflexive Who + verb Reflexive N2 host (6a) 27.9 36.3 38.4 44.9 N1 host (6b) 32.5 37.7 45.4 51.8 conclude that Spanish flouts Late Closure whereas English simply ignores it. Perhaps the answer lies in the Gricean maxim of manner or clarity discussed in the previous section, in conjunction with the plausible if still unproven proposal that a language comprehender prefers to construe an adjunct as being relevant to the main assertion of a sentence (see Frazier 1990a, where such a constraint, called the Relativized Relevance Principle, is formulated). Indeed, Gibson et al. (1993) show in Spanish and in English that relative clauses prefer the highest NP in a complex head with three potential hosts for the relative clause, when the lowest NP is not a possible host (or, at least, that the intermediate NP is not preferred over the highest one). They attribute this to their Predicate Proximity Principle. Applied to our NP V N1 of/de N2 RC constructions, this proposal suggests that there is a source of preference to predicate the relative clause of N1, an argument of the main verb of the sentence. Depending on the relative strengths in our two-NP constructions of the Predicate Proximity Principle and the Recency Principle (the latter presumably being dominant in Gibson et al.'s three-NP constructions), one might predict faster reading times for N1 host phrases than N2 host phrases in Spanish. In English the Predicate Proximity Principle is also counteracted by the comprehender's utilization of the Gricean maxim that suggests that a speaker who wants to predicate the relative clause of N1 will use the N2's N1 RC construction, resulting in a lower preference for N1 in the construction we have studied. It seems to be time for additional on-line tests of the proposal that readers interpret ambiguously attached relative clauses following the Construal Hypothesis. De Vincenzi and Job (in press) present some research that they take to indicate that Late Closure governs the initial attachment of postnominal modifiers in Italian, and that the factors we claim to be important in the operation of construal actually affect only the

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final comprehension of such sentences. De Vincenzi and Job report four self-paced reading studies of Italian modifiers (relative clauses, adjectives, and prepositional phrases) following complex NPs. They found a systematic reading time advantage for sentences in which the postnominal modifier had to modify N2, regardless of its phrasal type. However, question-answering accuracy was higher for sentences in which the relative clause (or postnominal adjective) had to modify N1, but only when the second NP of the complex head was introduced by di/of, not when it was introduced by con/with. De Vincenzi and Job conclude that Late Closure governs the parsing of modifiers in Italian. They suggest that the effect of di/of versus con/with in answering questions about relative clause sentences is a reanalysis effect. Reanalysis of the initial late closure structure is easier and more accurate when the reanalysis simply reattaches phrases within a thematic domain (as it does in the case of di/of), compared with reanalysis across thematic domains, as is necessary for early closure (con/with) sentences. We think De Vincenzi and Job's study is interesting and very suggestive. But, at most, it is the relative clause studies (experiments 1 and 4) that are problematic for the Construal Hypothesis. The PP study (experiment 3) tests examples where Late Closure and Construal make the same predictions. Following the sequence The puppy in the box, a PP should attach (by Late Closure) or associate (by Construal) to the lower NP, since it is the only NP in the current thematic processing domain. The adjective study (experiment 2) also is not problematic. The "ambiguously attached" adjective itself carried grammatical gender information that disambiguates its analysis; there is no temporarily ambiguous region that is disambiguated by later material, as is the case in De Vincenzi and Job's other studies. Since in both theories only grammatical analyses are considered, neither theory claims that an ungrammatical low attachment or association would be entertained. The reading time advantage for late closure adjectives should thus presumably be attributed to an advantage for nearby or local agreement rather than to a garden path effect. We assume that adjective-noun gender and number agreement is grammatically constrained, and, like other agreement processes, it is governed by sisterhood or specifier-head relations. Thus, the grammatical information is available to the constituent structure processor, and since it is contained in the word being attached, it will guide the initial attachment decision. De Vincenzi and Job's relative clause studies (experiments 1 and 4) involve disambiguation after a temporarily ambiguous region of the

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sentence. In both experiments sentences like (7) were presented using a self-paced, phrase-by-phrase reading time procedure. In this case the Construal Hypothesis does predict that low association should occur following a complex head with a theta-assigning preposition like con 'with', but not following a complex head with a thetaassigning head noun and the Case marker di 'of'. (7)L'avvocato diffida del padre della ragazza che si the lawyer suspects the father of the girl who himself/herself é tradito/tradita al processo. betrayed at the trial 'The lawyer suspects the father of the girl who betrayed herself/himself at the trial.' In contrast, Late Closure would predict low attachment in both cases. De Vincenzi and Job found a reading time advantage for low attachment sentences across the board. They rule out some attractive but superficial hypotheses that could explain their results. For instance, in their experiment 1 they presented their complex NPs in two separate presentation regions (e.g., del padre and della ragazza) rather than one region (as has been done in most other experiments on relative clause attachment), which might have influenced their results. However, in experiment 4 they presented the NP di NP phrase as a single region, as in previous studies, but they still found evidence supporting a late closure preference. Further, although half of their sentences (like example (7)) contained a reflexive particle, De Vincenzi (personal communication) indicates that the late closure preference held equally for the reflexive and the nonreflexive items. Not all possible superficial accounts of the apparent late closure preference observed in Italian by De Vincenzi and Job have been ruled out. For example, in all their relative clause experimental sentences, De Vincenzi and Job's highest subject NP had the same gender as N1 in the complex NP, which was the higher potential head for the relative clause. Since gender was used to disambiguate relative clause attachments, this means that two genderappropriate hosts existed in the experimental conditions where the relative clause was intended to take N1 as host, but only one when it was intended to take N2 as host. Although we do not know whether this particular ambiguity should speed or slow comprehension, it is at least possible that competition between the two hosts in

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an N1 ("early closure") condition resulted in a reading time disadvantage for "early closure" sentences. Clearly, more work needs to be done to pin down securely the apparent differences among the Italian, the Spanish, and the English data. However, we do suggest that claiming that Late Closure governs initial attachment of relative clauses and other nonprimary phrases in English would conflict with many results (e.g., most of the data in this book, including the research presented in the next section). We conclude by asserting that the existing data can be understood quite well by appeal to the Construal Hypothesis. The questionnaire data provide positive support for the hypothesis and the on-line data are at least consistent with it. To our knowledge, no other proposal is even consistent with both sets of data. 4.4 Association of Semantically Obligatory Constituents The definition of primary relation in chapter 2 relied on the idea that certain phrases in a sentence are arguments of a predicate or obligatory constituents of a syntactically required phrase. Other (nonprimary) constituents are associated into the current processing domain. These include modifiers, adjuncts, secondary predicates, and noninitial conjuncts of conjoined phrases. But what if a constituent must be present for semantic reasons, for example, to restrict the domain of a function in a manner consistent with the semantic requirements of the sentence? Will a relative clause of this sort be associated into the current processing domain as a nonprimary phrase? We suggest that it will. However, it is possible that the semantic obligatoriness of the phrase might influence the processor's operations. The phrase might in principle be considered a primary phrase and thus analyzed by structural (Late Closure and Minimal Attachment or, more generally, first-analysis) principles. An alternative possibility (inconsistent with our assumptions but logically possible) is that the required phrase might directly be projected at some semantic level of representation and thus be available immediately to quickly evaluate the processor's syntactic hypothesis as it develops. Take the sentences in (8a) and (9a), for example. 5 (8) a. # I met the one of Sam's friends. b. I met the one of Sam's friends who lives here.

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(9)a.# John praised those of the volunteers. b. John praised those of the volunteers who showed up on Community Day. The sentences are incomplete without some modifier present in the complex NP. But the need for a modifier does not seem to derive from any general structural constraint. Instead, the modifier is needed in order to identify the subset denoted by the complex NP, and thus the requirement seems to be semantic or possibly pragmatic in nature. In examples like (8) and (9), the Construal Hypothesis predicts that the relative clause will be associated with the entire complex NP (the current processing domain), where two potential heads for the relative clause will be available. Semantic information should then come into play in choosing a particular interpretation of the relative, namely, the one corresponding to high attachment. If this semantically informed process takes place rapidly, then a preference should appear for high attachment of relative clauses in ambiguous examples. When a low attachment analysis is necessitated in a disambiguated sentence, reanalysis should be required. (See chapter 3 for a comparable example where an adjunct clause is associated to VP but then is interpreted rapidly as being attached high because of interpretive considerations, namely, in order to minimize revisions to the already assigned interpretation of material.) The predictions of the Construal Hypothesis were tested in a self-paced reading study, experiment 1, using sentences like those in (10). Twelve sentences were constructed, with four forms of each. Every form contained two relative clauses. (10)a.Max met / the only one of Sam's employees / who have teeth / who drives a pickup truck. b.Max met / the only one of Sam's employees / who has teeth / who drives a pickup truck. c.Max met / the only supervisor with employees / who have teeth / who drives a pickup truck. d.Max met / the only supervisor with employees / who has teeth / who drives a pickup truck. The experimental forms (10a) and (10b) contained a complex NP that requires a modifier, namely, the only one of Sam's employees. The following relative clause could be interpreted as instantiating the obligatory modifier in (10b), but not in (10a). The number of the verb in the first relative clause permits it to modify the higher N' (the only one) in (10b),

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but not in (10a). In both cases the verb of the second relative clause is appropriate in number to modify the higher N'. According to the Construal Hypothesis, the first relative clause in both (10a) and (10b) should be associated to the highest NP. The semantic requirement that the only one phrase be modified will lead the parser to attempt to modify it with the relative clause. The inconsistency of this interpretive preference with verb number in (10a) will slow reading time, compared to (10b). On the other hand, if the semantically required clause is treated as a primary relation and attached following Late Closure, (10b) will be inconsistent with the parsing preference and hence will be read more slowly. The control forms (10c) and (10d) contained relative clauses identical to those in (10a) and (10b). But the complex NP in (10c) and (10d) the only supervisor with employees, does not require a modifier. Also, in these forms the preposition (with) assigns a thematic role. Given that with assigns a thematic role, the first relative clause in (10c) and (10d) will be associated into the PP (the maximal projection of the last theta assigner). Only the lower NP employees will be available in this domain to host the relative clause. Therefore, the Construal Hypothesis predicts a preference for low attachment, which is consistent with morphological number in (10c). In a second study, experiment 2, we tested sentences like those in (11). Again 12 sentences were constructed, with four versions of each. Every form contained two relative clauses. (11)a.The supervisor will look after / those of the volunteers / who continue / who get hurt. b.The supervisor will look after / those of the volunteers / who continue / and who get hurt. c.The supervisor will look after / the well-being of the volunteers / who continue / who get hurt. d.The supervisor will look after / the well-being of the volunteers / who continue / and who get hurt. The analysis of the first relative clause is temporarily ambiguous in the experimental (11a,b) forms, but not in the control (11c,d) forms, where only one potential head appears. When the relative clause is conjoined, as in (11b,d), then only high attachment of the first relative clause is permitted. In the nonconjoined examples, the ambiguous form (11a) can have either a ''stacked" interpretation, with both relatives attached high,

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or a "layered" interpretation, with one relative clause attached low and the other attached high. The Construal Hypothesis predicts that the relative clause is initially associated to the higher NP. Semantic interpretation then quickly favors a high attachment to satisfy the semantic requirements for a modifier to appear. Hence, no difficulty should occur in (11b), where the conjunction and forces a high attachment analysis of the first relative clause. By contrast, Late Closure predicts low attachment in all cases. It thus predicts a garden path in (11b), where an initial low attachment is disconfirmed. Sentence (11a) is fully ambiguous. Hence, neither theory predicts difficulty in this example. Seventy-two University of Massachusetts students were tested in a self-paced reading task. They read 12 sentences like those in (10) (experiment 1) and 12 like those in (11) (experiment 2), embedded in a list containing 76 filler sentences of a variety of constructions. Half (including half of the experimental sentences) were followed by twochoice wh-questions, to ensure comprehension. Four different lists were constructed, in each of which one version of each experimental sentence occurred, and across which each sentence was tested equally often in each of its four forms. 4.4.1 Results, Experiment 1 The mean reading times for each region of the sentences in experiment 1 appear in table 4.5. Consider the last two regions, containing the first and second relative clauses. The only significant effect (other than a highly significant main effect of regions) was the interaction of presence versus absence of the semantic requirement for modification and the number of the verb in the first relative clause (forcing modification of the first or the second N') (F1 (1, 71) = 4.32, p < .04; F2(1, 11) = 4.52, p < .06). The relative clause regions of sentences like (10a), where the number of the first relative clause forced modification of the second N', were read significantly more slowly (p < .05 by both subjects and items) than the relative clause regions of sentences like (10b), where the semantic requirement for modification could be met by the relative clause. No comparable difference was observed between the control sentences (10d) and (10c), and in fact the direction of the difference (summed over regions) was reversed for these sentences. These results strongly suggest that immediate semantic interpretation occurs for the first relative clause in sentences like (10a,b), contrasting strongly with the more usual finding of neither a low nor a high attachment preference in English (Carreiras and Clifton 1993). 6

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Table 4.5 Mean reading times (in milliseconds), experiment 1 Region 1 2 3 4 Condition Max the . . . who have/has who drives a met employees teeth pickup . . . (10a) 1084 1655 1276 1647 only one, low attachment (10b) 1052 1630 1121 1546 only one, high attachment (10c) 1026 1800 1257 1624 NP with NP, low attachment (10d) 1043 1830 1291 1609 NP with NP, high attachment 4.4.2 Results, Experiment 2 Table 4.6 presents the results for experiment 2. No evidence of difficulty with the low attachment form (11b) appears here, a finding that is consistent with the Construal Hypothesis. The only significant effect in an analysis of mean reading times for regions 3 and 4, besides a highly significant effect of regions, is an interaction between regions and ambiguity (ambiguity vs. high attachment; F1(1, 71) = 10.44, p < .01; F2(1, 11) = 6.99, p < .05), which is probably attributable to the fact that region 4 contained an extra word (and) in the high attachment versions. These results are inconsistent with the possibility that Late Closure operated with later semantic revision. In that case we would have expected difficulty in (11b) relative to either the unambiguous (11d) or the ambiguous (11a). In introducing these experiments, we briefly raised the possibility that semantics determines the first syntactic analysis of the relative clause (by directing syntactic hypothesis formation, rather than by guiding the interpretation of an associated phrase). The predictions of such a hypothesis do coincide with those of the Construal Hypothesis in the present case. However, a semantic determinism hypothesis cannot be maintained seriously, given the many studies where anomalous (Cairns, Cowart, and Jablon 1981; Garnsey, Tanenhaus, and Chapman 1989) or implausible

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Table 4.6 Mean reading times (in milliseconds), experiment 2 Region 1 2 3 4 Condition The supervisor . . . the who (and) who will look after volunteers continueget hurt (11a) 1413 1386 1117 1535 those of, ambiguous (11b) 1387 1340 1100 1674 those of, force high attachment (11c) 1392 1439 1160 1499 NP of NP, ambiguous (11d) 1346 1399 1172 1610 NP of NP, force high attachment analyses (Clifton 1993; Rayner, Carlson, and Frazier 1983; Stowe 1989; cf. Abney 1989, gift to a boy in a box) are computed despite the availability of a semantically more plausible analysis. 4.4.3 Conclusion As we have argued throughout this book, the actual pattern of attachment preferences exhibited by the human sentence-processing mechanism cannot be attributed across the board to Late Closure or to Early Closure. To correctly characterize the observed pattern, we must distinguish between primary and nonprimary relations, forcing determinate attachments on the basis of purely structural information only for the former. For nonprimary relations, association takes place into the current processing domain, with rapid interpretation ensuing based on nonstructural as well as structural information. 4.5 Other Work on Relative Clauses Much of the psycholinguistic research on processing of relative clauses indicates that object relatives are harder to process than subject relatives (e.g., Fodor, Bever, and Garrett 1974; Frauenfelder, Segui, and Mehler 1980; Frazier 1987b; Holmes 1979; Holmes and O'Regan 1981; Wanner

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and Maratsos 1978; Wanner, Kaplan, and Shiner, n.d.). This effect is presumably due to the operations of gap postulation and interpretation (Ford 1983; Frauenfelder, Segui, and Mehler, 1980). This research primarily concerns identification of the internal structure of relatives, not the relation between a (potential) relative clause and potential hosts. The evidence concerning the latter issue is of three types: (a) evidence about the preference to interpret a phrase (raced past the barn) as a main predicate or a reduced relative clause, (b) evidence directly relevant to host identification in relatives with complex heads (the focus of much of the current chapter), and (c) identification of a host for relatives extraposed to the end of a clause (discussed in chapter 5). Concerning (a), there is now a quite sizable literature following up Bever's (1970) original observation that sentences like (12) and (13) are garden paths. We analyze this, as well as the complement clause preference in (1), as the consequence of the priority given to analyzing items as primary relations. (12) (13)

The horse raced past the barn fell. The boat floated down the river sank.

Most of the studies concern the question of serial versus parallel processing of competing analyses (Blosfelds, Bradley, and Cupples 1988; Gorrell 1987; MacDonald, Pearlmutter, and Seidenberg 1994a), the nature of the verb and tense (Kurtzman 1985; Trueswell and Tanenhaus 1991), or the interplay of syntactic hypotheses with semantic or discourse knowledge (Altmann and Steedman 1988; Britt et al. 1992; Rayner, Carlson, and Frazier 1983; Rayner, Garrod, and Perfetti 1992; Taraban and McClelland 1988; Trueswell, Tanenhaus, and Garnsey 1994). Perhaps most important for our current concerns are the issues raised by Crain and Steedman (1985), who suggest that the apparent main clause preference in (12) and (13), and also in complement clause/relative clause ambiguities such as (1), is really due to the presentation of the sentences in isolation, where the Parsimony Principle (14) is violated (most severely) by the reduced relative analysis. They also propose the A Priori Plausibility and Referential Success Principles in (15) and (16) as special cases of (14). (14)Parsimony Principle If there is a reading that carries fewer unsatisfied but consistent presuppositions or entailments than any other, then, other criteria

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of plausibility being equal, that reading will be adopted as most plausible by the hearer, and the presuppositions in question will be incorporated in the hearer's model. (15)A Priori Plausibility Principle If a reading is more plausible in terms either of general knowledge about the world, or of specific knowledge about the universe of discourse, then, other things being equal, it will be favored over one that is not. (16)Referential Success Principle If there is a reading that succeeds in referring to an entity already established in the hearer's mental model of the domain of discourse, then it is favored over one that does not. This account of the processing of relative clauses has been challenged (Murray and Liversedge 1994; Portner 1989). It also appears that some data presented earlier in this chapter (originally in Gilboy et al. 1995) go against the Parsimony Principle. If we understand the principle correctly, it predicts that definite NPs should tend to repel modifiers in null contexts. On Crain and Steedman's account, the definite itself presupposes an already established entity in discourse and a definite NP modified by a relative clause also presupposes the existence of an already established set of entities from which a single entity or subset is being picked out. Hence, in a N1 P the N2 or the N1 P a N2, the indefinite should tend to attract the relative clause to avoid this (latter) presupposition violation, on their account. However, Gilboy et al. failed to observe any consistent effect of the definiteness of determiners. In general, Gilboy et al.'s study was not consistent with the predictions of the Parsimony Principle, given Crain and Steedman's assumptions about the presuppositions of the relative clauses. As a case in point, consider picture-NPs like (17) where no systematic N1 or N2 preference was observed in the data. (17) The sketch of the tree that . . . Crain and Steedman's account seems to predict a systematic late closure preference (N2 interpretations) in (17). According to this account, presumably a reader adds the smallest number of presuppositions needed to legitimize the relative clause. To choose N2, the tree, as the host of the relative, the perceiver only needs to assume that the (nonexistent) discourse model for (17) might contain other trees (and thus, the relative

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clause selects the tree of which some unique sketch was made). By contrast, to choose N1, the sketch, the perceiver must assume the existence of multiple sketches, one of which is of some uniquely specified tree. It seems much more consistent with readily available world knowledge to assume the existence of multiple trees and a single identifiable sketch than to assume the existence of multiple sketches, one of which is of an identifiable tree. In support of this assumption, we note that (18a) is generally acceptable even in an "out of the blue" context, whereas (18b) is acceptable only in limited contexts. If going against world knowledge violates parsimony, the Parsimony Principle seems to predict a predominance of N2 responses for the representational NPs and thus is at odds with the data. 7 (18)

a. b.

The trees are changing color. ?The sketches are fading.

Turning to the other two principles, we endorse the A Priori Plausibility Principle (15). The question is really what the mechanism is for identifying the most plausible analysis. Hence, the real heart of this issue, or at least one of its central aspects, lies in questions about the serial versus parallel nature of the human language-processing mechanism (see references above; also Just and Carpenter 1992). With respect to the Referential Success Principle (16), many open questions remain (see Altmann and Steedman 1988; Clifton and Ferreira 1989; Steedman and Altmann 1989). Though this principle differs fundamentally from the Referentiality Principle proposed here (and in Gilboy et al. 1995), there may be a relation between the two. Both are cast in terms of discourse entities rather than any notion of referring to an individual in the "actual" world. One difference between them, however, is in whether a reading of the sentence is favored only if it refers to a discourse entity (or a subset of a set) already established, as in (16), or whether the analysis is favored even if it introduces a new discourse entity, as claimed by the Referentiality Principle proposed here. Another difference is whether the object whose referentiality is at issue corresponds to the entire relative clause, as in (16), or only to its host, as for the principle defended here. To summarize, the preference for phrases to instantiate a main clause predicate rather than a reduced relative clause has been attributed to presuppositional differences between the two structures. We think that overall the data do not support this account (though discourse effects clearly do have a large and quick influence on processing during the

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comprehension of a sentence). Instead, we attribute the initial preference to interpret a phrase as a main predicate rather than as a relative clause to the preference for an analysis where a phrase instantiates a primary relation over a nonprimary one. It is thus on a par with the preference to interpret a clause as a complement clause rather than a relative clause. 4.6 Conclusions Relative clauses are associated into the current thematic processing domain. This explains why low (NP2) attachment interpretations predominate for relative clauses following NPs introduced by a theta-assigning preposition (con/with) but not a Case marker (de/of), and also accounts for the accuracy data from the Italian study by De Vincenzi and Job (in press). Further, semantically required relative clauses that attach high do not give rise to garden path effects in the sentences tested in section 4.4, as predicted by the Construal Hypothesis but not by existing alternatives (De Vincenci and Job, in press; Mitchell, Cuetos, and Corley 1992). Interpretive principles determine or at least influence judgments of preferred readings when several potential heads are available within the current thematic domain. These include the Referentiality Principle, which contrasts with the Referential Success Principle by claiming that restrictive modifiers preferentially modify existing or new discourse entities. Gricean conversational maxims are also reflected in perceivers' judgments: perceivers apparently assume that speakers tend to avoid using an ambiguous structure to convey a meaning that is unambiguously expressed by an equally simple alternative structure. This explains the difference between English and Spanish responses to phrases of the type the daughter of the colonel who . . . , where an alternative structure (the prenominal genitive, the colonel's daughter) could have been used to express the high attachment interpretation in English but not in Spanish.

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Chapter 5 Directionality, (Non)finality, and Adjacency: Extraposed Relative Clauses The adjuncts examined in previous chapters have appeared in sentencefinal position, immediately following the phrase with which they must be construed. In this chapter we briefly examine the processing of nonprimary phrases in sentence-medial positions and in positions preceding the primary phrase or association site. We also take up the processing of structures where the dependency is not between adjacent elements, by focusing on extraposed relative clauses. In particular, we look at whether special principles are needed to govern the interpretation of relative clauses extraposed over other adjunct phrases (e.g., a nested dependency condition), or whether the interpretation of each adjunct is determined completely independently of the interpretation of the other adjunct. We conclude by speculating on the implications of the Construal Hypothesis for language change and language typology and by briefly noting an analogy between the processor, as characterized by the Construal Hypothesis, and the grammar. In this chapter, unlike chapters 3 and 4, we do not report new experimental evidence. Instead, we rely on a variety of intuitive judgments, systematically collected questionnaire data, and already published experimental data. 5.1 Nonfinal Adjuncts So far we have not explicitly addressed the processing of nonfinal adjuncts in English. Details aside, it turns out that there is little to say. Take the processing of a restrictive relative, an appositive, or an adjunct predicate following the subject NP in a language like English. In each case, if the subject NP contains a theta assigner, then the adjunct will associate into the extended projection of the theta assigner (e.g., the noun). If the NP

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does not contain a theta assigner, then the adjunct will associate into the IP (as the extended projection of the required verb). The grammar of English will then require the restrictive relative to be attached inside the subject NP, and it will presumably require the appositive to be attached outside the subject NP, either Chomsky-adjoined to it or attached as daughter of IP. Thus, no special assumptions need be made: the processor simply associates the nonprimary phase into the current thematic processing domain, as usual. Then, as usual, an analysis consistent with the grammar must be postulated. Since there is only one analysis consistent with the grammar in these cases (as described above), nothing special needs to be said concerning the nonfinal position of the adjunct. Cast in more general terms, the issue is whether (1a) and (1b) differ.

The precedence relation among words or terminal symbols is specified in immediate memory. Consequently, (1a) and (1b) do differ: whenever the grammar distinguishes the relative order of X and C, the distinction will be honored by the processor. The other difference between (1a) and (1b) concerns the effects of immediate interpretation. Under many circumstances, X in (1a) will preferentially be interpreted with B, not C (given comparable structural relations for the [BX] and [XC] analyses), simply as a result of the Immediate Interpretation Principle (see chapter 3). This principle will not favor the interpretation of X with B in (1b). 1 5.2 Directionality Consider now a head-final construction, such as a Dutch or German VP. No modification of the processor's principles is necessary. An adjunct following a simple subject NP (one without a theta assigner) will be associated to the extended projection of VP, where it may be analyzed together with any material within the current thematic processing domain, providing the interpretation is allowed by the grammar of the language. Of course, as in English, the processor will interpret an incoming phrase as a potential primary phrase if this is consistent with the evidence received so far. Typically, a VP-initial NP, or a single PP, can be assumed to be a potential argument of the upcoming verb, and thus it will be

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attached into VP as a primary phrase. But a sequence of PPs will force the outer (earlier) PP to be reanalyzed (associated) as an adjunct. 2 In short, the processor simply associates a nonprimary phrase into the current thematic processing domain. Any apparent directionality in interpreting the phrase follows from the grammar itself or from early interpretation principles (see chapter 3). Let us turn briefly now to a Russian example (2), where an adverb, a nonprimary phrase, appears sentenceinitially. (We are grateful to I. Sekerina for this example.) (2) Vcera* priexavsij* artist vystupil na koncerte. a. [yesterday arrived artist] gave a concert 'The artist who arrived yesterday gave a concert.' b. yesterday [arrived artist] gave a concert 'Yesterday the artist who arrived gave a concert.' Intuitions of native Russian speakers suggest that the analysis shown in (2a) is preferred. On this analysis, yesterday modifies the first theta assigner, the participle arrived. This follows from Construal, assuming that when no thematic processing domain has yet been established, then by default the first (or next) theta assigner defines the current thematic processing domain (as discussed briefly above). In other words, each XP, where XP cannot instantiate a primary relation, associates into the current thematic processing domain (which will be the extended projection of the first theta assigner when no theta assigner has yet been encountered). If Minimal Attachment governed adverb analysis in (2), then (2b) would be expected to be preferred by perceivers. The adverb yesterday could minimally attach directly to the highest sentential node (CP if all root sentences are CP; see Rizzi 1994). Consequently, attaching arrived as part of a constituent that also contains yesterday would involve unnecessarily revising the existing structure (in which the root node immediately dominates the adverbial phrase). Without this unnecessary revision, the adverb would modify the highest clause. Hence, it would modify give, not arrive. Thus, the Construal Hypothesis, not Minimal Attachment, makes the correct predictions about the preferred analysis of (2). A. Feldhaus (personal communication) presents similar cases in German. In the configuration shown in (3), the preferred analysis intuitively is for the PP to be analyzed as an argument of V2 (the main verb) and for

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the Adverb to modify V1 (the participle), as shown in (4a), much like in the Russian example (2). 3 (3) that-he-PP-Adverb-Vparticiple-N-V2 (4) a. that he [PP [Adverb-Vparticiple-N]NP-V2]VP b. that he [PP [Adverb [[Vparticiple-N]NP-V2]V']VP]VP Feldhaus argues that this follows from Minimal Attachment of the PP, where it can be an argument of V2 (the main verb), followed by construal of the adverb into the thematic domain of the first verb in accord with the analysis proposed here.4 What is particularly interesting about Feldhaus's observation is that the behavior of the nonprimary phrase in (4), the Adverb, directly contrasts with the findings of Bader and Lasser (1994) concerning German arguments. Bader and Lasser found that when an argument NP preceded both the embedded and the matrix verb, as in (5), the NP was preferably taken as an argument of V2, as shown in (5b), not an argument of the immediately following verb (V1), as shown in (5a). This primary phrase preference contrasts sharply with the preference seen in (4a), where the nonprimary phrase (the adverb) prefers to associate with its current thematic processing domain, resulting in the observed preference to modify the first verb in (3). (5) that NP PP V1 V2 a. [CP2 that [CP1 NP PP V1] V2] b. [CP2 that NP [CP1 PP V1] V2]

NP is object of V1 NP is subject of V2

Finding distinct processing preferences for (potential) primary versus nonprimary phrases is exactly what is expected, given the proposal developed in this book. 5.3 Extraposition from NP Next we turn to English extraposed relatives, because they allow us to investigate relative clauses that are not adjacent to their heads. Further, by investigating the processing of relative clauses extraposed over other nonprimary phrases, we can look for potential interactions between the interpretations of nonprimary phrases. Many syntactic analyses of relative clauses exist. For example, Culicover and Rochemont (1990) assume that extraposed relatives do not actually move to clause-final position (extrapose) or even move from clause-final position (intrapose) but instead are base-generated in clause-final position where they are interpreted in

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accordance with the Complement Principle (Culicover and Rochemont 1990, 41). (6)Complement Principle a. b is a potential complement of a (a,b = Xmax), only if a and b are in a government relation. b.a governs b if a c-commands b and there is no d, d a barrier for b, that excludes a. Consider a sentence with a relative clause extraposed from an NP, such as (7). (7) The girl met the boy yesterday who dropped out of school. Like Culicover and Rochemont, we assume that S-adjoined relatives may modify only the subject but VP-adjoined relatives may modify either a subject or an object. However, unlike Culicover and Rochemont, we will assume that the relative clause extraposes, leaving a trace. Given that Culicover and Rochemont argue that traces are unnecessary in accounting for extraposition from NP, our assumption of the Complement Principle together with our assumption of a trace in the NP admittedly seems odd. We need to assume the presence of the trace, though, to explain why an unmoved analysis of the relative clause is always preferred (see below). Further, this assumption simplifies the account of the syntax-semantics interaction during processing (see section 8.2). The Construal Hypothesis predicts that extraposed relatives will be associated into VP (unless the VP contains a final NP headed by a noun that assigns a theta role). Nonstructural information will then be used to choose the most plausible host for the relative clause within the current thematic processing domain. Given that the extended projection of VP includes IP, both the subject and the object lie inside the current thematic processing domain in a sentence like (7). We assume the existence of an object-host preference in the interpretation of ambiguous extraposed relative clause sentences like (7) and provide evidence for it below. The source of this preference is most likely a preference for focused hosts (see Carter et al. 1994). When the adverb yesterday is deleted in (7), the relative clause can be analyzed as a constituent of the adjacent NP the boy, rather than as an extraposed relative clause. In this case, as mentioned earlier, the perceiver seems to show an overwhelming preference for the nonextraposed analysis of the relative clause. We attribute this preference to the Minimal Chain Principle (De

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Vincenzi 1991): in general, the processor avoids analyses of a sentence that involve postulation of a potentially unnecessary empty category. This immediately results in a preference for a nonextraposed rather than an extraposed analysis of a relative clause that immediately follows an NP, since the extraposed analysis requires postulation of an empty category. Teasing apart the different underlying sources for the object preference in the interpretation of extraposed relative clauses lies beyond the scope of this book. Nonetheless, the prediction from the Construal Hypothesis is clear: namely, that despite the strong object preference no penalty should exist for subject-host interpretations over object-host interpretations in processing semantically disambiguated examples of necessarily extraposed relative clauses. The hypothesis claims that nonstructural information is used in even the initial selection of a host. This contrasts with the predictions of the fully determinate attachment view of processing extraposed relatives. Imagine that the structure in (8a) underlies subject-host extraposed relatives, and the structure in (8b) underlies object-host ones. Then, if a single fully determinate structure were initially constructed by Late Closure, (8b) should always be constructed initially, even when semantic information clearly dictates the need for the subjecthost relative in (8a).

We have not directly tested the prediction of the Construal Principle, showing the equivalent complexity of disambiguated subject- versus object-host extraposed relatives. However, indirect support for the prediction exists. Rayner and Frazier (reported in Frazier 1985b) found no penalty for subject-host relatives extraposed over long VPs versus those extraposed over short VPs (e.g., (9a) vs. (9b)). (9)a.Any girl could break the table easily who takes karate lessons. b.Any girl could break the beautiful new mahogany table easily who takes karate lessons. Given a structural misanalysis of the extraposed relative corresponding to (8b), we would expect a greater difficulty with a long intervening VP,

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where the disambiguating information (the subject host) occurs farther away from the structural error than in the short VP (see Ferreira and Henderson 1991). This evidence is not conclusive, but we think it is suggestive and difficult to reconcile with the structural misattachment view. 5.3.1 The Nesting Constraint and Relativized Minimality Let us return to Culicover and Rochemont's (1990) analysis (also Rochemont and Culicover 1990). These authors propose a nesting constraint on the interpretation of adjuncts. Since this is an important matter concerning the general question of whether the interpretation of an adjunct may be accomplished independently of the interpretation of any other adjuncts in the sentence, we will examine the evidence they give in support of their Interpretive Nesting Requirement and present new evidence suggesting that this constraint may not be descriptively correct as a grammatical prohibition. Rochemont and Culicover's (1990) constraint is intended to exclude the crossing interpretation of relatives or adjuncts as in (10b,d) (the examples are Rochemont and Culicover's). (10)a.*Someone ate some beans yesterday that should have been cooked in his bathrobe. b.*Someone ate some beans yesterday in his bathrobe that should have been cooked. c.John ate meat raw drunk. d.*John ate meat drunk raw. In (10b) it is difficult to compute the sensible reading where in his bathrobe modifies the subject and that should have been cooked crosses this dependency by modifying some beans. (It helps to set off the relative clause and the PP in separate intonational phrases, to help prevent association of the final phrase to the immediately preceding phrase.) Similarly, in (10d), assigning drunk to John and raw to meat will result in crossed dependencies. Rochemont and Culicover's Interpretive Nesting Requirement is proposed as an interpretive constraint and therefore does not necessarily exclude crossing of syntactically represented dependencies. Nakajima (1992) accepts the judgments in (10) but suggests that the Interpretive Nesting Requirement should be recast, since it bears a strong resemblance to the Relativized Minimality Condition of Rizzi (1990). Nakajima's basic idea is that a crossing interpretation requires one to overlook a closer governor (e.g., a structurally closer host for the adjunct

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or relative clause), as indicated in (11), where the subject phrase XPi is separated from NPi by the potential (adjunct) antecedent XPj (see 1992, 321; (11) is after Nakajima's (20b)).

In other words, Nakajima views the extraposed phrase as a governor of an adjunct chain, and chains of the same type may not cross (i.e., a structurally closer governor may not be overlooked). Specifically, on this view it must be assumed that an intervening governor matters only if it has a different antecedent than the current phrase (i.e., governed material with the same antecedent doesn't count) and only if the dependencies are of the same type: both an A-dependency *, an A-dependency, a head movement dependency, or, as in the present cases, an adjunct dependency (Nakajima's addition to the standard typology of movement). 5.3.2 Experimental Evidence about Extraposition from NP We do not go into detail about either Rochemont and Culicover's Interpretive Nesting Requirement or Nakajima's minimality modification of it since data we will present are not consistent with either constraint. We tested a total of 192 University of Massachusetts undergraduates in a questionnaire study5 in which they saw eight sentences like those in table 5.1 and were required to make two responses: (a) indicate their initial interpretation of the sentence by specifying whether the relative clause modified the first noun (man) or the second noun (steak) and (b) indicate the difficulty of comprehending the sentence on a 7-point scale (1 = easy to understand; 7 = difficult or impossible to understand). Each subject saw two sentences in each of the four forms shown in table 5.1. Across all subjects, each of the eight sentences was seen by an equal number of subjects.

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Table 5.1 Sample sentences used in first questionnaire study, mean percentage N2 interpretation of relative clause, and mean difficulty rating Sample item % object Mean difficulty interpretation rating 1 The man ate the steak that was in the 92 1.91 pantry. 2 The man ate the steak yesterday that 87 2.44 was in the pantry. 3 The man ate the steak naked that was 80 4.14 in the pantry. 4 The man ate the steak raw that was in82 3.28 the pantry. Our data (which appear with the sample sentences in table 5.1) show an overwhelming preference for the object interpretation of an extraposed relative clause. What is striking about the data is that the ambiguous relative clause associates with the object in sentence type 3 of table 5.1, producing a crossed pattern, even though a nested pattern is grammatical and nonanomalous. This interpretation is chosen overwhelmingly (over 80% of the responses), though it is also judged to be difficult on a 7-point scale where 7 = difficult. This preference for a crossing pattern in sentences where a nested pattern is possible disconfirms both the Interpretive Nesting Requirement and the minimality reformulation of it. Before turning to our account of the observations about (10) and discussion of alternatives to a nesting explanation for the data in table 5.1, we wish to present the data in table 5.2. These data came from a questionnaire in which 96 University of Massachusetts undergraduates responded to one form of each of eight sentences just as in the previous study, except that they were asked to indicate the host of the adjunct predicate (cold). The adjunct in the sentence types of table 5.2 is preferentially interpreted as an object adjunct (over 60% of the responses). This proportion does not change when a subject relative is added, as in sentence type 1 of table 5.2. Though this observation does not challenge a crossing constraint, it does reinforce the assumption that the interpretations of two nonprimary phrases associated to VP are independent of one another. We suspect that the object preferences in tables 5.1 and 5.2 reflect an assumption that the subject NP typically conveys given information, which is most often unfocused. An ambiguous adjunct is preferentially construed with the objectthe NP more likely to receive focus.

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Table 5.2 Sample sentences used in second questionnaire study, mean percentage N2 interpretation of adjunct predicate, and mean difficulty rating Sample item % N2 Mean interpretationdifficulty rating 1 The skier drank the tea cold that was 65 3.81 still shivering from the strong wind. 2 The skier drank the tea cold. 61 2.72 The appearance of a nesting constraint in (10b) (repeated here) derives, we think, from facts about focus and facts about processing complexity. (10)b.*Someone ate some beans yesterday in his bathrobe that should have been cooked. Typically, extraposed relatives and adjunct predicates need to be focused. To process two necessarily focused extraposed constituents, the first modifying the subject and the second modifying the direct object, the processor must terminate interpretation of the VP, turn attention to the subject, and then go back to the VP-internal constituent and turn attention to it. For the speaker to package information in this manner is not very cooperative, but it is possible, we think, if motivated. Thus, (10d), repeated as (12b), seems reasonably acceptable in response to (12a). (12)

a. Who ate the meat how in what state? b. John ate the meat DRUNK RAW.

And a direct counterpart to (10b) becomes better too if the speaker is given some motivation for the ''uncooperative" ordering of relative clauses, by making the first short and the second much longer, as in (13). (We have also eliminated various extraneous garden paths from Rochemont and Culicover's original example (10b).) (13) Someone ate beans yesterday who was tired that should have been cooked thoroughly before anyone even considered eating them. The apparent acceptability of (12b) and (13), along with the preferences observed in the questionnaire study, argue against the existence of a grammatical crossing constraint of the sort discussed here.

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Though admittedly the relevant intuitions are murky, we have argued against the existence of an interpretive nesting constraint on adjuncts. Questionnaire data show independence in the interpretation of adjuncts, even in cases where the presence of an intervening phrase results in crossing dependencies. The finding that subjects would opt for a crossing interpretation preferentially even when a nested interpretation is available is perhaps the most striking argument against a nesting constraint (see table 5.1). We have offered a tentative account of the original evidence that was advanced to support a nesting constraintan account that claims that the requirement to shift attention repeatedly in processing two focused phrases in (10b) contributes to the impression that it is completely ill formed. With respect to adjunct predicates (10d), we have suggested that here too it is not the crossing per se that eliminates (10d), given the acceptability of (13). We suggest, then, that the Complement Principle (as a principle of grammar) and the Construal Principle (as a processing principle) alone govern the interpretation of adjuncts, quite possibly without the need for an additional nesting constraint. 6 5.4 Summary and Implications In this and the previous chapter we have presented evidence that relative clauses associate into the current thematic processing domain. Presumably they behave this way in other languages as well. Here we will speculate on the implications of this finding for the structure of natural languages and the way they change. 5.4.1 Language Change and Language Typology Imagine a language with a final "loosely associated" clause, XP. How will XP be parsed? In a head-initial language, XP will be associated into the current thematic processing domain. Given a transitive main clause with a simple direct object (as in (14a)), this results in association of XP to the extended VP. However, if the head noun of the object NP assigns a thematic role (as in (14c)), XPj will associate to the NP. In a head-final language, however, XP will be unable to associate to the direct object because the verb intervenes between XP and the direct object. This results in the differences in the predicted association sites of XPj in (14c) versus (14d).

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These predicted preferences are of interest because clauses in sentence-final position provide the historical source for relative clauses in many languages (European languages of the Indo-European family (F. R. Higgins, personal communication) and Australian languages (Hale 1976)). The question is why the loosely associated "extraposed/adjoined" clause XP gets pulled down and integrated into the structure of phrases. Some pressure favoring this integration process appears to be at work since otherwise-unmotivated concomitant changes occur in languageschanges that seem to be required only in order to integrate the "extraposed/adjoined" clause more fully into the sentence or NP structure. For example, Higgins points out that in European languages indefinite pronouns needed to become definite to serve as relative pronouns inside the relative clause. If users of a head-initial language systematically associate nonprimary clauses (such as precursors of relative clauses) into the current thematic processing domain, this might explain why final adjoined clauses were reanalyzed as part of the NP. This linguistic hypothesis would arise from a systematic processing preference to associate the clause into the current processing domain, an NP in cases like (14c). It is difficult to derive precise predictions from this speculation. However, the speculation does set

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up several expectations concerning head-initial languages. During language change, integration of adjoined clauses into an NP should occur earlier for clause-final NPs than for nonfinal ones. This is because the sentence-final position may contain an NP that (in a head-initial language) may host the relative without any extraposition of the relative clause. Integration of the "relative" clause into the NP should initially occur only with final NPs, and it should tend to occur especially in NPs headed by a noun that assigns a thematic role, as indicated in (14c). Once the parser has constructed the association in (14c), the relative might be integrated into the NP structure; for example, children may acquire structures allowing clausal modifiers within the NP. The relative clause structure would then be expected to generalize to all NP positions (given a grammar that simply defines the possible NPs of the language once and for all, independent of their position in the structure), and thus they would no longer be found only in sentence-final NPs. In left-branching languages where the verb occupies clause-final position, a final adjunct clause could not be associated directly into NP because the verb intervenes between the NP and the adjunct clause. The current thematic processing domain will thus necessarily be taken as the extended projection of the phrase-final verb. Hence, sentence-final clauses might be expected to remain unintegrated into the larger structure, perhaps as correlatives (see Lebeaux 1990 and Srivastav 1991, for discussions of Japanese and Hindi, respectively). 5.4.2 Generalized Transformations, Revisited Turning from language change to the nature of the grammar itself, we note that there is a similarity between the processing claims made here and the view that natural-language grammars exploit generalized transformations that essentially embed a well-formed structure inside another structure, composing one structure out of two base structures (see Chomsky 1957; Chomsky 1965, 31 37; Lebeaux 1990). The similarity is that structures that are well formed internally are embedded in other structures using generalized transformations, much in line with the association of one structure to another during processing that is specified by the Construal Hypothesis. Perhaps the structures created or "linked" by generalized transformations are those that correspond to the separate processing domains that are joined during sentence comprehension by association. Subsequent analysis within the constructed domain is dictated by interpretive as well as structural factors, as claimed by the Construal Hypothesis.

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Page viii Appendix: Sentences Used in Experiments

173

Notes

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References

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Index

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Chapter 6 Indirect Subject-Predicate Binding: Adjunct Predication 6.1 Introduction To our knowledge, until now there have been no studies of the processing of adjunct predicates (e.g., (1) below) in English or any other language. Constructions with adjunct predicates are potentially of substantial interest for several reasons. First, different types of adjunct predicates contrast in the way they should be processed. A resultative adjunct predicate (e.g., (1a); see discussion below) is a verbal complement and should be attached into a determinate phrase structure following structural processing principles. On the other hand, a nonresultative adjunct predicate (e.g., (1b,c)) is a prototypical instance of what we have called a "nonprimary phrase" and accordingly should be associated to the current thematic processing domain following the Construal Hypothesis. Second, comprehension of adjunct predicates involves predication. The operation of predication is surely central to language comprehension, but even the main subject-predicate relation (subject-predicate binding) has received little or no experimental investigation. Such investigation may be difficult, since the absence of ambiguity in normal predication may give rise to such quick, automatic, and flawless subject-predicate binding that the component processes are difficult or impossible to observe experimentally. With secondary or adjunct predicates, however, the potential ambiguity of analysis may offer a glimpse of the operations involved. In this chapter we report several experimental studies on the processing of secondary or adjunct predicates. We begin by searching for the possible existence of a parsing strategy that results in the adjunct predicate's first being syntactically related to a single, structurally specified host in a fully determinate structure (i.e., treated as we claim primary phrases are treated). Consider (1).

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(1) Rita painted the desk red/exhausted/dirty. a. Resultant state: Rita made the desk red by painting it. b. Subject: Ritai painted the desk exhaustedi. c. Object: Rita painted the deski dirtyi. The structure NP-V-NP-AP is (at least) three ways ambiguous. The particular analysis constructed ultimately depends on the particular adjectival phrase and the relation it bears to the rest of the sentence. One reading, illustrated with red in (1a), involves a complement to a causative or perception verb. On this reading, the adjectival phrase (AP) is not an adjunct but rather is part of the complement of the main verb (hence, a primary phrase). We will not concentrate on this resultative reading of the AP here, except to note that intuitions suggest that it is the preferred analysis whenever it is plausible on semantic grounds. We suggest that this is because a resultative AP is a primary phrase in (1a), and the preference for such an analysis is an instance of the preference to take a phrase as a primary phrase, as discussed in chapter 2. The second reading is illustrated in (1b), where the AP is an adjunct and the subject of the main sentence (Rita) is also its subject. We will refer to sentences like this one as subject predication sentences. The third analysis, (1c), again involves analysis of the AP as an adjunct, but this time the object of the sentence (the desk) serves as the subject of the AP. We will refer to these sentences as object predication sentences. One linguistic treatment of adjunct predication distinguishes the structure underlying (1b) from that underlying (1c) as shown in (2). For other analyses, see Déchaine 1993 and Rapoport 1991.

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A variety of syntactic analyses of adjunct predication exist. To our knowledge, all of them treat the adjunct predicate as an adjunct generated without movement, but the analyses differ in details not relevant to our research such as whether a subject-host adjunct is contained within a VP or not. We avoid this question by using the notation XP in our subject predication analysis, not committing ourselves to whether the AP is dominated by a VP, an IP, or some other phrasal type. Given the structures in (2), the assumption (contrary to the Construal Hypothesis) that Late Closure (Frazier 1978, 1987a) or Right Association (Kimball 1973) applies to an AP predicts a preference for low attachment of the AP. Thus, a systematic preference for object predication as shown in (2a) would be expected. In a subject predication like (2b) an initial low attachment of the AP as a daughter of the VP dominating ate the meat would be made. This analysis would have to be revised, introducing a higher phrase XP and attaching the AP as its daughter. 1 From the perspective of the Construal Hypothesis, viewing the AP as a nonprimary phrase suggests an alternative to the structures in (2). Both subject and object predication sentences may share a single syntactic structure, one consistent with either a subject or an object reading of the AP. For example, we might postulate the existence of an initial structure like that in (3), where the dashed line indicates that the AP is associated to the extended VP of V*, and interpretation further specifies the relation of the AP to the larger syntactic structure.

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We assume that the subject is within the domain to which the AP is associated, since the extended projection of VP includes IP and thus includes the subject of the sentence. The subject or host of the AP is determined by Construal, in which we claim semantics influences initial decisions. The Construal Hypothesis thus predicts no systematic structural preference for subject-host or object-host interpretations of nonresultative adjunct predicates. This prediction contrasts with the prediction of the attachment hypothesis considered above in conjunction with the structures in (2). This hypothesis claims that purely structural factors govern the initial attachment of the AP into the (fully determinate) phrase marker. This results in a preference for object predication and predicts gardenpathing when semantic or other factors force a subject-host reading of an adjunct predicate. This chapter tests the Construal Hypothesis as opposed to the hypothesis that adjunct predicates are attached into a phrase structure following such principles as Minimal Attachment and Late Closure. Under the attachment view, the AP will be attached low into a structure that is compatible only with object predication regardless of the content of the AP. If the content of the AP forces it to take the subject as its host, structural revision will be required and evidence of a garden path will be seen. Construal, by contrast, presupposes an indeterminate structure that is disambiguated using nonstructural information. No garden path would be expected. The initial experiments were designed to search for the existence of a structural preference, as evidenced by garden-pathing effects (Frazier 1978, 1987a; Frazier and Rayner 1982). These initial experiments (and additional experiments reported in more detail in Clifton, Frazier, and Rapoport 1994) provide evidence against such gardenpathing. We go on to propose a mechanism for adjunct predicate interpretation whereby a VP-internal theme interpretation is tried first, followed if necessary by a default interpretation automatically supplied by a process that must take place in any case, namely, main clause subject-predicate binding.

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Table 6.1 Sample materials, reading times (in milliseconds per character), and question-answering accuracy, experiment 1 Version Example Reading% time correct Sentences with verbs that permit result reading The little girl wore 75 68 A1 Object host, the jewelry new. simple adjective The little girl wore 78 64 A2 Object host, -ing the jewelry adjective glittering. The little girl wore 77 74 A3 Subject host, the jewelry proud. simple adjective The little girl wore 74 79 A4 Subject host, -ing the jewelry posing. adjective Sentences with verbs that do not permit result reading The little girl tried 75 77 B1 Object host, on the jewelry new. simple adjective The little girl tried 74 64 B2 Object host, -ing on the jewelry adjective glittering. The little girl tried 71 74 B3 Subject host, on the jewelry simple adjective proud. The little girl tried 71 85 B4 Subject host, -ing on the jewelry adjective posing. 6.2 Searching for Garden Paths 6.2.1 Experiment 1 The first experiment we report was designed to identify preferences for hosts of adjunct predicates using the experimental technique of measuring the time taken to read a whole sentence. A sample sentence, in its eight versions, appears in table 6.1. Both simple adjectives and adjectives derived with -ing were used in experiment 1. Further, the experiment varied whether the verb was one that would or would not permit a sentence-final adjectival phrase with a result reading. Such a reading, according to which the sentence is interpreted as agent-causes-object to be ADJECTIVE, appears intuitively to be highly preferred. In (4), for example, the adjective crusty seems likely to be taken as the result of

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frying the chicken, not as the temporary state of the chicken (or Ms. Keen) at the time of frying. (4) Ms. Keen fried the chicken crusty. It is possible that a preference for object predications could occur for verbs that permit a result reading of the sentence-final AP. Even though such a reading is ruled out by the content of the AP in all our sentences, the fact that the presumed initial "result" interpretation of the AP relates it to the object may bias interpretation of the adjunct predication toward the object rather than the subject. If this is so, then we might observe more of a preference for object hosts over subject hosts for verbs that permit result readings (A1 4 in table 6.1) than for verbs that do not (B1 4). Sixteen sentences whose verbs permit a result reading (type A in table 6.1) and 16 whose verbs do not (type B) were constructed. Each occurred in four forms, combining object versus subject host and simple adjective versus -ing adjective (none of which required a comma to set off the adjunct predicate). Forty-eight University of Massachusetts undergraduates read these sentences, together with 96 filler sentences, in a timed reading task. Each sentence in experiment 1 was presented on a video screen as a single unit, whereas most of the filler sentences were presented in two or more segments. A microcomputer presented the sentences on the video screen, timed a trigger-pulling response, and presented a yes/no question after each sentence. Half of the questions required a positive answer, and half a negative answer. All of the positive questions probed the relation between an adjunct and its host (e.g., "The jewelry was new"), whereas only four of the negative questions did so. Therefore, only answers to the positive questions were analyzed. Table 6.1 presents the mean reading times in milliseconds per character (times longer than 300 ms per character were eliminated, 0.1%) and the percentages of correct answers to positive questions. No differences approached significance in the reading time measure. In particular, no effect of verb type (whether or not the verb could take a result predicate) was observed, nor was any difference between subject-host and object-host sentences. The accuracy of answers to positive questions was examined in an analysis of variance that assigned subjects to pairs based on which counterbalancing form of the experimental sentences they had received. The subject pair was treated as the sampling unit, to ensure that each sampling

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unit provided data in each of the eight conditions of the experiment (type of verb x host x type of adjective). (Because only eight sentences provided data, an analysis permitting generalization to items was not attempted.) Overall, accuracy was higher when the host of the adjunct predicate was sentence subject than when it was sentence object (F1(1, 23) = 13.30, p < .01), but this difference was apparent only for questions about -ing adjuncts (82 vs. 64% accuracy for subject vs. object predication sentences), not for questions about simple adjective adjuncts (74 vs. 73% correct) (interaction F1(1, 23) = 5.23, p = .03). There does seem to be some source of preference to take -ing adjuncts as being predicated of the subject, contrary to the bias that might be expected if structural parsing principles applied to adjunct predicates, but there is no preference for subject versus object host for simple adjective adjuncts. We suggest that experiment 1 provides preliminary evidence against the use of structural parsing principles in parsing sentences with adjunct predicates. We suggest that parsing of adjunct predicates is best understood in terms of their being associated to the extended VP that precedes them and analyzed following the Construal Hypothesis. 6.2.2 Experiment 2 The next experiment pursued the same questions as the first, but used a different logic to search for garden path effects. It contrasted ambiguous with unambiguous sentence structures by having two versus one possible hosts for the adjunct predicate (see table 6.2). When two possible hosts were present, one was in sentence subject position, and the other in sentence direct object position; a single possible host always appeared in sentence subject position. Orthogonally, the adjunct predicate was eventually disambiguated to being predicated of the object (more accurately, the theme) of the main sentence versus being predicated of its subject; in single-host sentences, a theme host appeared in subject position as the subject of a passive sentence. Garden-pathing effects (preference for object- or theme-host interpretations) should appear only when a sentence contains a temporary ambiguity (i.e., in the two-host sentences). A structural attachment analysis would thus predict that garden-pathing should be observed in the two-host subject predication sentences (B1 in table 6.2). However, on the basis of experiment 1, we claimed that the adjunct is simply associated to the extended VP as shown in (3). Interpretive processing would be used to further specify the analysis of the adjunct.

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Table 6.2 Sample materials, reading time for adjunct (in milliseconds per character), and accuracy, experiment 2 Condition Sample item Reading% time correct Theme-host sentences The defendant presented 67 83 A1 Two possiblehis alibi, not convincing hosts, yet entirely true. ambiguousunambiguous The defendant presented 66 97 A2 Two possiblehis alibi, entirely true yet hosts, not convincing. unambiguousambiguous The alibi was presented, 74 85 A3 One possible not convincing yet host, entirely true. ambiguousunambiguous The alibi was presented, 69 85 A4 One possible entirely true yet not host, convincing. unambiguousambiguous Subject-host sentences The ringmaster had 78 87 B1 Two possible trained the elephant, hosts, obviously masterful but ambiguousan alcoholic. unambiguous The ringmaster had 82 91 B2 Two possible trained the elephant, an hosts, alcoholic but obviously unambiguous- masterful. ambiguous The ringmaster was 81 95 B3 One possible exceptional, obviously host, masterful but an ambiguousalcoholic. unambiguous The ringmaster was 76 94 B4 One possible exceptional, an alcoholic host, but obviously masterful. unambiguousambiguous

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This claim would predict no garden-pathing and thus no special difficulty of processing sentences like B1. We began to investigate what these interpretive processes are like by using adjunct predicates that were conjunctions of two adjectival phrases, separated by a comma from the main assertion. One of the conjuncts was ambiguous, possibly taking as subject either the object (theme) or the subject of the main sentence; the other was semantically disambiguated in favor of the object/theme or of the subject. The two conjuncts could appear either in the order ambiguous-unambiguous or in the order unambiguous-ambiguous. Consider the possibility that all structurally appropriate NPs in a sentence are evaluated in parallel as possible hosts of an adjunct predicate. Such a mechanism could use a feature attraction or resonance process in which congruence between properties of an NP and selectional features of the adjunct predicate permits the appropriate NP to be directly accessed by the predicate. It seems reasonable to expect that the need to choose between two semantically acceptable hosts for an adjunct predicate will create a processing cost. However, if only one, not both, of the potential hosts ''resonated" to the selectional features of the adjunct predicate, no processing cost would be incurred by the need to choose between hosts. Such selective availability of a single host could come about if the acceptable host possessed linguistically encoded semantic features to which the adjunct predicate was attracted. If the parser must expend processing resources to choose between two alternative semantically compatible hosts for an adjunct predicate, then reading times for the region that contains the adjunct predicates should be slower when there are two NPs in the first region than when there is just one. This would hold true equally for subject predication and theme/object predication sentences. However, if having a single semantically acceptable host eliminates competition, a time penalty for having two (vs. one) NPs in the first region would occur only when the ambiguous adjunct comes first. When the unambiguous adjunct comes first, the reader may use the information it contains to select a host based on congruence of semantic features, without any substantial competition from the alternate host. Eight theme-host sentences and eight subject-host sentences were constructed in four versions each, as shown in table 6.2. The four versions resulted from the combination of one versus two NPs in the main clause and the ambiguous-unambiguous versus unambiguous-ambiguous ordering of the conjuncts in the adjunct predicate. Each sentence was divided

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immediately after the comma for purposes of self-paced presentation. A true/false question was devised for each sentence, querying the adjunct in all but two cases. These 16 sentences were included with 112 others. Since this experiment and experiment 1 were carried out as parts of the same overall study, the procedural details were the same as those described for experiment 1. Since no differences in reading time for region 1 (milliseconds per character) reached significance in either the subjects or items analyses, these times will not be discussed. Table 6.2 presents the reading times for region 2 of each sentence (the adjunct predicate), together with the percentage of correct answers to the questions. There was no sign of the difficulty of processing two-host subject predication sentences like B1, predicted by the structural attachment hypothesis. Mean reading time for these sentences was 80 ms per character, not significantly slower than the corresponding one-host sentences at 79 ms per character. Neither was there any sign of an overall difference between two-host and one-host sentences (73 vs. 75 ms per character, respectively). The only effect on reading time that was arguably significant was the main effect of theme versus subject predication: sentences with theme-host predicates were read faster than sentences with subject-host predicates (69 vs. 80 ms per character; F1(1, 47) = 44.33, p < .01, but F2(1, 14) = 2.96, p < .10). Actual reading time was approximately equal (2080 vs. 2097 ms). The experiment was not designed to compare subject-host and theme-host sentences directly, focusing instead on the interaction of this factor with number of possible hosts. Hence, the predicates differed in length (30.6 vs. 26.4 characters) and in content. Because of the marginal significance of the milliseconds-per-character effect in the items analysis, and because of the fact that the milliseconds-per-character analysis generally overcorrects for length differences (see Clifton and Ferreira 1987), and because no attempt was made to permit direct comparison of subject-host and theme-host sentences, the indication of a speed advantage for theme-/objecthost predicates should probably be discounted. The analysis of question-answering accuracy yielded two interesting results. First, accuracy tended to be higher for questions about sentences whose adjunct predicates occurred in the order unambiguous-ambiguous than for questions about sentences with the order ambiguous-unambiguous (92 vs. 88%; F1(1, 48) = 4.27, p < .05, but F2(1, 14) = 3.52, p < .08). This difference might be taken as support for the direct access mechanism, according to which difficulty of choosing the host would

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appear only when the first adjunct was ambiguous. This is especially true since the difference appeared only for sentences with two possible NP hosts (94 vs. 85% correct), not for sentences with only a single possible host (92 vs. 91%; F1(1, 47) = 5.54, p < .03, but F2(1, 14) = 2.48, .15 > p > .10). Second, the interaction between theme versus subject predication and two versus one possible antecedents was significant (F1(1, 47) = 5.46, p < .03; F2(1, 14) = 5.78, p < .03). Having two possible antecedents instead of one hurt subject predication sentences (89 vs. 94% correct) but actually seemed to help theme predication sentences (90 vs. 85%; this effect may be attributable to the fact that one-host theme predication sentences were passives, not actives). Thus, no evidence was found for structurally based garden-pathing in experiment 2. Further, although the direct access mechanism was not favored by the reading time results, it did receive some support from the accuracy results. Reading was not slower when there were two possible NP hosts rather than one, nor was it affected by the order of ambiguous versus unambiguous adjunct, contrary to the direct access predictions. However, presenting the semantically unambiguous conjunct of the adjunct before the ambiguous conjunct may have improved comprehension for sentences with two possible NP hosts, compared to presenting the ambiguous conjunct first. Although this is as predicted by direct access, in the absence of any effects on reading time, other interpretations of the finding must be considered (see below, especially section 6.3). Readers presented with an initial ambiguous adjunct may sometimes have interpreted it quickly, without waiting for the second adjunct, but interpreted it in a way that was inconsistent with the second adjunct in the two-host sentences. This interpretation might not always have been revised when the second, unambiguous adjunct was read, resulting in an error. 6.2.3 Conclusions: Structural Garden-Pathing? Experiment 1 indicated a preference in question-answering performance for gerundive adjunct predicates to be predicated of subjects rather than objects, but showed no difference for nongerundive adjunct predicates. Experiment 2 similarly provided no evidence for garden-pathing in subject predication sentences. We have conducted several other experiments using various techniques that, in general, failed to provide any convincing data for a general object-host preference of the kind predicted if structural parsing principles applied to adjunct predicates (see Clifton, Frazier, and

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Rapoport 1994, for more detailed discussion). Two experiments used an end-of-sentence ungrammaticality detection task. When the adjunct predicate was a simple adjective, subject-host sentences were more often judged ungrammatical than object-host sentences (46 vs. 25% in one experiment, 40 vs. 20% in another), but no reaction time differences appeared. A difference in comprehension time is highly characteristic of the garden paths that result from an initial syntactic misanalysis requiring syntactic revision. Its absence here suggests that the objecthost preference does not reflect a syntactic attachment strategy (e.g., the low attachment that would be appropriate if the proper syntactic analysis is that given in (2)). Two more experiments used gerundive adjunct predicates in the same task; these found no reading time differences but higher rejection rates for object-host than subject-host sentences (34 vs. 27% in one experiment, 36 vs. 27% in the other). The fact that the difference in comprehensibility depends on the form of the adjunct predicate similarly suggests that the preference does not result from structural factors that lead to one preferred initial analysis. Such an initial preference should not be influenced by the aspectual information distinguishing between -ed and -ing, on the assumption that such aspectual information is not associated with relevant structural differences. A fifth experiment reported by Clifton, Frazier, and Rapoport used an end-of-sentence "got it" (comprehension judgment) task, as used by Frazier, Clifton, and Randall (1983), with sentences that had simple adjective adjunct predicates that were disambiguated toward subject versus object host either by semantic features or by world knowledge. The experiment showed no preference for either object or subject hosts in either reaction time or percentage of "got it" judgments, nor any effect of how the host was disambiguated. We propose that all these experiments point to the conclusion that adjunct predicates are not initially attached to a single host following structural preference principles. The only clear evidence for the object-host preference that such principles would implicate occurred in the grammaticality judgment experiments just mentioned, but the preference was observed only in proportions of "ungrammatical" judgments, not reaction times, and the preference depended on the form of the adjunct predicate. Neither of these facts is consistent with a garden path analysis of adjunct predicates. However, the preference for object host in the proportion of "ungrammatical" judgments suggests that there may be some sense in

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which an adjunct predicate prefers an object (or theme) host. We turn to one suggestion concerning this preference. 6.3 Indirect Binding Consider the possibility that adjunct phrases (excluding gerundive phrases) are initially predicated of the object of the clause to which they are adjoined simply because the object is the prototypical position for the NP that plays the thematic role of theme and a theme is always an acceptable host for an adjunct predicate (Williams 1980). Such a preference does not exclude the possibility of other hosts, as (e.g.) an initial structural analysis that makes predication inappropriate for other hosts would do. If predicating the adjunct phrase of the object or theme is plausible, then the predication will be accepted. However, if it is not plausible, the predication is broken, and the adjunct will be bound by the predicate variable of the VP and thus ultimately coindexed with the subject (see Williams 1993, section 3.1.2, for details, especially discussion of the Predicate Opacity Condition). This binding, we assume, happens automatically when the predicate that contains the adjunct predicate, the main VP, is predicated of the sentence subject. This proposal would explain why a preference for object predication sometimes existsthemes have interpretive priority in cases of ambiguitybut no necessary processing time advantage, since predicating the VP of the subject must be accomplished in any case. No additional, otherwise unnecessary operation need follow the attempt at object (or theme) predication if such predication is not acceptable. For example, in (5), when the VP receives the index of the subject i, then the AP will too, as in (5a), unless it has already received the index of the theme, as in (5b). (5)

[NP]i [theme-NP [AP] VP] a. [NP]i [theme-NP [AP]i VP]i b. [NP]i [theme-NPk [AP]k VP]i

Such an indirect binding process would not predict any necessary processing time cost for having two possible NP hosts rather than one, as long as one was the subject of the sentence and the other the object. However, if the two possible hosts were within the same constituent, then competition between them might be costly. It could not be resolved by the default binding of any unassigned predicates by the subject. Experiment 3 was designed to test this prediction (and, incidentally, to evaluate the

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sensitivity of our self-paced reading procedures to identify effects of competition when they occurred). 6.3.1 Experiment 3 Sixteen sentences like those in table 6.3 were constructed, eight (A1 4) with the host of the adjunct predication in object position (or theme subject, in the case of their one-NP counterparts) and eight (B1 4) with the host of the adjunct predication in subject position. Each sentence occurred in four forms. Two forms (1 and 2) had two conjoined NPs in the constituent that included the host of the adjunct, and two forms (3 and 4) had a single NP as the host constituent. In one of each of these, the two conjuncts of the adjunct occurred in the order ambiguousunambiguous, and in the other, the two conjuncts occurred in the order unambiguous-ambiguous. Forty-eight University of Massachusetts undergraduates were tested in a self-paced phrase-by-phrase reading experiment, in which they saw these 16 sentences randomly mixed with 112 other sentences. Each subject saw two sentences in each version, and across all subjects, each sentence was tested equally often in each version. The sentences were presented in two parts: everything up to the adjunct, and the adjunct itself. A moving-window procedure (Kennedy and Murray 1984) was used in which the locations of to-be-seen letters were indicated by underscores that changed to letters when a thumb trigger was pressed and then reverted to underscores when the trigger was next pressed. A true/false question was asked after each sentence. The mean reading times for the adjunct phrase (region 2) and the question-answering accuracy appear in table 6.3. There were some differences in reading time for region 1 (not shown in table 6.3). Reading time was longer for sentences whose adjunct would prove to be predicated of the object (type A in table 6.3) than for subject predication sentences (type B) (66 vs. 60 ms per character p < .01). Further, the reading time for the (longer) twopossible-antecedent sentences was longer than for the one-possible-antecedent sentences when measured in terms of uncorrected reading times (milliseconds), but not in terms of milliseconds per character. We do not consider these differences to be informative. They presumably reflect length, lexical, and plausibility differences between the two sets of sentences used. There was one consistent difference in reading time in the critical region, region 2, which contained the adjunct phrase. Adjuncts were read

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Table 6.3 Sample materials, reading time for adjunct (in milliseconds per character), and question-answering accuracy, experiment 3 Condition Sample item Reading% time correct Object-host sentences Yesterday I located my 70 91 A1 Two niece and her dog,/ only possible hosts, sixteen and already getting ambiguousmarried. unambiguous Yesterday I located my 77 92 A2 Two niece and her dog,/ already possible hosts, getting married and only unambiguous- sixteen. ambiguous Yesterday my niece was 60 95 A3 One located,/ only sixteen and possible host, already getting married. ambiguousunambiguous Yesterday my niece was 67 92 A4 One located,/ already getting possible host, married and only sixteen. unambiguousambiguous Subject-host sentences The head nurse and her 83 89 B1 Two thermometer were possible hosts, banished from the office,/ ambiguousthreatening and unambiguous unabashed. The head nurse and her 81 84 B2 Two thermometer were possible hosts, banished from the office,/ unambiguous- unabashed and ambiguous threatening. The head nurse was 66 96 B3 One banished from the office,/ possible host, threatening and ambiguousunabashed. unambiguous The head nurse was 69 94 B4 One banished from the office,/ possible host, unabashed and unambiguous- threatening. ambiguous

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more slowly when there were two possible hosts within the constituent containing the host of the predication than when there was just one (78 vs. 65 ms per character, F1(1, 47) = 36.45, F2(1, 14) = 14.52, p < .01; 2070 vs. 1774 ms, F1(1, 47) = 35.40, F2(1, 14) = 16.35, p < .01). In addition, the tendency for object-host predicates to be read faster than subject-host predicates was significant by subjects but not by items (68 vs. 75 ms per character, F1(1, 47) = 8.29, p < .01, but F2(1, 14) = 1.45, p > .20). Like experiment 2, experiment 3 was not designed to compare object-host and subject-host sentences directly, but focused instead on the number-of-hosts manipulation and its possible interaction with object versus subject host. Accordingly, object-host and subject-host adjuncts were not matched on length or on content, and therefore the possible object-host advantage probably should not be treated too seriously. Question-answering performance yielded one suggestive result that can be taken to support the reading time findings. Questions tended to be answered less accurately when there were two possible hosts than when there was just one (89 vs. 94%), but this difference was significant only by subjects (F1(1, 47) = 5.18, p < .03, but F2(1, 14) = 2.47, p > .10). The main prediction of the indirect binding hypothesis was supported: reading time was slower, and accuracy was possibly worse, when the actual host NP occurred in conjunction with another NP. The significance of this effect also suggests that our experimental techniques are capable of detecting processing-difficulty effects when they do exist. Unlike what we found in experiment 2, the order of ambiguous versus unambiguous adjuncts made no difference. 6.3.2 Experiment 4 The indirect binding hypothesis claims that an adjunct is initially predicated of the theme or object of the matrix sentence, and that this predication is revised at little or no cost in time if a revision proves necessary. We have provided some linguistic justification for the presumed theme predication preference and have mentioned some experiments (described more fully in Clifton, Frazier, and Rapoport 1994) that showed better comprehension of theme predication than subject predication sentences. However, we have not provided direct evidence for such a preference. Experiment 4 was designed to do that. This experiment used logic established by Bever and McElree (1988), Dell, McKoon, and Ratcliff (1983), MacDonald (1989), Nicol and Swinney (1989), Swinney (1979), and others. The operation of predicating

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something of the object NP may make it or its constituents more available for processing in (e.g.) an episodic probe-recognition task. On the assumption that an adjunct predicate is initially predicated of the object or theme NP and not of the subject NP, a constituent of the object NP should be recognized faster and more accurately than the corresponding constituent of a subject NP. No corresponding advantage in recognizing a constituent of the object NP would be expected in the absence of an adjunct predicate (e.g., if the sentence ended with an adverbial rather than an adjunct predicate). The present experiment was conducted by T. Rapoport (see Clifton, Frazier, and Rapoport 1994) as a test of this prediction. Twenty-four sentences like those in table 6.4 were constructed, in four forms each. Each sentence contained a subject and an object NP with a prenominal adjective and ended either with an adjectival phrase serving as an adjunct predicate adjective or with an adverbial phrase. The adjectival phrase was ambiguous in that it could be predicated of either the subject or the object (e.g., in The vendor sold the books drenched, either the vendor Table 6.4 Probe response time (RT; in milliseconds) and accuracy, experiment 4 Condition Sample item Probe RT % item correct probe Causal, adjunct, The small boy ate the WHEAT961 98 object wheat roll dirty. Causal, adjunct, The small boy ate the SMALL 100496 subject wheat roll dirty. Causal, adverb, The small boy ate the WHEAT939 96 object wheat roll daily. Causal, adverb, The small boy ate the SMALL 934 92 subject wheat roll daily. Noncausal, The small boy saved the WHEAT923 96 adjunct, object wheat roll dirty. Noncausal, The small boy saved the SMALL 998 92 adjunct, subject wheat roll dirty. Noncausal, The small boy saved the WHEAT954 96 adverb, object wheat roll daily. Noncausal, The small boy saved the SMALL 935 93 adverb, subject wheat roll daily.

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or the books could be drenched). Each sentence could occur with two different verbs, one belonging to the class of "causal" or "+change" verbs that result in a change of state in their object (e.g., eat, cook, paint) and one belonging to the class of "noncausal'' verbs that do not result in a change of state (e.g., save, pursue, phone). 2 Each sentence was tape-recorded by a female speaker and then digitized. A timing mark was placed with a waveform editor to permit the visual presentation of a probe item immediately after the offset of the last word of the sentence. The sentences were recorded on four different tapes, one form of each sentence on each tape, intermixed in different random orders with the other items to be described below. Two probe words were available for each sentence, the adjective from the subject NP and the adjective from the object NP. A probe word was displayed centered on a video screen immediately after the end of the sentence, and remained displayed until the subject pulled a "yes" or "no" trigger to indicate whether the probe had occurred in the sentence. Fifty-six subjects were tested, seven in each of eight conditions. Half the subjects received one probe item, and the other half the other probe item. Orthogonally, each sentence was tested equally often in each of the four forms for each subject, and each subject saw each form equally often (probed half the time for the adjective from the subject NP, and half the time for the adjective from the object NP). Each sentence was followed by a visual who/what question, with two choices displayed on the video screen above the two response triggers. The subject was instructed to pull the trigger under the correct alternative. A sentence with an adjunct predicate adjective was always followed by a question about that adjunct (e.g., "What was dirty?"). A sentence with an adverbial, on the other hand, was always followed by a question about the subject or object adjective that had not been presented as a recognition probe. Twenty-four other sentences containing adjunct predicate adjectives or adverbial phrases, but in which the probe word did not occur, were also used, together with 48 filler sentences of various forms (half of which were probed with positive probes from various portions of the sentences). The mean reaction times to respond "yes" to the probe item, together with the percentages of correct responses to probes, appear in table 6.4. The only significant effect in the analysis of reaction times was the interaction between subject versus object probe and adjunct versus adverbial (F1(1, 55) = 9.25, F2(1, 23) = 6.64, p < .02). Object probes were

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responded to faster than subject probes, but only when the sentence contained an adjunct (942 vs. 1001 ms), not when it contained an adverbial (946 vs. 935 ms). The accuracy rates for probe responses were slightly higher for object than for subject probes (96 vs. 93% correct, F1(1, 55) = 3.53, p < .07; F2(1, 23) = 7.52, p < .02). However, this difference held true equally for sentences with adjuncts and with adverbs. The who/what questions following sentences that ended with adverbials were answered correctly 87% of the time, with no noted difference among the conditions. The questions following the sentences that ended with adjunct predicates (which had no correct answer) were responded to more frequently with the object than with the subject (70 vs. 30%). This difference appeared to be more marked for verbs that denote a change of state than for verbs that do not (73 vs. 27%, compared to 66 vs. 34% correct, F1(1, 55) = p < .01, but F2(1, 23) = 3.21, .10 > p > .05). In summary, experiment 4 used an interpretive task, probe recognition of the host, to establish superior performance for object hosts over subject hosts. This advantage was present in both the probe recognition times and the question-answering data. However, experiments 1 3 demonstrated that this object-host preference, in contrast to presumably comparable structural preferences in sentences with primary phrases, does not result in garden-pathing when the preference is disconfirmed. 6.4 Conclusions We began by presenting syntactic analyses of nonresultative adjunct predicates that support the prediction that garden-pathing should be observed in temporarily ambiguous subject predication sentences, if adjunct predicates are attached following structural processing principles. Several experiments reported here (and additional experiments reported in Clifton, Frazier, and Rapoport 1994) provide no evidence for this prediction. Instead, the data support the claim that nonresultative adjunct predicates are treated as nonprimary phrases and processed following the principles of construal. They are associated to the extended VP, where they are available without structural reanalysis to both subject and object hosts. Both indirect and direct evidence (experiment 4) was provided that the theme or object is the initially preferred host for an adjunct predicate (at least a simple adjective, but probably not a gerundive; see experiment 1 and the discussion following experiment 2), but this preference does not seem to result in garden-pathing when it is disconfirmed.

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The idea that an adjunct predicate is associated to a single domain (the extended VP) and consequently is compatible with either a subject- or an object-host interpretation is systematically supported by our data. If a low attachment preference were followed, with later structural revision for subject-host predicates, the absence of a reading time advantage for object-host sentences would be completely unexplained. Further, the presence of structural ambiguity in the two-host sentences in experiment 2 should have produced a large increase in reading times in subject-host sentences, since it would introduce a garden path that was not present in one-host sentences. Similarly, a multiple or parallel analysis strategy is disconfirmed if it claims that multiple syntactic, as opposed to interpretive, analyses are computed. Complexity is not determined by the number of structurally permissible attachment sites (experiment 2), even though it is affected by the number of hosts available within a single NP constituent (experiment 3). We have attempted to flesh out the interpretive processes underlying the construal of adjunct predicates. These attempts must be viewed as preliminary, but we believe we are taking a first glimpse at the process of predication. We first considered a direct access mechanism, according to which a semantically acceptable host within the domain into which an adjunct predicate was associated would "resonate" to that predicate, supporting predication. No evidence supporting this prediction was found in the reading time data of experiment 2. Question-answering accuracy data from the two-host conditions of this experiment did provide some support, in that accuracy was higher when the adjuncts appeared in the order unambiguous-ambiguous than when they appeared in the other order. However, this accuracy effect may have reflected a more strategic process according to which an initial ambiguous adjunct is first predicated of one host, generally the object, a predication that the subject may sometimes have had difficulty giving up when the following unambiguous adjunct disconfirmed it. We next proposed an indirect binding mechanism. This mechanism claims that a stative adjunct predicate is initially interpreted as having the theme or object of the sentence as its subject if possible. If such a predication is blocked by the content of the adjunct predicate, then the subject variable of the adjunct is bound in a cost-free fashion when the predicate of the main clause is bound to the subject. This step does not add processing time, since the predicate must be predicated of the subject in any event. We are proposing that the act of predication binds all un-

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bound predicates to the sentence subject, including any unbound adjunct predicates. In short, the data point to the existence of a single underspecified or association structure underlying the parser's analysis of both subject-host and object-host sentences. They support the predictions of the Construal Hypothesis in three respects. First, the same syntactic representation is initially constructed whether an object or a subject predication is involved. Second, a thematic interpretation principle ("Prefer theme" for stative adjunct predicates) characterizes the only general preferences observed across the various studies reported here; no structural preference emerges. Third, no general structural preference is found across the predicate types we studied (-ing vs. -ed and simple adjectives). Final interpretation preferences and accuracy are influenced by predicate type, even though sentences with these two predicate types presumably do not differ in relevant syntactic ways. The observed pattern of an initial preference for one interpretation (object-host), combined with no processing penalty when the other interpretation proves to be correct, is not the usual signature of garden path sentences (nor is it the pattern expected when comparing more and less frequent constructions). We have accounted for it by the indirect binding hypothesis, according to which all unbound predicates are bound to a sentence subject in a single step, one in which adding another predicate to be bound does not increase processing cost. We realize that evidence must be obtained in other domains if a convincing argument is to be made for such a hypothesis, but we submit that the hypothesis does receive initial and intriguing support from the evidence provided in this chapter.

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Page viii Appendix: Sentences Used in Experiments

173

Notes

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References

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Index

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Chapter 7 Empty Categories and Extended Domains: Adjunct Extraction In previous chapters we investigated the processing of because clauses, relative clauses, and adjunct predicates. Our purpose was twofold: to explore further the processing of these structures, and to test the predictions of the Construal Hypothesis, marshaling evidence for its cross-construction validity. In this chapter our purpose is somewhat different. We will consider ambiguous adjunct extractions such as How did Mary guess that John fixed the car? In particular, we wish to explore the processing of these constructions. This in itself is an especially difficult task because the optionality of adjuncts makes syntactic disambiguation of temporarily ambiguous extractions essentially impossible. In addition to pinning down descriptive generalizations concerning the processing of adjunct extractions, we will explore general questions raised by our processing account of themquestions relevant to the development of the construal framework and more generally to any theory of sentence processing. By contrast with our purpose in previous chapters, we do not present the studies in this chapter as specific empirical support for the framework developed here. We suspect that the data could in principle be handled in other frameworks besides this one. Our reason for including this chapter at all comes from our attempt to explore the problems that arise in the processing of adjuncts: we are aware of no published psycholinguistic studies on the processing of adjunct extractions, and we hope that this chapter will at least provide an initial sketch of how the human sentence-processing mechanism copes with such extractions. We begin by questioning whether adjunct extraction leaves a trace in the syntactic position from which the adjunct phrase was extracted. This is an open question, because the optionality of adjuncts entails that it is the semantics alone that disambiguates ambiguous adjunct extractions

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(though, as we will show syntactic constraints on extraction can determine whether an adjunct extraction is grammatically ambiguous). In section 7.1 we take up the linguistic evidence concerning whether adjunct extraction leaves a trace (i.e., an empty category in the canonical or unmoved position of the adjunct). We think the linguistic evidence favors the view that a trace of a moved adjunct exists in the syntactic representation. In section 7.2 we inquire when an adjunct phrase is identified as being an adjunct: when the word (how) or phrase (how cleverly) is first encountered or only once it has been related to some other position in the sentence? Experimental and intuitive evidence suggests that the identification of a moved phrase as an adjunct is a consequence of trace postulation, not an immediate labeling of the moved constituent itself prior to gap identification. In section 7.3 we consider whether the processor typically stops analysis of the adjunct once it has found a single possible analysis of it or whether the processor generally proceeds with analysis of the input by also considering alternatives to the first analysis. We assume that a single "first-analysis" preference does characterize argument extraction, and we present evidence that it does not characterize the routine behavior of the processor in the analysis of ambiguous adjunct extraction. In section 7.4 we take up intuitive evidence about some of the factors governing interpretive preferences for adjuncts. In section 7.5 we look at questions about how the data can be characterized utilizing the construal framework developed here; and we present a summary of the results and conclusions in section 7.6. 7.1 The Grammar of Adjunct Extraction Many linguistic studies of adjuncts have been carried out (e.g., Cinque 1990; Kroch 1989; Lasnik and Saito 1992). The distribution of "moved" adjuncts and moved arguments is not the same. Adjunct extraction is more highly constrained. In particular, adjuncts cannot easily extract from the so-called weak islands created by elements like negatives (1a) or factives (1b). The extracted adjunct how essentially has to be taken as modifying the matrix verb (say or realize), not the verb inside the weak island (fix). Though we are not in a position to review the arguments here, it does not seem implausible that weak islands serve as interpretive islands during language processing and thus resist being associated with adjuncts from outside this domain.

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(1) a. How did Mary say John didn't fix the car? b. How did Mary realize John fixed the car? It is not clear whether the ultimately correct grammatical treatment of weak islands will be couched in syntactic terms (e.g., the intervention account of Rizzi 1990), semantic ones (concerning the monotonicity of intervening constituents or their scope; Williams 1993; Déprez 1993; Szabolcsi 1991), or even pragmatic ones (Rullman 1994). Linguistic evidence suggests that adjuncts move to [Spec, CP], leaving a trace in the original adjunct position. For example, Collins (1991) presents data like those in (2) (6) to argue that systematic differences between why and how come follow readily from the assumption that why appears in [Spec, CP] or is adjoined to VP (Why (not) go to the store?) whereas how come always serves as the head complementizer. Basically, allowing why to move to CP, leaving a trace, explains why an empty C is available for subj(ect)-aux(iliary) inversion (verb movement) (2a) or a controlled PRO (6a), and why long extraction is possible for ordinary adjuncts like why ((3a) and (5b)). When why is VP-adjoined, it does not have these properties; thus, no auxiliary occurs (4a) and long-distance extraction is not possible (5a). This shows that it is the normal structure of why sentences (with why in [Spec, CP]) that explains the properties of the sentences and not anything directly about the meaning of why or the simple presence of the word why. (Specific reasons why the data follow from these assumptions are sketched after each example.) (2)a.Why did John leave? (C is empty, subj-aux inversion or verb movement to C can occur) b.*How come John did leave? (C is not empty, subj-aux inversion or verb movement to C is blocked) (3)a.How did John say Mary left? (long extraction possible) b.How come John said Mary left? (extraction of a head cannot cross an intervening head; thus, the interpretation requiring long extraction is prohibited) (4)a.Why go to the store? (VP adjunction of why) b.*How come go to the store? (no C position for how come) Why say that Mary likes John? (VP adjunction of why doesn't involve a trace, (5)a. therefore no long-distance interpretation) b.Why did you say that Mary likes John? (long-distance reading possible if traces are postulated and bound from [Spec, CP])

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(6)a.John doesn't know how PRO to leave. (I can move to C, as required for a controlled PRO, since how is not in C) b.*John doesn't know how come PRO to leave. (I must move to C for PRO to be controlled, but C is filled) The arguments implied by the above do not demand the assumption that short adjunct extraction leaves a trace. However, the availability of only the VP reading (7a), not the IP or propositional reading (7b), in sentences like (7) suggests that a trace is required even for short extraction. (7) How cleverly did the terrorist gift-wrap the bomb? a. The terrorist gift-wrapped the bomb very cleverly. b. It was very clever of the terrorist to gift-wrap the bomb. Presumably a trace inside VP is, but a trace outside VP is not, in a legitimate position to be bound by the adjunct in [Spec, CP]. We thus assume that the grammar requires a trace to be postulated whenever an adjunct wh-constituent is moved. Finally, we assume that wh-movement only applies to extract focused constituents. Thus, we think the grammar must incorporate some constraint along the lines of Erteshik-Shir's (1990) Focus Constraint; also see Ronat's (1984) discussion of the requirement that an empty category must be bound within its intonation contour. We return to this issue below. 7.2 Analyzing an Adjunct Phrase Is a sentence-initial wh-word (when, where, why, how) immediately identified as an adjunct by virtue of its form alone? Technically, this cannot be accomplished securely in the absence of knowledge of the particular predicates contained in the sentence. A predicate might be lacking an obligatory argument, such as the locative argument required by put or, more controversially, the manner argument of the verb word. This is illustrated in (8) and (9), where where in (8a) and how in (9a) satisfy the lexical requirements of put and word, respectively. (8)

a. b. c.

Wherei did John put the book ei? *What did John put? Whati did John put ei on the table?

(9)

a. b. c.

How did Sally word the ultimatum? ?*What did Sally word? What did Sally word carefully?

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Adjunct wh-words are used only exceptionally to question an argument position. Overwhelmingly, actual arguments of English predicates express thematic roles like agent and theme, not relations like location, time, or manner. Consider (10), for example, where the adjunct wh-words are extracted from theme positions that may be instantiated by temporal or locative phrases, as illustrated in (11). The resulting questions (in (10)) sound very odd indeed. If the adjunct wh-words were simply neutral wh-words, this awkwardness would be surprising. The adjuncts should be completely free to felicitously instantiate any argument position, any thematic role, consistent with their semantic content. (10)

a. ??Wheni did Jeremy say ei upset Martha? b. ??Wherei does John think ei displeased Father?

(11)

a. Jeremy said yesterday upset Martha. b. John thought New York displeased Father.

The intuitions concerning the awkwardness of the examples in (10) suggest that the processor does assign a (tentative) thematic label to the wh-word immediately when that word is first encountered. In (10) a new thematic label must presumably be assigned when the "adjunct" is co-indexed with the gap, resulting in the perceived awkwardness. The thematic roles commonly carried by adjuncts, roles such as locative, temporal and manner, typically do not instantiate arguments. This raises the possibility that initial thematic role assignment amounts to indirect identification of the question word (or ultimately its trace) as an adjunct. Alternatively, as we argue below, the wh-word might remain unanalyzed in terms of the argument/adjunct distinction until the position of its trace is discovered. If so, then we would expect the usual argument advantage (i.e., the preference to analyze an item as part of a primary relation or phrase) to exist in cases of ambiguity, but we would not expect a penalty for analyzing the trace of a wh-word as an adjunct in a sentence where no argument analysis is possible. Ambiguous sentences where the wh-word may be analyzed as serving as either a primary relation (a small clause) or a nonprimary one, as in (12), provide evidence for a preference to analyze the phrase as instantiating a primary relation. (12)

a. b.

How did John look? How did Juli think John looked?

(13)

a. b.

Howj did Johni look [SC ei ej]? Howj did John look ej?

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Intuitions suggest that tired, not using binoculars, is the appropriate answer for the initial analysis of (12). It thus appears that (12) is initially assigned a structure like (13a), where SC stands for small clause, not the adjunct extraction structure of (13b). 1 The intuitive preference in (12a) depends in part on the nature of the verb and the content of the clause. For example, the preference is milder with appear than with the look of (12). In embedded cases like (12), the preferences depend heavily on the nature of the matrix verb and its (in)ability to be modified easily by the particular wh-word. For example, if think is replaced with guess or report in (12b), the matrix interpretation of the question becomes more available, especially when the embedded clause is informative taken on its own (e.g., in (12), in the context of a party where hide-and-seek is being played, or a bloody movie is being shown). The intuitions about examples like those in (12) are sufficiently labile that we can take them only as providing very suggestive, but not definitive, evidence for the prediction that primary relation analyses will be favored. We turn now to the prediction that no penalty would be expected in analyzing the trace of a wh-word as an adjunct in a sentence where no argument analysis is possible. An experiment testing sentences like those in (14) confirmed this prediction. (14)a.Where / did John haul the wood / this afternoon / before sunset? / b.Where / did John haul the wood to / this afternoon / before sunset? / c.To which shed / did John haul the wood / this afternoon / before sunset? / d.Which shed / did John haul the wood to / this afternoon / before sunset? / No adjunct penalty appeared in the adjunct sentence form (14a) relative to the argument sentence forms (14b d). This experiment measured the speed with which 48 University of Massachusetts undergraduates read sentences like (14), using a self-paced region-by-region reading procedure in which each successive region appeared at the same position on the left side of a computer screen. The division of sentences into presentation regions is indicated in (14). Item (14a) is an adjunct question; (14b) is actually an argument question with a wh-word that appears to be an adjunct. Sentences (14c) and (14d) serve as controls in which the questioned constituent does not appear to be an adjunct superficially. Further, in (14d) the wh-NP is a part of a directional argument of haul.

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Reading times for the second region were 54, 58, 56, and 61 ms per character, for sentences like (14a), (14b), (14c), and (14d), respectively. (Reading times in the next region were 78, 80, 77, and 78 ms per character). The most notable conclusion is that there was no apparent advantage for the argument extraction cases, either (b), (c), or (d), over the adjunct extraction case (a) in these unambiguous examples. This suggests that the wh-phrase is immediately assigned a thematic role but is not labeled as an argument or an adjunct. 7.3 Reading Biased Adjunct Questions The apparent ready availability of an embedded interpretation of an adjunct question word requires explanation, given the general tendency for the parser to prefer the shortest grammatical syntactic chain (see the Minimal Chain Principle; De Vincenzi 1991). Before exploring the basis for this observation, we report an experiment designed to test whether the embedded reading is in fact available. The study determines whether only the matrix analysis of the adjunct wh-word is initially computed, revisions of this analysis being considered only later if at all, or whether the processor typically computesor at least considers the interpretation ofboth the matrix and embedded extraction analysis in two-clause wh-adjunct questions. We conclude that the processor normally does consider both matrix and embedded interpretations of the adjunct, but that it is biased toward matrix clause interpretations in that it quickly ceases considering the embedded reading if all evidence is consistent with the matrix interpretation. Sentences containing ambiguous adjunct extractions, with possibly a matrix or possibly an embedded gap, may be biased so that perceivers tend to report the matrix reading or so that they tend to report the embedded reading. In order to develop materials for a reading time study (reported immediately below), we constructed how questions that we thought were biased toward a matrix or an embedded interpretation, as well as similarly biased when/where questions. This was accomplished by trying to block, or make unpreferred, the alternative analysis of the question. The sentences are illustrated in (15). (15) a. Matrix extraction bias; how How did the attendant indicate that the old lady was sick? b. Embedded extraction bias; how How did the plumber declare that the leak started?

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c. Matrix extraction bias; when/where When did Dr. Tanen inform Sam that he was cured? d. Embedded extraction bias; when/where Where did Kristy realize that her presents were hidden? We then made up a questionnaire with sentences in isolation, each associated with two choices, as shown in (16). (16)When will the doctor inform the patient that he was finally cured? _____ tomorrow morning _____ last week Fifty-five University of Massachusetts undergraduates rated 46 sentences each. There were a total of 92 sentences, 46 pairs with one how and one when/where version of each pair. Each subject saw one version of a pair, half the subjects seeing each version. Subjects first read each sentence (without seeing the alternatives we provided) and wrote an answer to it. After reading all sentences, they went back over their answers and categorized them as being more similar to the first or the second answer option we provided. The first option was always the matrix answer, and the second, the embedded answer. We scored the percentage of subjects making the embedded choice. We then selected six how and six when/where sentences with a matrix bias (8 28% embedded extraction choice), and six of each with an approximately matched embedded bias (68 88%) for use in the self-paced reading experiments. 7.3.1 Self-Paced Reading in Isolated Sentences Seventy-two University of Massachusetts undergraduates were tested in a single-sentence self-paced reading experiment (experiment 1) that contained the how and when/where questions from the rating experiment just described (see (15) for examples). Twelve of these sentences had a matrix extraction bias, and 12 an embedded extraction bias. A self-paced moving-window procedure was used in which the reader saw a preview of a sentence in which letters were replaced by underscore marks, and each press of a thumb button brought up the letters of the next phrase and replaced the previous phrase with underscores. Each of the adjunct extraction sentences was presented as two phrases, the first phrase consisting of the wh-word through the sentence subject, and the second phrase consisting of the rest of the sentence. These 24 sentences were embedded in a list of 96 other sentences, including 24 indirect question sentences, 24 attachment ambiguity sentences (NP vs. S complement), and 48 sentences

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Table 7.1 Reading time (in milliseconds per character), experiment 1 Region Extraction bias Region 1 Region 2 Matrix 59 65 Embedded 60 70 of a variety of forms. Half of the sentences were followed by a simple two-choice question. The mean reading times for the two regions of a sentence (milliseconds per character) appear in table 7.1. Questions were answered with at least 86% accuracy in the two conditions. The difference in region 2 provided suggestive support for a matrix extraction bias but was significant only by subjects, not by items (F1(1, 71) = 15.74, p < .01; F2(1, 22) = 1.40, p > .20). 7.3.2 Self-Paced Reading in Context We made up two contexts for each sentence, one that permitted both readings, and one that was designed to force the preferred reading. The resulting 24 pairs of contexts were as similar as possible, generally differing only in that some information relevant to the unpreferred interpretation was added to make the context support both readings (the underlined material in the example shown in (17)). Each paragraph ended with a previously normed how or when/where question. (17)a.Matrix extraction bias George works as a GE salesman, though he also knows about repairs. This morning he convinced an old customer that his office heating system needs to be replaced with a new heat pump by explaining that it would be cost effective. Hopefully, George is telling the truth. How did the salesman convince the customer that the system should be replaced? b.Embedded extraction bias The local grammar school is an old wooden building. Recently, there was a fire in the west wing where the third grade classes are held. The third grade teacher stood in her classroom and used a picture book to show the kids how to exit through the windows, jumping into the net below. Where did the teacher instruct the kids to leave the burning building?

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Twenty-four additional paragraphs were constructed that ended with an argument extraction question (who or what question), and 12 additional paragraphs that also ended with a question (why, when, or what) were constructed as fillers. Four different versions of the entire set of 60 paragraphs were constructed in a counterbalanced fashion, so that each experimental sentence was tested equally often in each form and each subject received an equal number of each type of sentence. Forty-eight undergraduates at the University of Massachusetts were tested in this experiment (experiment 2), using a procedure in which they read each paragraph in a self-paced region-by-region procedure. A display began with the computer-controlled presentation of underscore marks in the position where each word would appear. When the subject pressed a thumb button, the first region of underscores changed to letters. With the next button press, these reverted to underscores and the next region appeared as letters. The critical sentence appeared as a whole as the last presentation item for a paragraph. Subjects were instructed to read the last (question) sentence of a paragraph ''well enough so that you understand what is being asked, but we don't want you to figure out the answer before we ask you to give it. Just read the question once, carefully, understanding it, and press the thumb button to indicate you have done that." The time taken to read each phrase, including the last sentence, was recorded. After half of the items of each type, the computer instructed the subject "ANSWER THE QUESTION." The subject answered the question orally, and the experimenter typed a code for the answer category (matrix, embedded, ambiguous or wrong) into the computer (assisted by a prompt displayed to the experimenter but not the subject on a computer screen). The experimenter was instructed to be lenient in scoring an answer and not to insist on literal exactness. No feedback was given to the subject. The data in milliseconds per character appear in table 7.2. The effect of matrix versus embedded preferencewith matrix-biased items being read faster than embedded-biased items (73 vs. 86 ms per character)was significant by subjects (F1(1, 47) = 51.71, p < .001) but not by items (F2(1, 22) = 1.98, .20 > p > .15). The effect of context was not significant. Contexts that supported both answers appeared to be read slower than contexts that supported only the biased one (81.0 vs. 78.2 ms per character, but F1(1, 47) = 1.82, F2(1, 22) = 1.30, p > .10). However, this difference did reach significance, at least in the subjects analysis, when the uncorrected reading times were analyzed (3849 vs. 3519 ms; F1(1, 47) =

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Table 7.2 Reading times (in milliseconds per character), experiment 2 Extraction Support Reading time % matrix site interpretation answersa Matrix Both 74 68 Matrix Matrix 72 78 Embedded Both 88 22 Embedded Embedded84 14 aThe percentage of matrix answers is based on all answers that were clearly scorable as either matrix or embedded. 13.33, p < .001, but F2(1, 22) = 3.36, .10 > p > .05). The interaction did not approach significance in either analysis. Answers were required to the paragraph-final adjunct extraction questions on half the trials. These answers indicated that the manipulation of matrix versus embedded bias was successful. Seventy-five percent of all answers were scored as indicating either a clear matrix or a clear embedded interpretation of the question. When the last sentence of the paragraph was intended to have a matrix bias, 73% of these clear responses answered the matrix interpretation. When it was intended to have an embedded bias, only 18% of the clear responses answered the matrix interpretation. The contextual manipulation had a modest effect. Adding contextual support to an embedded answer decreased the percentage of matrix answers to questions of matrix-biased sentences from 78% to 68%, whereas adding contextual support for a matrix answer increased the percentage of matrix answers to questions of embedded-biased sentences from 14% to 22%. The effect of bias was highly significant (F1(1, 47) = 54.37, p < .001; F2(1, 10) = 54.72, p < .001). The effect of contextual support tended to depend on the nature of the bias, as indicated by the near-significance of the interaction between bias and contextual support (F1(1, 47) = 2.85, p < .10; F2(1, 10) = 3.23, p < .11). The mechanism by which contextual bias operates was illuminated by a post hoc analysis of the data that correlated the intrinsic bias of the question with the difference in reading time between contexts that supported both interpretations and contexts that supported only the intrinsically biased interpretation. Intrinsic bias was measured as the absolute value of the difference between 50% (neutral point) and the percentage of choices of embedded interpretations obtained in the norming ques-

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tionnaire described earlier. The effect of context on reading time was measured as the actual value of the difference in reading time (milliseconds per character) in the support-both context, minus reading time in the biased context. For sentences with an intrinsic bias toward matrix extraction (range of embedded extraction bias 8% to 28%), the correlation between intrinsic bias and the effect of context on reading time was significant and positive (r = .63, p < .02). Sentences with the greatest intrinsic bias were facilitated most by a context that supported only the biased (in this case, matrix) interpretation. The corresponding correlation for sentences with an intrinsic bias toward extraction from the embedded clause (range of embedded extraction bias 68% to 88%) was nonsignificantly negative (r = -.36, p > .10). The tendency toward a negative correlation for these items indicated that the most biased (embedded preference) sentences were the least facilitated by a context that supported only the preferred interpretation. This pattern of correlations suggests that the structural hypothesis (according to which the parser makes a single syntactic attachment of an adjunct question into a structural analysis) is incorrect. That hypothesis predicted an interaction between intrinsic bias and context in which a context that supported the preferred interpretation should be of most help to the embedded-biased questionsthe ones requiring a revision of the first structural analysis. Instead, the observed correlation shows an effect only for the matrix-biased questions. This is consistent with our assumption that the processor normally considers both matrix and embedded interpretations of the adjunct, but it does not consider the embedded reading just in case all evidence strongly supports the matrix interpretation. Hence, when the question is strongly biased to the matrix interpretation and the context supports only this interpretation, only the matrix interpretation is evaluated. Evaluation of only a single interpretation takes place only under these conditions, and it results in maximally fast reading time. 7.3.3 Discussion The preceding two experiments, both for sentences in isolation and for sentences in context, suggested that matrixbiased adjunct questions were read faster than embedded-biased ones. The differences were of questionable significance, especially by items, indicating substantial between-item variability. With this caution in mind, we view the results as being

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consistent with the mechanism we propose: an adjunct question is initially construed with a matrix predicate, if only because the matrix predicate provides the first opportunity for interpretation. This interpretation need not be revised or abandoned for the matrix-biased adjunct questions. For both matrix- and embedded-biased questions we suspect that the processor generally goes on to consider the possibility of an embedded construal. In the exceptional circumstance in which all evidence strongly favors the matrix reading, the embedded reading is effectively not considered. The embedded analysis will be adopted only for embedded-biased questions, a decision that requires abandonment of the matrix reading and insertion of a trace into [Spec, CP] of the lower clause. The presence of a context supporting only the intrinsic bias of the question tended to facilitate comprehension compared to the presence of a context supporting both readings (although the effect approached significance only when analyzing raw reading times, not reading times adjusted for region length). What is interesting about this finding is that it clearly does not hold only for embedded-biased questions (the interaction between bias and contextual support in the reading time analysis had an F < 1). Question-answering accuracy also indicated very similar effects of contextual support for both matrix- and embedded-biased items. Further, intrinsic bias of the item in isolation was correlated with the amount of facilitation provided by contextual support for the biased interpretation only for matrix-biased questions, not for embedded-biased ones. All these effects suggest that both interpretations are considered for the matrix-biased questions as well as for the embedded-biased questions. The processor does not simply find the first plausible analysis (the matrix one) and then stop. If it did, the difference between the two types of contexts (support-both vs. support-biased) should have been observed only for the embedded-biased questions. The comprehension of matrix-biased questions should not have been affected by whether the context favored or merely supported the matrix interpretation, whereas the comprehension of embedded-biased questions should have been affected by all available evidence bearing on the appropriateness of the embedded-extraction reading. Since contextual support affected matrix-biased questions at least as much as it affected embedded-biased questions, it appears that both matrix and embedded readings are evaluated in the process of interpreting an extracted adjunct. We take the general advantage of the unambiguous contexts over the ambiguous ones to favor our approach over alternatives where the

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adjunct filler is treated on par with an argument filler and assigned to the first position from which it could have been extracted, as in the Minimal Chain Principle account of filler-gap processing. Presumably the effects of context we observed arise because in the ambiguous context the processor persists with its normal operationsthose implicated in considering both the matrix and the embedded interpretations. 2 7.4 Interpretive Preferences We turn now to the interpretive preferences in ambiguous adjunct extractions. Intuitively it is very easy to bias the interpretation of certain ambiguous adjunct questions. One way has been touched on earlier: wh- constituents must be interpreted as being extracted from a potentially focused position (see Selkirk 1995). Some experimental evidence that the presence of a pitch accent can influence intuitive preferences has been provided by graduate students working at the University of Massachusetts. Philip (1991) tested how 16 subjects interpreted a few spoken questions containing the matrix verbs tell and say, such as (18). (18) Why did Sally say she liked the city? Philip's sentences were chosen to have no strong intrinsic bias (52% embedded-extraction responses with neutral intonation; i.e., a pitch accent only on why). He found that also placing a pitch accent on the matrix verb (e.g., say in (18)) increased the matrix interpretation preference (to 71%), consistent with the suggestion that the adjunct is construed preferentially with a focused phrase.3 Other factors that affect the interpretation of adjunct questions are more structural or semantic in nature. The effects of many specific factors can be summarized in (19) and (20). (19)Other things being equal, the processor prefers the matrix interpretation of an adjunct. The more eventive a clause is, the more likely it is to attract a (locative or temporal) adjunct. The less eventive a clause is, the less likely it is to attract (20) the adjunct.4 Based on intuitions, as well as data collected by Broderick (1994; see note 3) and ourselves (see below), it is clear that matrix interpretation is preferred in questions like (21a d) where both the matrix and the em-

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bedded construals of the adjunct are sensible, informative, and consistent with Gricean assumptions about the cooperativeness of the speaker. This supports the generalization in (19). In fact, some dialects may only permit a matrix reading. Broderick reports that five of her speakers answered only with matrix readings for ambiguous questions like (21a d). We are also aware of at least one linguist (from Chicago) who permits only matrix extractions of adjuncts, regardless of the structural details of the question. (21)

a. b. c. d.

How did Mary conclude Jay fixed the car? When did Mary conclude Jay fixed the car? Where did Mary conclude Jay fixed the car? Why did Mary conclude Jay fixed the car?

Before turning to (20), we must say something about eventives. Many theories of events exist and we are not in a position to choose among them. For present purposes, we will simply assume that along with a thematic assigner and its thematic grid comes an event variable, and the thematic grid thus indirectly provides a definition of a potential minimal event. Phrases associated with a thematic grid such as a manner adverbial may also contribute to the definition of a potential event. Temporal and aspectual markers may be exploited to cast a potential event as an eventive as opposed to a stative. We take the prototypical instance of an eventive to be a single punctual event or readily delimited occasion that may thus be readily located in time and space. These assumptions about eventives, together with (20), help to explain why our intuitions seem to shift in the following examples, (22) (26). (22) a. When did John say that the firemen are available? b. When did John say that the firemen are altruistic? (23)

When did Grandmother think Bush was kind? a. Grandmother thought that Bush performed a kind act in 1988. b. Grandmother thought in 1988 that Bush was a kind person.

(24) a. When did Martha say Sam fixed the car? b. When did Martha say Sam fixed cars? 5 (25) a. When had Martha concluded Sam fixed the car? b. When did Martha conclude Sam fixed the car? (26) a. When has Governor Weld claimed that public education was important?

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b.When did Governor Weld claim that public education was important? A stage-level predicate (available) is more eventive than an individual-level predicate (altruistic). Hence, the embedded-extraction reading is easier to obtain in (22a) than in (22b). Similarly, (23) seems open to an embedded interpretation of the adjunct only if was kind is interpreted as shorthand for performed an act of kindness. In (24a) the single event describing the embedded clause makes the embedded interpretation somewhat more favored than it is in (24b), where the embedded clause is interpreted as a habitual. In (25) and (26) the perfect aspect in the matrix clause makes an embedded-clause construal of the adjunct difficult (in (25a) and (26a)). 6 If, as (20) claims, it is true that adjuncts tend to be attracted to more eventive predicates, then the behavior of why and how becomes more transparent. It is difficult to force why to have only an embedded-extraction interpretation, perhaps in part for presuppositional reasons (see Kroch 1989). Since states of affairs, as well as events, may have causes, why will typically fit with a matrix clause no matter what its content may be. (Compare for what reason. . . .) Thus, the primary bias with why concerns the relative informativeness of the matrix versus embedded interpretation as in (27). The embedded interpretation of the adjunct seems easiest with the informationally lighter matrix verbs say and think. (27)

a. b. c. d.

Why did Jay say Fred died? Why did Jay conclude Fred died? Why did Jay think Fred died? Why did Jay write Fred died?

We suspect that how differs from the other adjuncts because how typically contributes a specification of manner to the definition of the event, rather than restricting or (temporally or spatially) placing an already defined event. Consider (28), for example. (28)

How did John walk to the store? a. John walked to the store slowly. b. Unexpectedly John walked to the store.

How may receive its normal manner interpretation whereby it restricts walk. Hence, it corresponds to slowly in an answer like (28a). By contrast, how might be forced to modify the entire event of John walking to the store, where it seems to mean something like "How did it come to be that

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John walked to the store?" Here how corresponds to a sentence-level adverb in the corresponding answer in (28b). Given an activity verb, we expect the former interpretation to be preferred. To summarize, many interpretive factors easily bias the preferred interpretation of ambiguous adjunct questions, including the focusing of information (Philip 1991, 1992), or making the predicate more eventive (for temporal and locative adjuncts). However, these and other biases seem to matter most when the matrix verb is informationally light and the question is not strongly biased toward the matrix interpretation (cf. the experimental findings reported in section 7.3.2). 7.5 Association and the Postulation of Traces Recently several investigators have argued that traces are postulated by the processor before it encounters the ultimate syntactic position of the trace in the input string of words (Crocker 1992, 1994; Gibson and Hickok 1993; see also Pickering and Barry 1991; Tanenhaus et al. 1993). Imagine that a trace is postulated but not positioned as soon as the processor encounters an obligatorily moved constituent. The trace might then be analyzed as occurring in any position in the input string where a phrase of its syntactic category could legitimately appear. Given these assumptions, we might well imagine that an empty category will be analyzed just like a lexical phrase. This leads us to expect the trace to be preferentially analyzed as instantiating a primary phrase or relation. Further, if the trace cannot be analyzed as an argument or obligatory constituent of the highest processing domain (the first XP dominating a theta assigner), then the trace should be associated to VP, since a lexical phrase would be. When a lexical phrase is associated to an embedded VP, higher thematic processing domains are unavailable, and the lexical phrase will be interpreted as part of the embedded clause as in the examples in chapter 5. But what about the current situation where a phrase is associated to the highest clause? Are lower thematic domains available, such as a thematic domain corresponding to a propositional argument of the highest predicate? We will tentatively assume that the answer is yes, providing that the specifier position introducing the lower domain (e.g., [Spec, CP]) is not already filled and providing that the syntactic category of the lower domain is appropriate to form an extended projection with the higher domain (where CP, IP, VP are category compatible, and PP, NP are also category compatible; see Grimshaw 1991; Li 1993). In this case a

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projection is being extended across a theta assigner and, therefore, the domains defined may be larger than a thematic processing domain. We will label these larger domains extended syntactic domains. We can illustrate this using (29a) and (29b). The trace of how cannot be analyzed as instantiating a primary phrase or relation in the highest clause of (29). Therefore, it should associate to the VP headed by say, as illustrated in (29a). The thematic grid of say includes the thematic grid of fix because the lower CP instantiates an argument of say. [Spec, CP2] is not lexically filled, and the lower theta assigner (fix) projects a category (VP) that is appropriate to form an extended syntactic projection linking the lower VP to the higher one. Given our assumptions, the trace of how associates to the higher VP, where it may be interpreted with any legitimate phrase in the current thematic processing domainin this case, with either the higher or the lower VP. Interpretive factors may choose between any of the structurally permitted interpretations within the current domain. This accounts for the ready availability of extractions for the lower clause in a comparable

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fashion to that offered for relative clauses with complex heads (chapter 4). If how is interpreted as modifying fixed, then the grammar will require a trace to be postulated in the lower clause and in [Spec, CP2], as indicated in (29b). To this point we have not really justified the provisos on extended syntactic domain formation stipulating that a lower thematic processing domain B is included in the higher thematic processing domain A only if the specifier position of the construction instantiated by B is not lexically filled and A (the maximal projection of the highest theta assigner) has the same major lexical-syntactic category features as B (the maximal projection of the lower assigner). The former constraint is illustrated in (30), which has a lexically filled specifier position, and the latter in (31), where a verbal complement to a verb permits extraction (31b) but a verbal complement to an adjective does not (31a). We assume these provisos on

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extended syntactic category domain formation are necessary because extractions from the lower domain are permitted only under these circumstances, as illustrated in (30) and (31) (the latter taken from Li 1993), which violate the unfilled-specifier and the category compatibility provisions, respectively. (30)

*Howi did Molly ask who fixed the Saab ei?

(31)

a. *Howi is Bernie [able [to fix Ernie's car ei]]? b. Howi did Bernie [say [he fixed Ernie's car ei]]?

The current proposal predicts that these provisos have general consequences with respect to defining the interpretive domain operative in language processing. For example, (32a) and (32c) are predicted to contain two (thematic) processing domains each, whereas their counterparts in (32b) and (32d) have only one (extended syntactic) domain. Hence, a probe recognition response for the matrix subject is predicted to take longer in the two-domain (32a,c) examples where the matrix subject is predicted to lie outside the current processing domain than in the one-domain examples (32b,d). (32)

a. b. c. d.

Molly asked who fixed the Saab. Molly reported Lou fixed the Saab. Bernie is able to fix Ernie's car. Bernie wanted to fix Ernie's car.

We have not yet tested these predictions. However, existing data support the general proposal in that NPs containing theta role assigners do act as much like processing units as clauses do, as indicated by click location studies (Tanenhaus and Carroll 1975). On the present view, this is predicted because NP will define a thematic domain that cannot form an extended projection with a higher VP domain and thus should serve as a distinct thematic processing domain. (We are not aware of any other processing system that predicts this.) 7.6 Summary In this chapter we have explored the processing of extracted adjuncts. Experimental evidence was presented suggesting that typically the processor considers both a matrix and an embedded interpretation of an ambiguous adjunct question, except when lexical, semantic, and contextual factors all favor the matrix interpretation. Under these circum-

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stances, and only these, we suggest, the processor commits itself to the matrix trace site without considering the embedded extraction possibility at all. To account for these data, we have proposed that traces are analyzed just like lexical phrases and, therefore, the trace of an adjunct will be associated to VP if the trace cannot instantiate a primary relation in the first thematic processing domain (the highest clause). Once it is associated to the highest VP, it may be related to any material within the current thematic domain. By hypothesis, thematic domains included in the current thematic domain provide potential interpretations for the adjunct. A lower thematic domain is included in the extended syntactic domain of the higher one only if it corresponds to a syntactic constituent introduced with a lexically empty specifier and the constituent is of the appropriate syntactic category to form an extended projection with the maximal projections of both the higher and the lower theta assigners.

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Page viii Appendix: Sentences Used in Experiments

173

Notes

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References

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Index

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Chapter 8 Conclusions 8.1 Summary Prior to the work reported in this book, our research focused on how sentences are processed using purely structural preference principles such as Minimal Attachment or Late Closure. We argued that sentences receive a single initial analysis in which each phrase is attached in a fully explicit fashion into a representation of the sentence's phrase structure. If a region of the input is compatible with alternative analyses, structural preference principles operate to select a single analysis. When the ultimate interpretation of a sentence is congruent with this initial analysis, the sentence is generally comprehended easily and quickly. When the ultimate interpretation of a sentence is inconsistent with the initial analysis, the analysis must be replaced, at a cost in time and difficulty. The reader or listener is said to be garden-pathed, perhaps unconsciously, in systematic ways. In this book we argue that certain constructions or relations are not initially processed in this fashion. No systematic preference is observed that holds across different exemplars of such constructions. Neither general structural parsing preferences such as Minimal Attachment and Late Closure nor their opposites (Early Closure, Nonminimal Attachment) seem to operate. Instead, any of several analyses may be preferred and computed first, depending on which analysis is favored by nonstructural factors, with the one restriction that all preferred analyses must keep the phrase being processed within the current processing domain. To account for these observations, we have proposed a system whereby nonprimary relations are processed by construal. This proposal may be broken into component parts as follows:

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(1)Applicability of Construal Nonprimary relations are subject to Construal; phrases that may instantiate primary relations are not. (2)Construal Principle a.Associate XP into the current processing domain, and b.Try to interpret XP within that domain using nonstructural interpretive principles along with structural well-formedness principles. The current processing domain is the extended XP (XP = Xmax) dominating (3) the last theta assigner (X). (4)Interpretive principles (unranked) a.Gricean maxims (e.g., ''Be clear") b.Immediate Interpretation Principle c.Minimal Revisions Principle d.A Priori Plausibility Principle e.Referentiality Principle f. Focus and perhaps discourse salience determine the preferred host for predications of (nonprimary) phrases. 8.1.1 The Preference for Primary Relations or Phrases The domain in which Construal is applicable (1) was discussed in chapters 1 and 2. In chapter 1 we reviewed available psycholinguistic evidence on the processing of what we now call primary relations, showing that consistent structural preferences can be documented. In chapter 2 we advanced the Construal Hypothesis and presented some preliminary motivation for it. In subsequent chapters we presented new evidence showing that because clauses, relative clauses, adjunct predicates, and adjunct extraction structures do not exhibit systematic structurally based parsing preferences. They show neither a preference for low attachment nor, in the case of adjunct extraction, the structurally determined filler-gap preferences that have been demonstrated for argument extraction. Instead, these constructions, and probably more, are processed by Construal (2). The definition of nonprimary relations (see chapter 2) specifies that a phrase counts as nonprimary only if it cannot be taken to instantiate a primary relation. In the framework we have been developing, the processing of primary relations proceeds in the first instance on the basis of purely structural information, as in our earlier model of parsing (Frazier

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1987a; Clifton, Speer, and Abney 1991). A phrase will initially be taken to instantiate a primary relation if, without violating the grammar, the phrase may be so analyzed given structural information alone (using Minimal Attachment and Late Closure). A prepositional phrase (PP) can, in some cases, instantiate a primary relation. A relative clause seldom can (perhaps never). It is for this reason, we believe, that PPs in the V-NP-PP configuration do not behave on par with relative clauses. PPs are initially minimally attached, perhaps with rapid subsequent revision (Clifton, Speer, and Abney 1991; Frazier and Rayner 1982). Relative clauses are analyzed by Construal (see chapter 4). Similarly, adjectival phrases in V-NP-AP are taken as resultatives or as predicates of small clauses whenever possible, rather than being taken as adjunct predicates (see chapter 6). Resultatives and small clause predicates instantiate primary relations by our definition; adjunct predicates do not. A phrase will initially be interpreted as instantiating a primary relation if structurally possible. The preference for primary relations over nonprimary ones raises issues about the relation of the currently proposed system to the principles favoring analysis of a phrase as an argument over analysis as a nonargument (Abney 1987, 1989; Gibson 1991; Pritchett 1988). The principles differ, first, in that primary relations include phrases beyond arguments, such as phrases of syntactic types other than NP (e.g., particles) and phrases that serve nonargument roles (e.g., the predicate of a small clause or a constituent of a compound noun or complex verb). (See chapter 1 for more examples.) In addition to applying to obligatory constituents other than arguments, the current proposal differs from argument preference principles in the mechanisms proposed to underlie sentence analysis. Experimental evidence suggests that argument preferences may reflect a second stage of processing involving quick (dis)confirmation of structurally determined preferences. They may not reflect the initial parsing preferences that are determined in the immediate analysis of input (Clifton, Speer, and Abney 1991). We thus think it would be a mistake to identify structurally determined parsing of primary relations with a preference for arguments, even if the latter is descriptively valid at a gross level. Besides these descriptive differences the two approaches offer fundamentally different, indeed opposing, explanations for why the human sentence- processing mechanism behaves the way it does (see section 8.6).

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8.1.2 The Current Thematic Processing Domain We have shown several types of evidence that nonprimary relations are associated into the current processing domain. For example, in the English and Spanish studies of relative clause association preferences in noun phrases with complex heads, the relative clause was generally associated with the second noun, N2, when it was part of an adjunct (theta- marked by the preceding preposition), but with the entire NP when N2 was an argument of N1. The relative clause was interpreted as taking the lower NP as host in the former case, but potentially either NP as host otherwise, the choice depending on semantic and pragmatic considerations. The hypothesis that a nonprimary phrase is associated into the current processing domain also explains why Construal leads to a disambiguated structure when an adjunct might in principle attach to either of two clauses. Consider (5). (5) John said Bill died last week. The phrase last week, an adjunct and a nonprimary phrase, shows a strong preference to be analyzed within the lower clause, Bill died, a preference that has previously been taken as evidence for Late Closure (Frazier and Fodor 1978; Frazier 1978) or Right Association (Kimball 1973). On the Construal Hypothesis, the phrase last week is not attached following the Late Closure strategy. Rather, it is analyzed following Construal. But, as is typical of most clauses, each clause in (5) contains a theta assigner. In such clauses, therefore, potential attachment sites located in two or more distinct clauses will rarely occur in the same thematic processing domain. The adjunct phrase is consequently construed within the current thematic processing domain. There is an exception, however. Consider (6). (6) John seems unkind on Fridays. a. [S Johni seems [S NPi [AP unkind]] [on Fridays]]. b. [S Johni seems [S NPi [AP unkind [on Fridays]]]]. Seem does not assign a thematic role to John. Hence, at the point when on Fridays is received in (6), seem is arguably not part of a prior processing domain but part of the current one. Hence, in the absence of a pause before unkind, on Fridays may be taken as a constituent of either the VP or the AP. Intuitions seem consistent with this prediction. It is relatively easy to interpret on Fridays as modifying seem. However, if seem already has an argument, to Fred in (7), before on Fridays is encountered, then the

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processor should have no difficulty taking on Fridays to be a constituent of unkind, but some difficulty taking it to be a constituent of the matrix VP. Intuitions support this prediction. 1 (7) John seems to Fred unkind on Fridays. Apart from nonextraposed relative clauses, most nonprimary phrases will associate to a VP only after the end of the maximal thematic domain has been identified. This is because they typically will not need to be analyzed as nonprimary phrases before this point since analysis of the input as a primary relation will usually still be possible, at least in principle. It is, we think, an interesting fact about natural languages that a phrase adjoined or associated to VP may take the subject as its host (see Culicover and Rochemont 1990, for preposing tests). In most other circumstances, attachment level uniquely determines interpretation. For instance, if a phrase is attached to S, only a subject-host interpretation is available. The special status of VP may reflect its role as the domain containing all contentful ("referential") thematic roles at the relevant level of structure. In other words, association to VP is really association, in some sense, to the thematic grid carried by the head V. 8.1.3 Gricean Maxims We turn now to the interpretive principles in (4). The Gricean maxim (4a), "Be clear," has been discussed in some detail in chapter 4. It accounts for the fact that a relative clause has a stronger preference in English than in Spanish to attach low to a complex head containing a genitive NP. It also accounts for the fact that the form that biases attachment toward inanimate NP heads in phrases where only one of the nouns is inanimate (Cuetos and Mitchell 1988). More generally, we expect biases to exist whenever an expression B, where B unambiguously covers a proper subset of the circumstances where it would be grammatical to use A, is not chosen by the speaker. This of course is related to a very general phenomenon observed in natural languages, namely, blocking of one expression (A) when another with narrower conditions of use (B) could have applied (see (8)). Apparently, the Gricean maxim of clarity does apply to affect interpretation preferences during on-line comprehension as a tendency (see chapter 4), but the consequences are only sometimes registered as obligatory blocking in the grammar itself (see discussion in Di Sciullo and Williams 1987).

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When a Gricean consequence is not grammaticized, one might suppose that it will be most likely to be honored only in slow, considered, deliberate listening or reading. However, we are inclined to think that speakers/ perceivers may always take cooperative maxims into account, always giving significance to which particular choice a speaker/author selects from among the grammatically available options. Such considerations do seem to influence perceivers' interpretation of phrases (e.g., being responsible for noticing the oddity of saying the day after today rather than tomorrow, unless some special interpretation is intended). On this view, Gricean effects are pervasive and part of normal interpretive processes in general. The small size of the effect we observed in chapter 4 (the difference in N2 preference between English and Spanish) would then be attributable to the fact that language is complicated and many factors influence the analysis assigned to any given sentence. Some researchers may question whether language comprehension could involve anything so complex as this Gricean approach suggests (i.e., consideration not only of how a potential meaning was expressed but also of how that meaning could have been expressed otherwise). Some conclude that such a complex process must actually be mediated by precompiled, perhaps statistical, knowledge. We agree that it is remarkable that humans understand language so readily. Normal language comprehension is a remarkable feat regardless of whether perceivers limit attention to actual input sentences or whether they also consider the choices speakers and authors make in the context of the permissible choices open to them. Intuitions about what is plausible in terms of complexity will not carry the day here. What is clear is that at least under some circumstances, choices open to the speaker do guide some stage of comprehension. Consider (9), where intuitions suggest that (9a) is easier to understand than (9b). (9) a. John spilled the pepper and salt was all over the floor too. b. John spilled the salt and pepper was all over the floor too.

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Presumably this is because the (ultimately incorrect) NP conjunction analysis is promoted or reinforced by the expected order of conjuncts (short-then-long, salt and pepper) in (9b), whereas the unexpected order in (9a) demotes or disconfirms a conjoined NP analysis. To account for this effect, one need not appeal directly to the frequency of salt and pepper versus pepper and salt, but one may appeal directly to the meaning of the conjoined NP together with the principles speakers use to order conjuncts (e.g., in the present case, short-before-long). To insist that the statistical frequency of the two conjoined phrases must be considered seems unnecessary. We think it more reasonable to conclude that perceivers may evaluate the interpretation they arrive at by considering whether speakers have more specific and unambiguous ways to express the hypothesized meaning. If not, then pragmatic factors will confirm the chosen semantic interpretation; if so, then either pragmatic considerations will serve as disconfirmation or they will serve as an invitation to assign a special meaning or significance to the utterance, because of the unusual means used to express the idea. 8.1.4 Immediate Interpretation, Minimal Revisions, Plausibility The Immediate Interpretation Principle (4b) was needed in chapter 3 to explain the behavior of because clauses. By "immediate interpretation" we mean something along the lines of the principle in Frazier and Rayner 1990, where only obligatory semantic decisions are made in the absence of evidence. Though considerable development of this idea is needed, what we have in mind is that each Nmax (except predicate nominals) must be related to a discourse entity, either by postulating a new entity corresponding to the head of the phrase or one of its projections or by relating the phrase to an already established discourse entity. Predicates must be postulated of some relevant discourse entity. In the case of the because clauses examined in chapter 2, the (negated) predicate is immediately postulated of the subject of the sentence, resulting in a preference to have the because clause modify the entire sentence, not the VP. Note that, in contrast to the principle proposed by Just and Carpenter (1980), we do not intend the Immediate Interpretation Principle to force premature resolution of semantic vagueness or to complete processing of every aspect of each word before attention is turned to processing the next word. The Minimal Revisions Principle (4c) is discussed in Frazier 1990b and Frazier 1994, and we simply refer the reader to those discussions (and

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chapter 3). Similarly, A Priori Plausibility (4d) is discussed in Crain and Steedman 1985, and we refer the reader to their discussion. 8.1.5 Referentiality Principle We turn now to the Referentiality Principle (4e), introduced in chapter 4. This principle immediately raises a host of essentially unexplored issues. The principle was required to explain the strong tendency for restrictive relative clauses to attach preferentially to a head that corresponds to a new or old discourse entity. Although we think this principle is essential, it does require an independent account of which words and phrases are "referential" in the sense of corresponding to a discourse entity. Clearly, NPs not in predicative position must be referential if they are introduced by a determiner and if the head noun projects to a maximal projection. Heads of quantified phrases must also be "referential" in that they must correspond to an entity in the discourse model at least temporarily (i.e., during the processing of the current sentence and subsequent ones in the same modality). For example, we assume that in (10) the discourse model must at least temporarily contain a discourse entity corresponding to one or more guests who arrived at a particular party or relevant occasion on time, to permit the relative clause. (10) No guest would arrive on time (who came from out of town). (11) No owner of a race car that is from Italy arrives late. Otherwise, the Referentiality Principle would predict a systematic avoidance of N1 interpretations in (11): a relative clause would not be taken to modify a noun that does not correspond to a discourse entity. It seems reasonable to us to make the assumption that guest in (10) and owner in (11) prompt the creation of discourse entities. It is possible, for example, to continue a discourse initiated with (10) using a modal sentence like (12) containing a pronoun referring back to this entity (see Roberts 1987). (12) He would need to own a private plane since the roads and the public airport are closed due to the terrible blizzard. It is crucial that a discourse entity may be postulated in response to the head noun of quantified phrases and that no discourse entity be postulated in response to nonheads (e.g., the nonhead of a compound noun such as lemon eater, and optionally the second noun in the substance and quantity NPs discussed in chapter 4). However, we have no explicit model of discourse representation or processing to offer. At this point we must make the fairly standard assumption that only phrases (maximal projec-

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tions) introduced by a determiner are referential and hope that a model with the appropriate properties will be forthcoming (see Tunstall 1994 and Wittenburg 1987, for a start). Superficially at least, there appears to be little relation between our principle of Referentiality Principle and the Referential Success Principle (or Parsimony Principle) of Crain and Steedman (1985). The Referential Success Principle instructs the processor to opt for analyses that successfully refer to an already established discourse entity over those that fail to refer (see Altmann 1988 and Altmann and Steedman 1988, for discussion). The Parsimony Principle favors analyses that entail the fewest unsatisfied presuppositions. As far as we can determine, these principles would not favor N1 or N2 in the relative clause constructions explored in chapter 4, nor would they distinguish between distinct types of NPs. 8.1.6 Focus and Relevance Much work also remains to be done concerning the final interpretive principle(s) in 4(f), which favor hosts that are focused or salient in discourse. We are currently conducting experiments that manipulate the pitch accent carried by different NPs to see if the accented phrase attracts a relative clause. Preliminary data provide support for the prediction, as do the intuitions gained by reading the examples in (13) with pitch accents placed on the capitalized words. 2 (13)a.Julie met the DAUGHTER of the ambassador who was drinking SCOTCH heavily. b.Julie met the daughter of the AMBASSADOR who was drinking SCOTCH heavily. It is possible that apparent effects of focus and discourse salience may be attributed to Gricean maxims. Perhaps the maxim requiring a speaker to "Be informative" indirectly favors analyses where a nonprimary phrase is predicated of a focused entity since this entity may be considered important and/or newnot already presumed to be available from discourse or general knowledge. Similarly, discourse salience may be related to the maxim of relevance ("Be relevant"), favoring interpretations where a phrase modifies, or is predicated of, a salient discourse entity. We think these are open questions in need of more explicit and precise formulation and investigation. Concerning salience in discourse, we note that in any case focus alone is not sufficient to capture the requirements that certain nonprimary relations be related to the main assertion of the sentence and that they be

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deemed marginal or even ungrammatical if they are not. For example, the requirement that a cleft modify the constituent that is focused by clefting is stronger than a simple focus constraint. Both sentences in (14) are acceptable. (14)

a. John saw MARY at the party. b. It was MARY who John saw at the party.

But in (15) a cleft is ungrammatical, as pointed out by Vallduvi (1992). (15)

a. John saw NOBODY at the party. b. *It was NOBODY that John saw at the party.

It also seems in (16) that the cleft (predicational) interpretation is available only if the relative clause modifies girl. The relative clause may be taken to modify hat, but then it is interpreted as an identificational or restrictive relative clause rather than as part of a cleft construction. (16) It was the girl with a hat that looked so strange. Similar constraints apply to adjunct predicates, since the host must be an argument of the main predicate, as illustrated in (17), or at least an argument on the main projection path of the sentence (see (18)). (17) a. John met the daughteri of the colonel drunki. b. *John met the daughter of the colonelj drunkj. (18) a. ?I think John met the daughteri of the colonel drunki. b. *I think John met the daughter of the colonelj drunkj. In short, predicational uses of phrases (e.g., cleft, adjunct predication) seem to carry focus and discourse requirements stronger than those observed by phrases used restrictively or identificationally, such as the restrictive relative clause. 8.2 On the Relation of Structure and Interpretation We have proposed a theory in which, for particular cases, interpretive processes allow a less specific structural representation (permitting a range of potential interpretations) to be made more specific so that it corresponds to a particular interpretation. This reverses the usual process whereby structure determines interpretation, and it raises several questions. Most importantly, what is the source of the interpretation if not the structure itself, and what are the constraints on the relation between syntax and semantics?

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A definitive answer to these questions would require a detailed theory of (grammatical) semantic processing. Since no such theory exists to date, we can at present only sketch the kind of answers we envision, leaving a rigorous testing of these answers/hypotheses of future research. What we think is important for the range of examples discussed here are the assumptions or generalizations in (19). (19)a.The grammar of a language determines which positions may be interpreted as restrictive modifiers versus predicates (e.g., the interpretation of a modifier in Romance languages depends on its position before or after the nominal). b.Restrictive modifiers are interpreted by combining the interpretation of the modifier with the interpretation of an X'-level constituent (e.g., in The pretty child with a hat laughed, pretty child with a hat is interpreted as the intersection of the denotation of pretty child and the denotation of with a hat). c.Predicates require an external argument that is a maximal projection, Xmax (e.g., the predicate laughed applies to the denotation of the pretty child, not to the denotation of pretty child). d.Rules of semantic composition combine the interpretations of a and B in the sequence a B, where a and B must be sisters. Essentially, the grammar determines whether a phrase in a particular position may be interpreted as a predicate or as a restrictive modifier and requires predicates and restrictive modifiers to each combine with constituents of a particular type (Xmax and X', respectively). Moreover, rules of semantic composition apply to constituents that are sisters. Given these generalizations, when the processor determines on semantic or pragmatic grounds which head nominal is appropriate for a restrictive modifier, this essentially dictates the syntactic attachment of the modifier: the modifier must be sister to the N' with which it is interpreted. When a and B (see (19d)) are not sisters, then they may be combined only if complex predicate formation has applied (e.g., if B is an adjunct predicate) or if a trace has been postulated (e.g., with extraposition of a modifier from subject position). In short, interpretation of a and B together will dictate the syntactic structure in many cases. When a constraint is violated (e.g., because a and B are not adjacent), interpretation will necessitate syntactic reanalysis precisely because of the existence of the violation. Consider extraposition, for example. In the syntax, no trace will be postulated in the initial analysis of (20), because of the operation of the Minimal Chain Principle.

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(20)

a. The girl liked the boy that was so bright. b. The girl liked the pickle that was pregnant.

By Construal, the relative clause will associate to the extended projection of like. If the relative clause is then construed as modifying the N' dominating the object noun, no syntactic reanalysis will be required. The relative clause will simply be analyzed as a sister to this N' (e.g., Chomsky-adjoined to the N'). In (20a) this process will take place smoothly because the boy that was so bright is semantically coherent and because the object relative clause analysis requires no syntactic revision given that the nominal (a) and the modifier (B) are sisters. By contrast, in (20b) the semantic/pragmatic anomaly of the pickle that was pregnant will constitute evidence that a syntactic revision is necessary. By virtue of choosing girl (a) as a head nominal for the relative clause (B), the processor will violate the requirement that a and B be sisters. Hence, syntactic reanalysis will be required (i.e., the addition of a trace within the subject NP). Once the syntactic revision is accomplished, the processor will have remedied the violation and will have achieved an acceptable interpretation of the sentence. To take a different sort of example, consider (21). 3 (21) a. John didn't leave because he was angry at any student. b. John didn't leave because he was angry at the student. When the because clause is first encountered, it will be associated into the extended projection of leave, where it might modify either the VP or the IP. Assuming that immediate interpretation of the main clause occurs, the because clause will preferentially be interpreted initially as modifying the IP, by the Minimal Revisions Principle. However, when the processor encounters any in (21a), a revision must be made: any is not licensed unless it is under the scope of the negative. Placing any under the scope of the negative will require lowering the because clause (i.e., attaching it to VP). This process need not be viewed as special. The processor simply treats the because clause as being ambiguous, chooses a favored interpretation, and then receives later information inconsistent with its initial analysis. Whether the need for revision is detected by the syntactic processor in initial syntactic analysis of any or whether later LF or semantic constraints lead to a rejection of the chosen analysis is identical to the question of whether any must be licensed at surface structure or only at LF. Either way, (21a) is predicted to be difficult to process, relative to (21b), for example, because of the need for a revision in the analysis of (21a).

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8.3 Relations to Previous Theory To forestall certain misconceptions concerning the relation between the original garden path theory and the present theory, we should emphasize that the construal theory is in most respects the same as the original with the addition of highly circumscribed underspecification of the syntactic representation of the relation between a nonprimary phase and the larger phrase marker. To date at least, there is no need to relax the claim that syntactic processing is strictly modular. The only difference between the original theory and the revised one is that the initial syntactic parse, though arrived at on the basis of structural information, does not adjudicate between certain structural attachment sites. This work is left to the semantics. The proposal is not that two syntactic processors exist. We are not postulating an autonomous processor for processing primary relations and a construal processor that handles nonprimary relations using both structural and nonstructural information. Viewed with respect to particular decisions, the syntactic processor simply does less work. However, the decisions it makes are still arrived at by adopting the first available analysis consistent with the dictates of the syntactic well-formedness rules of the grammar. In one respect, the construal theory is a weaker theory than the old garden path model. Until the nonstructural preferences of the processor have been worked out in detail, the construal theory is consistent with more possible preferences (cast as high vs. low attachment). But this is empirically motivated, as we have argued throughout. And, given that any theory of sentence processing must ultimately characterize semantic processing principles as well as structural ones, the illusion that the old theory was more parsimonious is really just thatan illusion. The impression is entirely due to the fact that the old theory could be evaluated independent of the (already) needed semantic component whereas the construal theory cannot. In short, what has been added is not a complication of the description of the syntactic processor but a shifting of boundaries. This in effect leaves certain ambiguities to be resolved by the nonstructural processor, thereby highlighting the (always present) need to characterize the operations involved in semantic processing of sentences. Though we have made certain suggestions about what some of these semantic (or pragmatic) principles might be, clearly substantial work is needed to flesh out a full theory of semantic processing.

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8.4 Questions for Further Research A variety of questions raised by the construal framework cannot be answered definitely on the basis of available data. We take up a few of these questions below. 8.4.1 Systematic Preference for One Host within the Domain One class of questions concerns the various principles or factors determining the choice of a host for a nonprimary phrase when more than one host is available within the current thematic processing domain. The construal theory, by itself, only predicts which potential hosts should be easily available to the processor, without any revision costs. Throughout this book we have made suggestions about some of the interpretive principles that come into play in choosing a particular host from among readily available candidates: immediate interpretation, relativized relevance, Gricean factors, and so on. (See Carter et al. 1994, for evidence about the role of pitch accent and prosody.) However, in new examples it may be unclear what interpretive principles are at play. For instance, Hemforth, Konieczny, and Scheepers (1995) show that in the German counterparts to the examples in (22), an N2 interpretation is preferred when the modifier is a PP, as in (22a), but an N1 interpretation is preferred when the modifier is a relative clause, as in (22b). (22) a. The student of the teacher from Germany was . . . b. The student of the teacher, who was from Germany, was . . . In written German a comma is apparently obligatory before any embedded clause. It is possible that the presence of a comma is mentally associated with a prosodic break, which might induce a high attachment preference in (22b). Another approach to understanding the preferences in (22) might focus on the clausal nature of the modifier in (22a). Given the absence of a strong bias in the modifier, the processor might wait to choose among possible hosts for the modifier until the entire modifier had been interpreted. Presumably, this interpretation would take longer for the clausal modifier than for the prepositional one (not only because of the length of the relative clauses but also because of the need to postulate the empty category, the operator, and the need to perform a predication between the relative clause and its head). Consequently, the representation of the complex NP would have been held in memory longer for the relative clause example than for the PP example before the predication/

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modification operation was performed, perhaps allowing a representation of the complex NP to be developed that is farther from its surface representation. Assuming that a later semantic representation of the complex NP gives priority to the head of the phrase (e.g., representing arguments of the head as binders of argument positions in the argument structure provided lexically by the head noun), this could result in a high attachment preference in the interpretation of clausal modifiers. We do not know what the correct explanation of the German facts is. The point, however, is that the existence of a systematic preference for one particular host from among those that the Construal Hypothesis predicts to be easily available is not inconsistent with that hypothesis. What would count as an argument against Construal is an alternative theory that captures the various preferences across constructions and across languages without the need to distinguish the potential hosts within the current thematic processing domain from those outside it. Merely establishing the existence of a preference for one of the readily available hosts does not by itself argue for or against the Construal Hypothesis. Construal simply distinguishes readily available hosts from those predicted to be available only if an already assigned structure is revised. 8.4.2 How Far Do Domains Extend? The work presented here has examined a number of cases contrasting clear examples where the current thematic processing domain contains both the inappropriate and appropriate host versus only the inappropriate host for a nonprimary phrase. In developing the theory, we have limited ourselves to clear cases where there is no question about the definition of the current thematic processing domain. Unclear cases also exist, of course. The most interesting of these, to our minds, is the case where the last theta assigner is itself also a theta assignee. 4 In such cases, although the extended projection of the theta assigner technically introduces or defines a new thematic processing domain, the domain is not independent of the (already) current domain. If the reason why thematic processing domains are important is that they capture argument complexes, then we would expect the boundary between one thematic domain and an independent thematic domain to be stronger or less permeable than the boundary between one thematic domain and a new but dependent domain (i.e., where the last theta assigner is itself a theta assignee). For example, consider (23). Assuming that of

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serves only as a Case assigner in both of its appearances in (23), then the owner is the last theta assigner in (23). It takes the car as its argument. (23) The supervisor of the owner of the car who . . . But the owner (of the car) is itself an argument of the supervisor. Hence, when who is encountered in (23), the current thematic processing domain will be the extended projection of owner (the last theta assigner). But, since the last theta assigner is itself a theta assignee, we would expect the extended projection of supervisor to still be available since owner has not introduced an independent thematic domain. 5 Turning to a slightly different sort of example, consider (24). Assuming that friend assigns a theta role to the girl, but also receives a theta role from hit, then no new independent thematic processing domain will have been established by the PP in (24a,b) when quickly is encountered. (24) a. b. c. d.

John hit the friend of the girl quickly. John hit the friend of the girl quickly and . . . John hit the friend with the girl quickly. John hit the friend with the girl quickly and . . .

Hence, association of quickly to the VP should not be very problematic. By contrast, in (24c,d) with assigns a theta role to the girl but is not a theta assignee. Therefore, the PP headed by with will establish a new independent thematic processing domain in (24c,d). Consequently, correctly associating quickly with the VP should be more difficult in (24c,d) than in (24a,b). Preliminary data from an eye movement study confirm these predictions, at least numerically. 8.4.3 ''Sausage Machine" Effects Imagine that the above discussion of independent thematic processing domains is correct in spirit and in technical detail. The syntactic processor will have only a limited syntactic context readily available, namely, the material within the current thematic processing domain. It follows immediately that only the material within this domain can be used by the processor in its initial determination of whether a new input item can in principle be analyzed as a primary phrase. This, we believe, accounts for some of the effects originally attributed to the sausage machine model (Frazier and Fodor 1978). One of the interesting properties of the sausage machine model was its ability to explain the intuition that in the library initially attaches low in

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(25), despite the fact that put is at this point still missing an obligatory locative argument. 6 (25) Though Susan put the book that John was reading in the library . . . Though in principle in the library may be analyzed as a legitimate primary phrase (an argument of put), by hypothesis put is not visible to the syntactic processor because it lies outside the current thematic processing domain (the extended projection of read). The processor may initially attempt to analyze in the library as an argument of read, but that will fail since read does not take a locative argument. At this point the syntactic processor has no visible alternative but to analyze in the library as instantiating a nonprimary relation, an adjunct of read. 8.5 Relations to Other Proposals This overview of our proposal and the questions it raises would not be complete without examining the relation between it and similar proposals in the literature. It is to this topic that we now turn, restricting ourselves to considering other proposals that advance claims for underspecification of syntactic structure. The idea that certain phrases are processed by construal (association to a domain and interpretation) is in some respects similar to the Minimal Commitment Principle (Marcus 1980) and to D-theory (Marcus, Hindle, and Fleck 1983). This general approach to parsing allows the parser to put off certain structural decisions until helpful information becomes available. The Minimal Commitment Principle implies that uncertain structural decisions are delayed in general, including decisions about the parsing of primary relations. In this respect it is at odds with the proposal here, which assumes that primary relations are attached immediately into a fully determinate representation of the dominance relations in the sentence. D-theory, on the other hand, restricts the set of decisions that may remain open. In particular, it permits a phrase X to dominate some other phrase Y while remaining neutral about whether this entails immediate domination or not. If no subsequent node is postulated to intervene between X and Y, then the domination statement concerning X and Y will be interpreted as immediate domination of Y by X. D-theory differs from the Construal Hypothesis in terms of which decisions are potentially left open or syntactically unresolved. For example, according to D-theory

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(but not according to the position adopted here), the parser may remain uncommitted about some primary relations, such as the decision about whether a postverbal NP is the direct object of a verb or the subject of a sentential complement. Further, in D-theory it is possible to remain neutral between two determinate syntactic analyses by stating that the highest S dominates a phrase XP (e.g., a because clause, an extraposed relative, an adjunct predicate) with the later addition of the statement that VP also dominates XP. But this implies that the default, if no subsequent VPdomination statement is added, is for the interpretation where S immediately dominates XP. This would introduce a systematic structural preference for high (S) attachment readings of because clauses and subject- (rather than object-) host preferences for adjunct predicates and extraposed relatives. We have presented evidence against these predictions in the case of adjunct predicates and extraposed relatives. In the case of because clauses, the evidence is consistent with D-theory, but it is equally consistent with our proposal that an Immediate Interpretation Principle applies in the particular because clauses we tested. The German facts reported at the end of chapter 3 favor our approach since the German preferences involve structures similar to the English ones but a different order of constituents and thus a different consequence, given immediate interpretation of constituents as they arrive. Dtheory also makes different predictions from the Construal Hypothesis because, according to D-theory, decisions about domination could in principle remain neutral about which of two clauses a phrase belongs to. This is permitted by the Construal Hypothesis (in which a nonprimary phrase associates into the current thematic processing domain) only in the rare case where one of the clauses contains no theta assigner at all and thus (we assume) appears in the same thematic processing domain as the other clause. In short, D-theory differs from the Construal Hypothesis in the claims about which decisions may remain syntactically indeterminate, in the implication that high attachments are the default (the simplest analysis) in the adult parsing system (see Lebeaux 1990, for discussion of children's defaults), and in the nature of the explanation provided for why the human sentence-processing mechanism is configured the way it is. The Construal Hypothesis is similar in spirit to the pieces parser proposed by Perfetti (1990). In that system, the parser builds a chunk of syntactic structure and then, at a trigger, it begins a new piece of syntactic structure. The pieces are put together using semantic information. The

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problem with this proposal is that the notion "trigger" is not defined and consequently the system is not explicit. The Construal Hypothesis may be seen as an instantiation of the proposal, but one explicitly defining which syntactic decisions are left open in the immediate parse of the input. The two proposals, still differ, however, in that construal does not leave any portion of the phrase marker stranded on its own. Instead, each nonprimary phrase is related to some domain (i.e., associated to a particular projection in the syntactic tree). (See also the discussion of Church's (1980) Pseudoattachment proposal in chapter 2, and Weinberg 1993.) 8.6 Why Construal, Revisited The historical reason for our development of the Construal Hypothesis was our repeated failure, using a variety of sentence constructions, to find evidence that these constructions were parsed following the principles of Late Closure and Minimal Attachment. We noted that it is easy to show consistent parsing preferences in line with these principles when studying constructions that we identified as primary relations, whereas consistent initial parsing preferences were essentially nonexistent when nonprimary relations were involved. The pattern of parsing preferences and their absence can be accounted for by the combination of our previous theorizing (the garden path model of parsing; Frazier 1987a) and the novel Construal Hypothesis. As we have indicated, the resulting approach differs at a descriptive level from approaches that posit an argument preference principle and from other approaches that emphasize how detailed information about individual lexical items can guide parsing decisions (see Frazier 1989). The approaches also differ at a fundamental level in terms of the explanations that they offer for why the human sentence-parsing mechanism is structured the way it is. According to the argument preference principle considered here (e.g., Abney 1989), arguments are favored because syntactic structure is lexically projected using the lexical properties of the head. Adjuncts are disfavored essentially because they are not projected lexically. By contrast, the current proposal claims the parser uses general syntactic configurations, fitting phrases into those structures using the structural preference principles of Minimal Attachment and Late Closure. Obligatory dependencies are honored whether those result in argument attachment or not.

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Perhaps most important, the properties of lexical items (other than major syntactic category labels; see Frazier and Rayner 1987) are not taken to be fixed and established before parsing begins. Instead, syntactic context determines the relevant properties of an item on a particular occasion. We think this may provide the basic explanation for why the processor handles primary relations differently from other relations, granting them priority both logically and temporally. Put simply, initial attempts to parse using structural principles result in decisions that guide later construal. Phrases that could, in principle, serve as primary relations are parsed using structural principles. The decisions made following these structural principles ensure that the structure assigned to a sentence is globally coherent (Frazier 1990a). These decisions include the assignment of input items to minimal phrases as well as the analysis assigned to each lexical item (e.g., the complement structure assigned to a verb). Without this early stage of structural parsing, no clear lexical preference principle applied to each item in isolation (e.g., "Choose the most frequent usage") guarantees that the chosen lexical analysis of each input item will result in a coherent global analysis with a specification of each item that is compatible with the specification of each other item. We propose that the coherent analysis provided by the initial structural parse guides the choice among the lexical properties made available by a lexical item in the first place. All natural languages abide by a Lexical Criterion given as (26). (26)Lexical Criterion W, a word or terminal symbol in a phrase marker, must receive only one analysis. W may not simultaneously license A, a syntactic element, under one lexical description and license B, a distinct syntactic element, under an alternative lexical description. Languages do not allow a word to be analyzed as, say, both a noun and a verb at the same time (i.e., in the same sentence). For example, defeat cannot license both a count noun specifier (a defeat) and a verbal complement structure (a bare NP, defeat the enemy), to yield a defeat the enemy. For any property of a lexical item, in any given phrase marker, the lexical item must receive only one analysis. What we are proposing is that the operation of the syntactic processor may be understood as a response to the Lexical Criterion. Primary relations may in principle interact with lexical properties, and therefore the processor must identify a single lexical analysis under which globally well formed syntactic analysis is pos-

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sible. Nonprimary relations do not interact with lexical properties and thus are exempt from the pressure to immediately construct a fully determinate syntactic analysis. Once potential lexical properties have been established, the syntax of the sentence follows. What, then, of nonprimary phrases and the process of association and construal? They are dealt with in the process of interpretation, construed broadly to include Logical Form as well as discourse principles. Nonprimary relations are not subject to the immediate commitment restriction on primary relations, because their analysis will not interact with the specification of the lexical properties of the other items in the sentence. For example, attaching a because clause high or low does not influence the grammatical properties of any words in the main clause. However, for example, attaching a postverbal NP as a direct object versus as a subject of a complement clause clearly does influence the permissible subcategorization properties of the verb. Put crudely, we propose that syntactically based structural parsing disambiguates the lexical items of the sentence to values that are compatible with a single structure, that is, to values that are mutually compatible. Construal does the rest.

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Page viii Appendix: Sentences Used in Experiments

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Notes

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References

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Index

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Appendix Sentences Used in Experiments This appendix contains all items from the experiments reported in the book. The materials are exactly as they were used in the experiments, including a few typographical errors and stylistic infelicities. Chapter 3 Section 3.3 Items used in experiment 1. Items 1 20, because experiment; items 21 36, temporal adverb experiment 1. The secretary didn't quit because of her large raise. | The secretary didn't quit because of her low salary. | The secretary disappeared because of her large raise. | The secretary disappeared because of her low salary. 2. The investigator didn't take the job because the client was suspicious. | The investigator didn't take the job because the client was rich. | The investigator looked into the case because the client was suspicious. | The investigator looked into the case because the client was rich. 3. Sally didn't eat dinner because she wasn't hungry. | Sally didn't eat dinner because she was hungry. | Sally walked home because she wasn't hungry. | Sally walked home because she was hungry. 4. Fred didn't complain because he thought complaints wouldn't help. | Fred didn't complain because he thought complaints would help. | Fred was depressed and he thought complaints wouldn't help. | Fred was depressed and he thought complaints would help. 5. The addict didn't gamble because he couldn't stop. | The addict didn't gamble because he enjoyed it. | The addict gambled because he couldn't stop. | The addict gambled because he enjoyed it. 6. Clearly Mary didn't win the lottery because she looks depressed. | Clearly Mary didn't win the lottery because she's smart and practical. | Mary must have taken a job as a waitress because she looks depressed. | Mary must have taken a job as a waitress because she's smart and practical.

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7. The doctor didn't leave because his coat's still here; he must be upstairs. | The doctor didn't leave because his wife came; he must have been called to the hospital. | The doctor left but his coat's still here; he must be upstairs. | The doctor left but his wife came; he must have been called to the hospital. 8. The dinner guest didn't choke because Sam patted him on the back. | The dinner guest didn't choke because the food was so bad. | Apparently the sick guest coughed because Sam patted him on the back. | Apparently the sick guest coughed because the food was so bad. 9. The technician didn't respond to the question because the microphone was on. | The technician didn't respond to the question because he was seeking publicity. | The technician responded at length to the question because the microphone was left on. | The technician responded at length to the question because he was seeking publicity. 10. The librarian didn't protest because she was afraid she'd lose her job. | The librarian didn't protest because she'd been bullied into it. | The librarian threatened to resign because she was afraid she'd lose her job. | The librarian threatened to resign because she'd been bullied into it. 11. The lawyer didn't come because he was too busy. | The lawyer didn't come because he felt obliged. | The lawyer was nervous because he was too busy. | The lawyer was nervous because he felt obliged. 12. The mother of six didn't cook because she didn't have enough time. | The mother of six didn't cook because she had extra time on her hands. | The mother of six cooked most days and she didn't have enough time. | The mother of six cooked most days and she had extra time on her hands. 13. The policeman didn't laugh because he thought the joke wasn't funny. | The policeman didn't laugh because he thought the joke was funny. | The polite policeman laughed; he really thought the joke wasn't funny. | The polite policeman laughed; he really thought the joke was funny. 14. The out of shape teenager didn't run because he'd twisted his ankle. | The out of shape teenager didn't run because he had a chance of winning. | The out of shape teenager ran and he'd twisted his ankle. | The out of shape teenager ran and he had a chance of winning. 15. The storekeeper didn't smile because he had a toothache. | The storekeeper didn't smile because he was genuinely friendly. | The storekeeper smiled and he had a toothache. | The storekeeper smiled and he was genuinely friendly. 16. The waiter didn't break the plates because he probably wasn't even working. | The waiter didn't break the plates because he was terribly clumsy. | The waiter was easily angered and probably wasn't even working. | The waiter was easily angered and was terribly clumsy. 17. Karl didn't phone because he was busy tonight. | Karl didn't phone because he wanted to be invited for dinner. | Karl phoned and he was busy tonight. | Karl phoned and he wanted to be invited for dinner.

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18. Susan didn't cry because she was trying to set a good example. | Susan didn't cry because she was sad. | Apparently Susan dressed up whenever she was trying to set a good example. | Apparently Susan dressed up whenever she was sad. 19. Linda didn't come to the party because she didn't want to. | Linda didn't come to the party because she wanted to. | Linda came to the ceremony and she didn't want to. | Linda came to the ceremony and she wanted to. 20. Andrea didn't pray because she wasn't afraid. | Andrea didn't pray because she was afraid. | Andrea prayed and she wasn't afraid. | Andrea prayed and she was afraid. 21. John will explain to the kids that their grandfather died after the operation he had. | John will explain to the kids that their grandfather died after the operation they need. | Apparently the kids grandfather died after the operation he had. | Probably John will explain the accident to the kids after the operation they need. 22. The baker mentioned to Mrs. Owen that the quality of the bread will suffer when the old ovens are removed. | The baker mentioned to Mrs. Owen that the quality of the bread will suffer when he saw her at the shop. | The quality of the bread will suffer when the old ovens are removed. | The baker mentioned the ovens to Mrs. Owen when he saw her at the shop. 23. The teacher will tell the principal that the kids trashed the bathroom after the football game last Saturday. | The teacher will tell the principal that the kids trashed the bathroom after the faculty meeting later today. | The schoolkids trashed the bathroom after the football game last Saturday. | The teacher will tell the principal about everything after the faculty meeting later today. 24. The accountant complained to the boss that the February schedule will be too crowded when the clients return from vacation. | The accountant complained to the boss that the February schedule will be too crowded when he saw him this morning. | The office schedule will be too crowded when the clients return from vacation. | The accountant complained to the boss when he saw him this morning. 25. The auctioneer will inform the buyers that the furniture was already sold when the first estate sale took place. | The auctioneer will inform the buyers that the furniture was already sold when the auction begins this afternoon. | The antique furniture was sold when the first estate sale took place. | The auctioneer will inform the buyers about things when the auction begins this afternoon. 26. The spokeswoman told the reporters that the Governor will be unavailable when the Trustees meet next week. | The spokeswoman told the reporters that the Governor will be unavailable when the Trustees met last week. | According to his spokeswoman the Governor will be unavailable when the Trustees meet next week. | The spokeswoman told the reporters the Governor's busy schedule when the Trustees met last week. 27. The detective will investigate whether the Senators broke the law when they failed to declare their stock holdings. | The detective will investigate whether the Senators broke the law when he looks into their personal financial records. | Apparently the Senators broke the law when they failed to declare their stock

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holdings. | The detective will investigate the Senators when he looks into their personal financial records. 28. The astronomers showed that a planet may be detected by radio pulses when a dense star rotates in a nearly periodic fashion. | The astronomers showed that a planet may be detected by radio pulses when a dense star rotated in a nearly periodic fashion. | A planet may be detected by radio pulses when a dense star rotates in a nearly periodic fashion. | The astronomers showed the existence of a planet when a dense star rotated in a nearly periodic fashion. 29. The chemists will persuade the biologist that carbon-dating was already precise in the 1970's when the famous fossils were dated. | The chemists will persuade the biologist that carbon-dating was already precise in the 1970's when the fossils prove to be genuine. | Carbon-dating was already precise in the 1970's when the famous fossils were dated. | The chemists will persuade the biologists once and for all when the fossils prove to be genuine. 30. Marcie mumbled that her friends will arrive on Saturday when she will be at work. | Marcie mumbled that her friends will arrive on Saturday when she phoned from work. | Marcie's friends will arrive on Saturday when she will be at work. | Marcie mumbled about her friends when she phoned from work. 31. The defense attorney will imply that the defendant was insane when he committed the murder. | The defense attorney will imply that the defendant was insane when he makes his opening statement. | The defendant was apparently insane when he committed the murder. | The defense attorney will imply insanity when he makes his opening statement. 32. The director argued that the critics will pan the film because it is about real life. | The director argued that the critics will pan the film because he knew that they were biased. | The critics will pan the film because it is about real life. | The director argued with the critics because he knew they were biased. 33. The victim will convince the jury that the defendant was drunk when he got behind the steering wheel. | The victim will convince the jury that the defendant was drunk when he takes the witness stand. | The defendant was visibly drunk when he got behind the steering wheel. | The victim will convince the jury when he takes the witness stand. 34. Ahmed wrote Katherine that the police will crack down again when the elections are held. | Ahmed wrote Katherine that the police will down crack again when he was in Tangiers. | The police will crack down again when the elections are held. | Ahmed wrote Katherine again when he was in Tangiers. 35. Nina will show her parents that she studied hard when she was in Paris last year. | Nina will show her parents that she studied hard when she gets her report card. | Nina studied very hard when she was in Paris last year. | Nina will show her parents her progress when she gets her report card. 36. Thomas joked with his buddies that he will become a rock star when he graduates from high school. | Thomas joked with his buddies that he will become a rock star when he was impersonating Mick Jager. | Thomas will become a rock

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star when he graduates from high school. | Thomas joked with his buddies when he was impersonating Mick Jager. Section 3.4 Questionnaire reported in section 3.4. Items ordered late closure, long; early closure, long; late closure, short; early closure, short. 1. John will explain to the kids that their grandfather died after the operation he had. | John will explain to the kids that their grandfather died after the operation they need | John will explain to the kids that their grandfather died last night. | John will explain to the kids that their grandfather died tomorrow. 2. The baker mentioned to Mrs. Owen that the quality of the bread will suffer when the old ovens are removed. | The baker mentioned to Mrs. Owen that the quality of the bread will suffer when he saw her at the shop. | The baker mentioned to Mrs. Owen that the quality of the bread will suffer next month. | The baker mentioned to Mrs. Owen that the quality of the bread will suffer last week. 3. The teacher will tell the principal that the kids defaced the bathroom after the football game last Saturday. | The teacher will tell the principal that the kids defaced the bathroom after the faculty meeting later today. | The teacher will tell the principal that the kids defaced the bathroom yesterday. | The teacher will tell the principal that the kids defaced the bathroom tomorrow. 4. The accountant complained to the boss that the February schedule will be too crowded when the clients return from vacation. | The accountant complained to the boss that the February schedule will be too crowded when he saw him this morning. | The accountant complained to the boss that the February schedule will be too crowded next year. | The accountant complained to the boss that the February schedule will be too crowded last week. 5. The auctioneer will inform the buyers that the furniture was already sold when the first estate sale took place. | The auctioneer will inform the buyers that the furniture was already sold when the auction begins this afternoon. | The auctioneer will inform the buyers that the furniture was already sold last week. | The auctioneer will inform the buyers that the furniture was already sold next week. 6. The spokeswoman told the reporters that the Governor will be unavailable when the trustees meet next week. | The spokeswoman told the reporters that the Governor will be unavailable when the trustees met last week. | The spokeswoman told the reporters that the Governor will be unavailable tomorrow. | The spokeswoman told the reporters that the Governor will be unavailable yesterday. 7. The detective will investigate whether the senators broke the law when they failed to declare their stock holdings. | The detective will investigate whether the senators broke the law when he looks into their personal financial records. | The detective will investigate whether the senators broke the law last term. | The detective will investigate whether the senators broke the law next year. 8. The astronomers showed that a planet may be detected by radio pulses when a dense star rotates in a nearly periodic fashion. | The astronomers showed that a

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planet may be detected by radio pulses when a dense star rotated in a nearly periodic fashion. | The astronomers showed that a planet may be detected by radio pulses when a dense star rotates daily. | The astronomers showed that a planet may be detected by radio pulses when a dense star rotated last week. 9. The chemists will persuade the biologist that carbon-dating was already precise in the 1970's when the famous fossils were dated. | The chemists will persuade the biologist that carbon-dating was already precise in the 1970's when the fossils prove to be genuine. | The chemists will persuade the biologist that carbon-dating was already precise ten years ago. | The chemists will persuade the biologist that carbon-dating was already precise in a few months. 10. Marcie mumbled that her friends will arrive on Saturday when she will be at work. | Marcie mumbled that her friends will arrive on Saturday when she phoned from work. | Marcie mumbled that her friends will arrive tomorrow. | Marcie mumbled that her friends will arrive last week. 11. The defense attorney will imply that the defendant was insane when he committed the murder. | The defense attorney will imply that the defendant was insane when he makes his opening statement. | The defense attorney will imply that the defendant was insane last year. | The defense attorney will imply that the defendant was insane next time. 12. The director argued that the critics will pan the film because it is about real life. | The director argued that the critics will pan the film because he knew that they were biased. | The director argued that the critics will pan the film next week. | The director argued that the critics will pan the film last week. 13. The victim will convince the jury that the defendant was drunk when he got behind the steering wheel. | The victim will convince the jury that the defendant was drunk when he takes the witness stand. | The victim will convince the jury that the defendant was drunk at the time. | The victim will convince the jury that the defendant was drunk at the trial. 14. Ahmed wrote Katherine that the police will crack down again when the elections are held. | Ahmed wrote Katherine that the police will down crack again when he was in Tangiers. | Ahmed wrote Katherine that the police will crack down again next month. | Ahmed wrote Katherine that the police will down crack again last month. 15. Nina will show her parents that she studied hard when she was in Paris last year. | Nina will show her parents that she studied hard when she gets her report card. | Nina will show her parents that she studied hard last month. | Nina will show her parents that she studied hard next week. 16. Thomas joked with his buddies that he will become a rock star when he graduates from high school. | Thomas joked with his buddies that he will become a rock star when he was impersonating Mick Jager. | Thomas joked with his buddies that he will become a rock star next year. | Thomas joked with his buddies that he will become a rock star last night.

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Chapter 4 Section 4.2 Materials used in Gilboy et al. 1995. English first, then Spanish, separated by type, with proportion N2 response indicated. English Items, Type A1 1. In the garage we keep the/a table of wood that John carved this Christmas holiday. .39 2. To my sister they gave the/a lamp of alabaster that they polished until it looked like marble. .13 3. Yesterday they gave me the/a sweater of cotton that was illegally imported. .30 4. In the end Tomas brought the/a shawl of wool that was very expensive. .21 5. Maria made the/a belt of leather that Pedro liked a lot. .12 6. Finally they placed the/a bell of bronze that they brought from the foundry. .09 7. Yesterday we ate the/a cake of rice that they sold us in the oriental shop. .29 8. The young actress admired the/a gown of silk that was so beautiful. .12 Type A2 1. John asked for the (clear) glass of (clear) water that was on the table. .16 2. Mary liked the (old) bottle of (old) brandy that we kept in the wine cellar. .54 3. Pedro took away the (white) cup of (white) sugar that fell on the floor. .41 4. Andres picked up the (brown) sack of (brown) sand that we brought from the construction site. .56 5. The clerk brought us the (oily) package of (oily) fish that was on the counter. .28 6. When we go camping we take the (old) suitcase of (old) clothes that we use in the summer. .53 7. In the dining-room you will find the (big) basket of (big) apples that John gave us. .70 8. Julia picked up the (light) can of (light) varnish that was oily. .34 9. My mother didn't see the (ruined) jar of (ruined) jam that was crawling with ants. .38 Type B1 1. The teacher was talking with the/a relative of the/a boy who was in the hospital. .89 2. The journalist had interviewed the/a daughter of the/a colonel who had been in an accident. .70

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3. Andres had dinner with the/a niece of the/a doorman who we met last summer. .53 4. This morning I met the/an aunt of the/a mechanic who lives in the building where I live. .70 5. The police arrested the/a cousin of the/a painter who was in Marbella. .49 6. The doorman was talking to the/a sister of the/a nurse who was my mother's friend. .72 7. Everybody in the office felt sorry about the death of the/a nephew of the/a director who worked a long period in the corporation. .65 8. All of our friends liked the/a uncle of the/a exchange student who was visiting us. .71 9. We were worried about the/a grandmother of the/a babysitter who became ill and had to be taken to the hospital. .20 Type B2 1. The explosion deafened the/an assistant of the/an inspector who was near the warehouse. .26 2. The police arrested the/a chauffeur of the/an actor who was accused of dealing drugs. .44 3. Next month they will assign to the foreigner the/a secretary of the/a manager who works long hours in the office. .36 4. Most of the patients liked the/a nurse of the/a surgeon who just started to work in the hospital. .45 5. I was talking to the/an apprentice of the/a tailor who was in Paris for a while. .40 6. Tomorrow I have a date with the/an advisor of the/an assistant district attorney that they introduced to me at Mary's party. .28 7. I was told that the/a masseur of the/a skater who was on tv yesterday had been fired. .05 8. Yesterday I saw the/a consultant of the/a director who was upset because of the pitiful response to the latest sales promotion. .39 9. During the meeting the chief of protocol tried to talk to the/a translator of the/an ambassador who did not have an invitation to the party. .37 Type B3 1. The tourists admired the (small) museum of the (small) city that they visited in August. .62 2. John smashed the (new) car of the (new) company that his wife hated so much. .51 3. Several men moved the (old) machines of the (old) factories that had been set on fire. .60

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4. The brokers sold the (new) stocks of the (new) investment clubs that were losing money. .59 5. The governor bought some (new) books for the (new) library of the elementary school that had just been built. .44 6. The local newspaper columnist wrote about the (well-known) mascot of the (well-known) club that people found so ridiculous. .25 Type B4 1. The pilot was looking at the airport through the (filthy) side window of the (filthy) plane that the mechanic was examining. .81 2. Birds won't be able to nest in the (big) branch of the (big) tree that we cut last year. .50 3. The car stopped in front of the (main) door of the (main) house that showed clear signs of damage. .58 4. The plumber suggested to us to change the (new) faucet of the (new) sink that we installed last year. .68 5. I really liked the (short) preface of the (short) book I read yesterday. .63 6. Silvia didn't find the (old) cover to the (old) pot that she just cleaned. .82 7. We have to paint the (blue) handlebar of the (blue) bicycle that we fixed yesterday. .70 8. In the meeting they showed us the (new) label of the (new) bottle that the artist designed. .25 9. The insurance inspector photographed the (damaged) engine of the (damaged) boat that was covered with water. .58 Type B5 1. I was surprised by the (odd) etching of the (odd) sculpture that was in the town hall. .65 2. The designer agreed to show us the (new) sketch of the (new) house that he should finish before the end of the summer. .66 3. The architect exhibited the (plain) drawing of the (plain) building that his client had commissioned. .61 4. Charles liked the (sad) portrait of the (sad) woman that he saw at your house. .12 5. All the newspapers published the (small) photograph of the (small) boy that all the judges of the singing contest liked so much. .87 6. Sara did the (famous) painting of the (famous) cove that the public found so gloomy. .36 7. The collector lost the (big) picture of the (big) house that was so dark. .62 8. Suzanne sold the (small) painting of the (small) beach that her friends liked. .15

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9. The critics judged very harshly the (Japanese) lithograph of the (Japanese) park that had attracted the most visitors. .45 Type B' 1. The professor read the (new) book of the (new) student that was in the diningroom. .43 2. The inspector observed the (suspicious) suitcase of the (suspicious) traveler that was in the station. .55 3. The mechanics were modifying the (dangerous) car of the (dangerous) driver that took part in the race. .48 4. The dressmaker was sewing the (dirty) dress of the (dirty) girl that was on the floor. .50 5. We borrowed the (old) car of the (old) neighbor that we saw nearby. .55 6. I had to borrow the (new) computer of the (new) secretary that was in the office close to mine. .55 Type C 1. The count ordered the/a steak with the/a sauce that the chef prepares especially well. .74 2. Laura lost the/a notebook with the/a sticker that Pedro gave her. .85 3. Marta was wearing the/a sunhat with the/a scarf that she used to wear in summer. .56 4. It was agreed to move the/a computer with the/a screen that we bought recently to another building. .42 5. I wanted to take the/a radio with the/a loudspeaker that I bought for a very low price. .38 6. On the shelf I keep the/a box with the/a cover that Peter varnished. .59 7. The captain authorized the/a departure of the/a ship with the mast that we repaired. .95 8. Yesterday I dropped the/a tray with the/a perfume that is made in Barcelona. .82 9. The millionaire was shown the/a house with the/a pool that was as big as half a football field. .91 Spanish Items, Type A1 1. En el garaje guardamos la/una mesa de madera que Juan serró estas Navidades. .06 2. A mi hermana le regalaron la/una lampara de alabastro que pulieron hasta que pareciera m´rmol. .0.24 3. Ayer me regalaron el/un jersey de algodón que importaban de contrabando. .10

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4. Al final Tomás compró la/una manta de lana que era muy cara. .00 5. María hizo el/un cinturón de piel que le gusta a Pedro. .02 6. Por fin colocaron la/una campana de bronce que trajeron de la fundición. .06 7. Ayer nos comimos el/un pastel de arroz que nos vendieron en la tienda de productos orientales. .04 8. La joven actriz admiraba la/una toga de seda que era muy bonita. .00 Type A2 1. Juan pidió el vaso (transparente) de agua (transparente) que estaba encima de la mesa. .03 2. A María le gustaba la botella (vieja) de coñac (viejo) que guardábamos en la bodega. .07 3. Pedro se llevó la taza (blanca) de azúcar (blanco) que se cayó al suelo. .04 4. Andrés recogió el saco (marrón) de arena (marrón) que trajimos de la obra. .15 5. El vendedor nos trajo el paquete (grasiento) de pescado (grasiento) que estaba en el mostrador. .05 6. Cuando vamos de camping llevamos la maleta (vieja) de ropa (vieja) que usamos en verano. .59 7. En el comedor encontrarás la cesta (grande) de manzanas (grandes) que Juan nos regaló. .30 8. Julia recogió el pote (claro) de barniz (claro) que estaba aceitoso. .13 9. Mi madre no vió la jarra (estropeada) de mermelada (estropeada) que estaba cubierta de hormigas. .20 Type B1 1. La maestra estuvo hablando con la/una pariente del/un niño que estaba en el hospital. .80 2. Los periodistas entrevistaron a la/una hija del/un coronel que tuvo un accidente. .41 3. Andrés estuvo cenando con la/una sobrina del/un portero que conocimos el verano pasado. .57 4. Esta mañana me encontré con la/una tía del/un mecánico que vive en mi bloque de pisos. .52 5. La policía detuvo a la/una prima del/un pintor que estaba en Marbella. .35 6. El portero conversaba con la/una hermana de la/una enfermera que era amiga de mi madre. .63 7. Todos en la oficina sintieron la muerte de la/una sobrina del/un directivo que había trabajado tanto tiempo en la empresa. .39 8. A todos nuestros amigos les gustaba el/un tío del/un estudiante extranjero que nos vino a visitar. .45

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9. Estábamos preocupados por la/una abuela de la/una canguro que se puso enferma y tuvo que ser llevada al hospital. .07 Type B2 1. La explosión ensordeció al/un ayudante del/un comisario que estaba junto al almacén. .11 2. La policía también detuvo al/un chófer del/un actor que estaba acusado de tráfico de drogas. .55 3. El mes que viene envían al extranjero a la/una secretaria del/un gerente que trabaja un montón de horas en la oficina. .33 4. A la mayoría de los enfermos les gustaba la/una enfermera del/un doctor que acababa de empezar a trabajar en el hospital. .25 5. Estuve conversando con el/un aprendiz del/un sastre que estuvo en Paris durante un tiempo. .29 6. Mañana tengo una cita con el/un asesor del/un fiscal que me presentaron en la fiesta de María. .29 7. Me dijeron que el/un masajista de la/una patinadora que ayer salió por televisión había sido despedido. .74 8. Ayer ví al/un consejero del/un director que estaba transtornado por el poco éxito de la última capaña de promoción de ventas. .24 9. Durante la reunión el jefe de protocolo intentó hablar con la/una traductora del/un embajador que no tenía invitación para la fiesta. .13 Type B3 1. Los turistas admiraban el museo (pequeño) de la ciudad (pequeña) que visitaron en agosto. .59 2. Juan se estrelló con el coche (nuevo) de la compañia (nueva) que su mujer odiaba tanto. .63 3. Varios hombres trasladaron las máquinas (viejas) de las fábricas (viejas) que se habían incendiado. .75 4. Los consultores vendieron las acciones (nuevas) de la empresas (nuevas) que estaban bajando la cotización. .30 5. El gobernador compró libros para la biblioteca (pequeña) de la escuela (pequeña) que acababan de construir. .61 6. El columnista del periódico escribió sobre la mascota (famosa) de la asociación (famosa) que la gente encontraba tan ridícula. .08 Type B4 1. El piloto contemplaba el aeropuerto desde la ventanilla (sucia) del avión (sucio) que estaban limpiando. .63

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2. Los pájaros no podrán anidar en la rama (grande) del árbol (grande) que cortamos el año pasado. .25 3. El coche se detuvo ante la puerta (blanca) de la casa (blanca) que mostraba claros signos de deterioro. .73 4. El fontanero nos recomendó cambiar el grifo (nuevo) del lavabo (nuevo) que instalamos el año pasado. .51 5. Me gustó mucho el prólogo (brebe) del libro (brebe) que leí ayer. .47 6. Silvia no econtraba la tapa (vieja) de la olla (vieja) que acababa de limpiar. .65 7. Tenemos que pintar el manillar (azul) de la bicicleta (azul) que reparamos ayer. .71 8. En la reunión nos mostraron la etiqueta (nueva) de la botella (nueva) que diseñó el artista. .31 9. El inspector de seguros fotografió el motor (estropeado) de la canoa (estropeada) que se cubrió de agua. .63 Type B5 1. Me sorprendió el boceto (extraño) de la escultura (extraña) que estaba en el ayuntamiento. .63 2. El diseñador accedió a mostranos el esquema (nuevo) de la casa (nueva) que debía acabar antes del fin del verano. .63 3. El arquitecto exhibió el dibujo (sencillo) del edificio (sencillo) que un cliente le había encargado. .36 4. A Carlos le gustó el retrato (triste) de la mujer (triste) que vió en tu casa. .09 5. En todos los periódicos publicaron la fotografía (pequeña) del niño (pequeño) que a todos los jueces del concurso de canto les gustó mucho. .80 6. Sara pintó el cuadro (famoso) de la cueva (famosa) que la gente encontraba tan triste. .51 7. El coleccionista perdió la lámina (enorme) de la casa (enorme) que era bastante oscura. .45 8. Susana vendió la pintura (pequeña) de la playa (pequeña) que gustaba a sus amigos. .10 9. La crítica juzgó duramente la litografía (japonesa) del parque (japonés) que más visitantes había atraído. .56 Type B' 1. El profesor leía el libro (nuevo) del estudiante (nuevo) que estaba en el salón. .53 2. El revisor observaba la maleta (sospechosa) del viajero (sospechoso) que estaba en la estación. .84 3. Los mecánicos revisaban el coche (peligroso) del piloto (peligroso) que participaba en la carrera. .72

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4. La modista cosía el vestido (sucio) de la niña (sucia) que estaba en el suelo. .68 5. Pedimos prestado el coche (viejo) del vecino (viejo) que vimos por allí cerca. .56 6. Tuve que pedir prestado el ordenador (nuevo) de la secretaria (nueva) que estaba en el despacho al lado del mío. .54 Type C 1. El conde pidió el/un bistec con la/una salsa que el cocinero preparaba especialmente bien. .92 2. Laura perdió la/una libreta con el/un adhesivo que le regaló Pedro. .91 3. Marta se puso la/una pamela con el/un pañuelo que acostumbraba a llevar en verano. .77 4. Se decidió trasladar el/un ordenador con la/una pantalla que compramos recientemente a otro edificio. .78 5. Quise llevarme la/una radio con el/un altavoz que obtuve por muy poco precio. .73 6. En la estantería guardo la/una caja con la/una tapa que barnizó Pedro. .81 7. El capitán autorizó la salida del/un buque con el/un mástil que reparamos. .98 8. [This sentence is different in English and Spanish] Llevé al joyero la/una pulsera con la/una esmeralda que compré en Colombia. .71 I took to the jeweller the/a wristlet with the/an emerald that I bought in Colombia. 9. Al millonario se le mostró la/una casa con la/una piscina que era tan grande como medio campo de fútbol. .84 Section 4.3 Sentences used in Carreiras and Clifton 1993. Spanish first, then English; head nouns in N1 and N2 modification versions separated by |, with N2 first. 1. Un ladrón armado disparó contra el mayordomo | la criada de la actriz | del actor que estaba divorciada de su marido. An armed robber shot the butler | maid of the actress | actor who had just divorced her husband. 2. La policía arrestó al hermano | a la hermana de la niñera | del criado que dió a luz recientemente dos gemelos. The police arrested the brother | sister of the nursemaid | handyman who recently gave birth to twins. 3. El perro ladró al sobrino | a la sobrina de la emperatriz | del emperador que siempre se pone vestidos verdes. The dog barked at the nephew | niece of the empress | emperor who was wearing a green dress.

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4. Esta tarde he visto al hijo | a la hija de la loca | del loco que estaba probándose una nueva pintura de ojos. This afternoon I saw the son | daughter of the madwoman | madman who was trying out some new eye shadow. 5. Los niños siguieron al abuelo | a la abuela de la niña | del niño que tenía la falda rota. The children followed the grandfather | grandmother of the girl | boy who was wearing a torn skirt. 6. Pedro fue ayer al concierto con el padre | la madre de la condesa | del conde que siempre se pone una pintura de labios roja brillante. Peter went to a concert yesterday with the father | mother of the countess | count who always wears flaming red lipstick. 7. El dueño del restaurante le hizo seña al camarero | a la camarera de la mujer | del hombre que llevaba una minifalda muy corta. The restaurant owner motioned to the waiter | waitress of the woman | man who was wearing a very short miniskirt. 8. El periodista entrevistó al guardaespaldas | a la querida de la reina | del rey que siempre tomaba el sol en topless. The journalist interviewed the bodyguard | mistress of the queen | king who always sunbathed topless. 9. Pedro se encontró con la novia | el novio del mesonero | de la mesonera que fue boxeador de pesos pesados. Peter met the girlfriend | boyfriend of the host | hostess who was a heavyweight boxer. 10. Los estudiantes descorteses miraban fijamente a la esposa | al marido del director | de la directora que había sido sacerdote. The impolite students stared at the wife | husband of the headmaster | headmistress who used to be a Catholic priest. 11. En el periódicó apareció una historia acerca de la tía | del tío del lechero | de la lavandera que era un donjuán. The newspaper wrote a story about the aunt | uncle of the milkman | laundress who was a real ladies' man. 12. El alcalde habló con la viuda | el viudo del pescador | de la pescadora que tenia un gran bigote pelirrojo. The mayor talked with the widow | widower of the fisherman | fisherwoman who had a bushy red mustache. 13. Llegó una carta certificada para la casera | el casero del ejecutivo | de la bailarina que fue sargento de la legión. A registered letter came for the landlady | landlord of the businessman | ballerina who was a sergeant in the army reserves.

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14. Amelia fotografió a la prometida | al prometido del príncipe | de la princesa que había sido jugador de fútbol en el instituto. Amelia photographed the bride | bridegroom of the prince | princess who had been a football player in college. 15. Los terroristas secuestraron a la nieta | al nieto del administrador | de la azafata que había sido jugador de rugby en la Universidad. The terrorists kidnapped the granddaughter | grandson of the steward | stewardess who had played rugby at Harvard. 16. Todo el mundo ignoraba a la madrastra | al padrastro del monje | de la monja que tenía una gran barba blanca. Everybody ignored the stepmother | stepfather of the monk | nun who had a long white beard. Section 4.3 Sentences used in eyetracking experiment reported in section 4.3. N2 version first, then N1 version; reflexive options indicated by $ $. 1. As the hospital buzzed with activity, the anxious doctor hesitantly called in the son of the pretty nurse who hurt $herself|himself$ in a bad fall. 2. With increasing curiosity the competent, well-trained pharmacist watched the mother of the man who was talking to $himself|herself$ outside. 3. Although he was pushy and determined, and he tried very hard, Fred never met the daughter of the fireman who shot $himself|herself$ last year. 4. Despite piles of character references on his desk, the lawyer didn't trust the brother of the woman who perjured $herself|himself$ under oath. 5. In search of a sensational story, the journalists had interviewed the girlfriend of the congressman who killed $himself|herself$ today. 6. Even though she searched all the usual hang-outs, Tina couldn't find the mistress of the executive who was amusing $himself|herself$ on the roof. 7. As he entered the dimly lit room under the staircase, Robert was amazed by the bodyguard of the actress who invited $herself|himself$ to the party. 8. Despite her appointment with the monk at the monastery, Janis flirted with the nephew of the ballerina who admired $herself|himself$ in the mirror. 9. Even though he knew he was being irrational about his feelings, Anthony hated the guy with the girl who was drawing attention to $herself|himself$ in the park. 10. When confronted, we had to admit that deep down we really liked the man with the actress who was trying to teach $herself|himself$ Spanish. 11. While everyone was socializing by the pool, nobody really got to know the niece with the weird boyfriend who hid $himself|herself$ in the TV room. 12. Risking rejection but taking a chance at happiness, Billy winked at the kind girl with the bald plumber who sang to $himself|herself$ loudly. 13. When finally faced with the truth, we realized that Amos didn't know the

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waitress with the handsome friend who had burned $himself|herself$ after spilling the veal scallopini. 14. Although we never thought she had a soft spot, Jennifer felt sorry for the postman with the lady who talked about $herself|himself$ for hours. 15. Lacking social graces and without good taste, Jonathan didn't meet the pretty woman with the bearded doctor who watched $himself|herself$ in the mirror. 16. Dying to get back at them for their egotistical pursuits, Melinda was rude to the cameraman with the starlet who was grooming $herself|himself$ in the hall. Section 4.4 Materials used in experiments 1 (items 1 12) and 2 (items 13 24). Options indicated by @|@ and $|$; presentation regions indicated by /. 1. Max met/@the only one of Sam's employees|the only supervisor with employees@/who $have|has$ teeth/who drives a pickup truck./ 2. Jacques mentioned/@the only one of Tom's wives|the only Mexican journalist with powerful friends@/who $live|lives$ in North America/who was fluent in French./ 3. Terry is/@the only one of Anne's children|my only acquaintance with sons@/who $paint|paints$/who has a regular full time job./ 4. The owner must have interviewed/@the only one of his customers|the only customer with children@/who $smile|smiles$/who even notices the mannequin at the cash register./ 5. Sarah is/@the only one of my acquaintances|the only American with relatives@/who $teach|teaches$ at the university/who still smokes./ 6. Donaldson is/@the only one of the commissioners|the only politician with local supporters@/who $care|cares$ about public education/who knows the Governor well./ 7. Patrick is/@the only one of the basketball players|the only unofficial coach with the basketball players@/who $were|was$ added to the team/who plays in the opening game on Saturday./ 8. The music critic must have heard/@the only one of the musicians|the only soloist with backup musicians@/who $show|shows$ up/who sings well./ 9. The Boston Globe will support/@the only one of the politicians|the only candidate with associates@/who $run|runs$ again this fall/who regularly gets elected with a full majority./ 10. The T.V. report showed/@the only one of the runners|the only mascot with the runners@/who $train|trains$ daily/who twisted his ankle./ 11. Apparently Brown was/@the only one of the candidates|the only teacher with the students@/who $were|was$ politically active/who answered his phone./ 12. Nancy is/@the only one of the nurses|the only nurse with the volunteers@/who $work|works$ here/who receives full benefits./

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13. $Father is impressed by/those of my friends/who went to college/who have a job in industry.|Father is impressed by/the grades of my friends/who went to college/who have a job in industry.|Father is impressed by/those of my friends/who went to college/and who have job in industry.|Father is impressed by/the grades of my friends/who went to college/and who have a job in industry.$/ 14. $The student quickly found/those of my colleagues/who like to teach/who are not on sabbatical leave.|The student quickly found/the offices of my colleagues/who like to teach/who are not on sabbatical leave.|The student quickly found/those of my colleagues/who like to teach/and who are not on sabbatical leave.|The student quickly found/the offices of my colleagues/who like to teach/and who are not on sabbatical leave.$/ 15. $I'm concerned about/those of my daughters/who go to college/who also have young children.|I'm concerned about/the health of my daughters/who go to college/who also have young children.|I'm concerned about/those of my daughters/who go to college/and who also have young children.|I'm concerned about/the health of my daughters/who go to college/and who also have young children.$/ 16. $Tina feels guilty about/those of her students/who failed the class/who later dropped out of school.|Tina feels guilty about/the lives of her students/who failed the class/who later dropped out of school.|Tina feels guilty about/those of her students/who failed the class/and who later dropped out of school.|Tina feels guilty about/the lives of her students/who failed the class/and who later dropped out of school.$/ 17. $We all like/those of Tim's relatives/who live in Maryland/who visit him on Thanksgiving.|We all like/the cooking of Tim's relatives/who live in Maryland/who visit him on Thanksgiving.|We all like/those of Tim's relatives/who live in Maryland/and who visit him on Thanksgiving.|We all like/the cooking of Tim's relatives/who live in Maryland/and who visit him on Thanksgiving.$/ 18. $Nobody at the small college seems surprised by/those of Sue's mentors/who write to her/who continue to advise her.|Nobody at the small college seems surprised by/the habits of Sue's mentors/who write to her/who continue to advise her.|Nobody at the small college seems surprised by/those of Sue's mentors/who write to her/and who continue to advise her.|Nobody at the small college seems surprised by/the habits of Sue's mentors/who write to her/and who continue to advise her.$/ 19. $Some people can't understand/those of the delegates/who went to the convention in Houston/who believe in the campaign process.|Some people can't understand/the minds of the delegates/who went to the convention in Houston/who believe in the campaign process.|Some people can't understand/those of the delegates/who went to the convention in Houston/and who believe in the campaign process.|Some people can't understand/the minds of the delegates/who went to the convention in Houston/and who believe in the campaign process.$/ 20. $The supervisor will look after/those of the volunteers/who continue/who get hurt.|The supervisor will look after/the well-being of the volunteers/who continue/who get hurt.|The supervisor will look after/those of the volunteers/who continue/

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and who get hurt.|The supervisor will look after/the well-being of the volunteers/who continue/and who get hurt.$/ 21. $Castro paid particular attention to/those of the reporters/who were present in Havana/who didn't fall asleep at the ceremony.|Castro paid particular attention to/the articles of the reporters/who were present in Havana/who didn't fall asleep at the ceremony.|Castro paid particular attention to/those of the reporters/who were present in Havana/and who didn't fall asleep at the ceremony.|Castro paid particular attention to/the articles of the reporters/who were present in Havana/and who didn't fall asleep at the ceremony.$/ 22. $The insurance companies may cut benefits for/those of the adjustors/who haven't been fired/who still earn enough money to survive.|The insurance companies may cut benefits for/the families of the adjustors/who haven't been fired/who still earn enough money to survive.|The insurance companies may cut benefits for/those of the adjustors/who haven't been fired/and who still earn enough money to survive.|The insurance companies may cut benefits for/the families of the adjustors/who haven't been fired/and who still earn enough money to survive.$/ 23. $Most people in town like/those of my neighbors/who vote Democratic/who are politically active.|Most people in town like/the views of my neighbors/who vote Democratic/who are politically active.|Most people in town like/those of my neighbors/who vote Democratic/and who are politically active.|Most people in town like/the views of my neighbors/who vote Democratic/and who are politically active.$/ 24. $We never hear about/those of Sam's girlfriends/who can read/who actually do.|We never hear about/the opinions of Sam's girlfriends/who can read/who actually do.|We never hear about/those of Sam's girlfriends/who can read/and who actually do.|We never hear about/the opinions of Sam's girlfriends/who can read/and who actually do.$/ Chapter 5 Section 5.1 Sentences used in first questionnaire reported in section 5.1. 1. The man ate the steak that was in the pantry. | The man ate the steak yesterday that was in the pantry. | The man ate the steak naked that was in the pantry. | The man ate the steak raw that was in the pantry. 2. The girl noticed the paper that revealed the corruption in the White House. | The girl noticed the paper last week that revealed the corruption in the White House. | The girl noticed the paper wide-eyed that revealed the corruption in the White House. | The girl noticed the paper crumpled that revealed the corruption in the White House. 3. The boy bought the shirt that the girl liked so much. | The boy bought the shirt today that the girl liked so much. | The boy bought the shirt drunk that the girl liked so much. | The boy bought the shirt torn that the girl liked so much.

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4. The neighbors planted the flower bulbs that came from Holland. | The neighbors planted the flower bulbs last weekend that came from Holland. | The neighbors planted the flower bulbs preoccupied that came from Holland. | The neighbors planted the flower bulbs upside-down that came from Holland. 5. The waitress brought the dinner that had been standing by the cash register. | The waitress brought the dinner quickly that had been standing by the cash register. | The waitress brought the dinner angry that had been standing by the cash register. | The waitress brought the dinner frozen that had been standing by the cash register. 6. The winners received the trophies that had been lying on the ground near the judge. | The winners received the trophies immediately that had been lying on the ground near the judge. | The winners received the trophies breathless that had been lying on the ground near the judge. | The winners received the trophies broken that had been lying on the ground near the judge. 7. The cook mashed the potatoes that had been lying around all morning. | The cook mashed the potatoes this afternoon that had been lying around all morning. | The cook mashed the potatoes sweating that had been lying around all morning. | The cook mashed the potatoes steaming that had been lying around all morning. 8. The scientist washed the test tube that had been under investigation by the Internal Review Board. | The scientist washed the test tube yesterday that had been under investigation by the Internal Review Board. | The scientist washed the test tube sick that had been under investigation by the Internal Review Board. | The scientist washed the test tube cracked that had been under investigation by the Internal Review Board. Section 5.1 Sentences used in second questionnaire reported in section 5.1. 1. The skier drank the tea cold that was still shivering from the strong wind. | The skier drank the tea cold. 2. The janitor carried the barrel filthy that was cleaning up South College. | The janitor carried the barrel filthy. 3. The supervisor talked to the operator drunk who was inspecting sabotage in the workplace. | The supervisor talked to the operator drunk. 4. The boy met the girl half dressed who was supposed to take her to the class party. | The boy met the girl half dressed. 5. The fireman rescued the woman burnt who had searched the attic for survivors. | The fireman rescued the woman burnt. 6. The waitress helped the old man half-asleep who had brought him dinner just 10 minutes before. | The waitress helped the old man half-asleep. 7. The painter primed the wall sticky who had just finished varnishing the wood-work. | The painter primed the wall sticky.

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8. The detective closed the case uninvestigated who had discovered the alleged perpetrator was a friend of the mayor. | The detective closed the case uninvestigated. Chapter 6 Section 6.2.1 Materials used in experiment 1. Alternatives indicated by |. 1. The little girl wore | tried on the jewelry new | glittering | proud | posing. 2. The teenager painted | opened the door broken | peeling | tired | slouching. 3. Melissa sewed | claimed the sweater torn | tearing | sleepy | half-sleeping. 4. Bill filed | glanced at his nails dirty | cracking | distracted | daydreaming. 5. The count polished | took off his boots damp | still shining | bored | still mumbling. 6. The maid ironed | borrowed the shirt still soapy | dripping | angry | screaming. 7. The babysitter washed | returned the clothes moldy | stinking | pensive | thinking. 8. We cooked | presented the fish rotten | rotting | depressed | cursing. 9. Frederick peeled | served the carrot limp | steaming | happy | humming. 10. Sally chased | rescued the cat still frightened | hissing | worried | complaining. 11. The assistants mixed | brought the egg whites cold | steaming | proud | pondering. 12. Lila whipped | tasted the cream chilled | cooling | furious | pouting. 13. I pruned | sketched the trees frozen | icing-over | worried | dreaming. 14. Betty toasted | devoured the muffins unsliced |; crumbling | unconcerned | smiling. 15. Billy roasted | popped the popcorn dry | rotting | sad | crying. 16. The little old lady kicked | abandoned the car broken | misfiring | distressed | screaming. Section 6.2.2 Materials used in experiment 2. Alternatives indicated by |, presentation regions by /. 1. The defendant presented his alibi | The alibi was presented, / not convincing yet entirely true | entirely true yet not convincing. 2. Janine didn't much like the movie | The movie wasn't well-liked, / technically sophisticated but far too long | far too long but technically sophisticated. 3. My cousin served Mexican food last night | Mexican food was served last night, / absolutely wonderful and low in calories | low in calories and absolutely wonderful.

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4. The house-mother intercepted a private letter | A private letter was intercepted, / amusing but nearly illegible | nearly illegible but amusing. 5. The audience praised the performance | The performance was universally praised, / somewhat humorless but technically flawless | technically flawless but somewhat humorless. 6. The maid wiped off the good crystal | The good crystal was wiped off, / glistening but chipped | chipped but glistening. 7. The violinist finished the solo | The solo was finished, / dramatic but surprisingly brief | surprisingly brief but dramatic. 8. The article praised the doctor | The doctor was praised, / supportive and well-trained | well-trained and supportive. 9. The carpenter described his masterpiece | The young carpenter soon arrived, / unassuming but clearly pleased | clearly pleased but unassuming. 10. The foreign actress pantomimed the entire event | The foreign actress was delightfully entertaining, / completely intriguing and seductive | seductive and completely intriguing. 11. The ringmaster had trained the elephant | The ringmaster was exceptional, / obviously masterful but an alcoholic | an alcoholic but obviously masterful. 12. Virginia swallowed a goldfish | Virginia swallowed hard, / squirming slightly but not talking | not talking but squirming slightly. 13. The architect next door was planting a magnolia tree | The architect next door was gardening, / graceful and, as always, polite | polite and, as always, graceful. 14. The professor ignored the household chores | The professor was relaxing, / dirty and lazy | lazy and dirty. 15. My sister was shopping for a new house | My sister was shopping, / large and very pregnant | very pregnant and large. 16. The old hunter followed the lion | The old hunter followed behind, / dangerous but without a gun | without a gun but dangerous. Section 6.3.1 Materials used in experiment 3. Alternatives indicated by | , presentation regions by /. 1. Yesterday I located my niece and her dog | Yesterday my niece was located, / only sixteen and already getting married | already getting married and only sixteen. 2. The reporter was impressed by the general and his troops | The general was unbelievably impressive, / experienced in combat and such a gentleman | such a gentleman and experienced in combat. 3. The librarian tracked down the editorial and its author | The editorial was finally tracked down, / undeniably brilliant and well crafted | well crafted and undeniably brilliant.

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4. The babysitter washed Johnny and the bathtub | Johnny had finally been washed, / sparkling clean and no longer pouting | no longer pouting and sparkling clean. 5. The repairman cursed the housewife and the washing machine | The washing machine was definitely cursed, / overworked and loaded improperly | loaded improperly and overworked. 6. The waitress approached the driver and his pet dog | The driver's pet dog approached, / drooling and baring its teeth | baring its teeth and drooling. 7. Susie liked Thomas and his Alfa Romeo | Thomas' Alfa Romeo was well-liked, / quite efficient and welldesigned | well-designed and quite efficient. 8. Vincent hated the director and the movie | The movie was widely hated, / boring and too long | too long and boring. 9. The head nurse and her thermometer were banished from the office | The head nurse was banished from the office, / threatening and unabashed | unabashed and threatening. 10. The conductor and his whistle frightened the other employees | The conductor was frightening, / shrill and ruthless | ruthless and shrill. 11. The old cashier and his machine were located near the kitchen | The old cashier was relocated, / very strange but friendly in his own way | friendly in his own way but very strange. 12. The banker and his Mercedes impressed the kids | The Mercedes was really quite impressive, / dignified and carefully engineered | carefully engineered and dignified. 13. The passenger and his luggage were found by the police | The passenger was eventually found, / cut up and strangled | strangled and cut up. 14. The cabdriver and his radio bothered me | The radio was annoying, / loud and full of static | full of static and loud. 15. The hitchhiker and his guitar upset the driver | The guitar was really quite upsetting, / boring and out of tune | out of tune and boring. 16. The pretty executive and her briefcase impressed the secretary | The briefcase was extremely impressive, / carefully tailored and Italian-made | Italian-made and carefully tailored. Section 6.3.2 Materials used in experiment 4. Probed words shown in uppercase; alternatives indicated by |. 1. The SMALL boy ate | saved the WHEAT roll dirty | daily. 2. The NEW chef cooked | pursued the RED bird sick | quick. 3. During the wild party, the PLAYFUL girl painted | phoned the HANDSOME boy drunk | twice. 4. The PATIENT student read | changed the NASTY pamphlet curled up | last night.

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5. During the bad game, the TIRED players examined | attacked the NEW mascot upset | often. 6. On that rainy day, the STUBBORN vendor sold | patted the SPLENDID books drenched | first. 7. The FAT cook boiled | poked the OLD lamb smelly | early. 8. The SICK boy dropped | bit the CLEAN glass wet | late. 9. The HUMBLE men loaded | touched the ROTTEN meat cold | once. 10. All summer, the SHY baker cut | checked the FINE loaves cold | once. 11. The PITIFUL orphan drove | searched the RICKETY wagon scratched | at last. 12. Outside the garage, the SUPERB mechanic repaired | hugged the CLASSIC motor cold | last. 13. The DRUNKEN army destroyed | contacted the ANCIENT city messy | early. 14. The GLOOMY artist photographed | knifed the MATURE corn burnt | fast. 15. During the storm, the CRUEL child froze | caressed the PRETTY cat soaked | badly. 16. The WILD actor cleaned | slapped the OLD fridge stinky | after. 17. The POOR farmer rode | hunted the SAD horse crippled | at dawn. 18. The DULL woman returned | betrayed the YOUNG slave unhappy | already. 19. The CRAZY boy dented | clawed the METAL wall filthy | promptly. 20. The HUGE car crushed | hit the STEEL fence new | here. 21. The BLOND woodsman felled | kicked the LEAFY vines young | once. 22. The HARD captain marched | cheated the FAT soldiers angry | rarely. 23. The STURDY nurse sank | escaped the ANGRY refugee pregnant | quickly. 24. The LOSING pitcher threw | followed the SPECIAL ball crushed | straight. Chapter 7 Section 7.2 Sentences used in experiment reported in section 7.2. Presentation regions indicated by /, alternatives by $|$, optional element by & &. 1. $Where | To which shed | Where | Which shed$/did John haul the wood& to&/ this afternoon/before sunset?/ 2. $Where | To which pile | Where | Which pile$/did Cindy carry the seasoned wood& to&/yesterday/before the snowstorm?/ 3. $Where | To which repair shop | Where | Which repair shop$/did Lynne send the computer& to&/last year/after the electrical storm?/ 4. $Where | To which friend | Where | Which friend$/did Dan bring the Mozart tapes& to&/yesterday/on his way home?/

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5. $Where | To which garage | Where | Which garage$/did Angela take the Toyota& to&/last week/when it stalled?/ 6. $When | To which country | Where | Which country$/did Thomas ship the documents& to&/this morning/after the call from Mrs. Taft?/ 7. $Where | To which city | Where | Which city$/did Yvonne's karate instructor move& to&/in November/halfway through the course?/ 8. $Where | To which neighbor's garden | Where | Which neighbor's garden$/did Sally pull the sprinkler& to&/this morning/before her parents noticed?/ 9. $Where | To which dump | Where | Which dump$/will Karen haul the dead leaves& to&/tomorrow/after the kids rake?/ 10. $Where | To which house | Where | Which house$/will Mr. Pearson carry the wounded dog& to&/in a while/when the bleeding stops?/ 11. $Where | To which agency | Where | Which agency$/will Franklin send a complaint& to&/next week/if his order doesn't come?/ 12. $Where | To which classroom | Where | Which classroom$/will the principal bring the videos& to&/tomorrow/for the classroom demonstrations?/ 13. $Where | To which neighbor | Where | Which neighbor$/will Elizabeth take her cat& to&/on Tuesday/when she leaves for her vacation?/ 14. $Where | To which rebels | Where | Which rebels$/will the government send the automatic rifles& to&/next year/when direct aid is allowed?/ 15. $Where | To which desk | Where | Which desk$/will Carmen move& to&/next month/when Priscilla returns?/ 16. $Where | To which parent | Where | Which parent$/will Rick send the spoiled brat& to&/in about ten seconds/when he can't stand any more whining?/ 17. $Where | To which sister | Where | Which sister$/will Ahmet wire the telegram& to&/this afternoon/announcing his wedding plans?/ 18. $Where | To which friend | Where | Which friend$/will Patricia write a letter& to&/on Monday/indicating her return flight from Madrid?/ 19. $Where | To which son | Where | Which son$/will Patrick telegraph more money& to&/tomorrow/despite his numerous debts?/ 20. $Where | To which newspaper | Where | Which newspaper$/will Aunt Maude telephone the ad& to&/next Friday/if a formal apology is not extended?/ 21. $Where | To which hotel | Where | Which hotel$/will Fran's secretary phone the reservations& to&/tomorrow/if Fran's note doesn't arrive on time?/ 22. $Where | To which park | Where | Which park$/will the babysitters push the strollers& to&/today/on their daily walk?/ 23. $Where | To which publisher | Where | Which publisher$/will Sarah mail her poems& to&/tonight/after biting off all her nails?/ 24. $Where | To which spectator | Where | Which spectator$/will Tom throw the basketball& to&/this evening/just as the game ends?/

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25. $Where | To which bank | Where | Which bank$/did Joseph wire the money& to&/last week/after the sale?/ 26. $Where | To which agency | Where | Which agency$/did Teresa write the complaint& to&/this morning/when she was so angry?/ 27. $Where | To which hotel | Where | Which hotel$/did John telegraph the message& to&/yesterday/when he returned from China?/ 28. $Where | To which airlines | Where | Which airlines$/did the terrorist telephone the threat& to&/yesterday/before the evening news?/ 29. $Where | To which store | Where | Which store$/did Sampson call the book orders& to&/last August/before school started?/ 30. $Where | To which station | Where | Which station$/did Janis push the Subaru& to&/last night/when it broke down?/ 31. $Where | To which friend | Where | Which friend$/did William mail the heavy packages& to&/this morning/on his way to the office?/ 32. $Where | To which secretary | Where | Which secretary$/did Barbara pass the memo& to&/this afternoon/during the emergency meeting?/ Section 7.3.1 Sentences used in experiment reported in section 7.3.1. 1. How did the salesman convince the customer that the system should be replaced? 2. How did the attendant indicate that the old lady was sick? 3. How did the chemist find out that she was going to be hired? 4. How did Jill express that the customer made a mistake? 5. When did the window cleaners demand that the ledges be kept from deteriorating? 6. When did Sue express that the shopper made an error? 7. When did Dr. Tanen inform Sam that he was cured? 8. How did the prosecutor prove that the defendant murdered the art dealer? 9. How did the engineers insist that the standard procedures be followed? 10. Where did the vice president tell the sales manager to keep the staff calm? 11. Where did the biochemist discover that the protein could bond? 12. When did the young stockbroker proclaim that she managed to relax? 13. How did the very old man announce that he managed to stay so healthy? 14. How did the plumber declare that the leak started? 15. Where did the owner imply that the gambler cheated? 16. Where did the teacher instruct the kids to leave the burning building? 17. When did Mary say that John will come? 18. Where did Fred suggest that Mrs. Duluth recovered?

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19. How did Jackson suggest that Molly recovered? 20. How did the professor proclaim that she managed to stay sane? 21. How will John's wife say that he fell? 22. How did the mechanic claim that the tire lost air? 23. Where did Tina decide she would marry Ike? 24. Where did Kristy realize that the presents were hidden?

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Page viii Appendix: Sentences Used in Experiments

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Notes

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References

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Index

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Notes Chapter 1 1. Although most evidence has been gathered using English, a substantial amount of research has been done on other language types. The resulting evidence suggests that a similar conclusion will hold true universally. 2. The latest version of Gibson's model of which we are aware involves Recency, Theta Criterion violation (collapsing over argument positions and operators that transmit theta roles), and Predicate Proximity. This is not the place to evaluate these principles in detail. We only note that Recency is not consistent with the data presented in this book. For example, it predicts the existence of a garden path in adjunct predication sentences that are subject-biased (see chapter 6). It is also unclear whether in the latest model, Gibson intends the ''beam search" account given in the text or a model where the processor has a fixed volume of resources. Any explicit constrained-parallelism model must take a stance on issues such as this. 3. This does not preclude a researcher from studying the special role some particular type of information may play in choosing among alternative syntactic analyses. For example, Altmann and Steedman (1988) and Crain and Steedman (1985) argue that discourse reference plays a special role in choosing between an analysis in which a phrase disambiguates reference by modifying a referential NP and an analysis in which it plays some other role in the description of a situation. We should note, however, that they take this position without claiming that multiple syntactic representations are constructed. Rather, they claim that multiple syntactically guided mappings from input strings of words onto semantic representations are considered and immediately chosen among. 4. A reviewer correctly points out that Minimal Attachment and Late Closure may conflict and hence concludes that the ordering of these principles must be stipulated. On our view, the ranking of Minimal Attachment above Late Closure simply indicates that node postulation takes longer than retrieval of nearby material; hence, the first analysis is the minimal one unless retrieval of distant material is involved (e.g., from a prior intonational phrase or, perhaps, a prior "phrasal package"; see Frazier and Fodor 1978). 5. We note that, under the theory to be introduced in chapter 2, some of these garden path ambiguities (most clearly (17j,k)) are no longer interpreted as late

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closure attachment ambiguities. Rather, they are analyzed as garden paths arising from the association of a nonprimary phrase to the current thematic processing domain. See chapter 2 for more discussion. 6. Regarding this last point, we note that in all reasonable models, the final interpretation of a sentence is the product of multiple information sources, and we suggest that one's intuitions about sentence processing generally reflect the final interpretation, not intermediate steps in reaching the interpretation (see Fodor 1983). 7. This raises the extremely difficult question of what should be counted when counting frequencies. Hindle and Rooth counted the aggregate frequency with which V-NP-PP structures were apparently intended to have the PP modify the V versus the NP. It may be more appropriate to conditionalize the count on specific prepositions, specific semantic categories of verbs, specific verb-preposition combinations, the definiteness of the NP, or the like. Only a fully fleshed out theory of how frequency affects parsing can resolve this problem. 8. This claim must be qualified slightly, to acknowledge that constraint satisfaction theories do have substantial freedom in how they can map presumed weight of evidence into actual reading time. 9. Based on intuitions about felicitous discourse and actual examples collected, we continue to doubt that the condition Crain and Steedman place on the felicitous use of a relative clausethat it selects from a set of potential referents of the head noun, established in the prior discourse contextis correct (see Clifton and Ferreira 1989; Fox and Thompson 1990). Incidental support for our doubt comes from MacDonald, Pearlmutter, and Seidenberg (1994a), who cite a number of examples of perfectly felicitous uses of reduced relative clauses culled from psycholinguistics articles. Few if any of their examples (which commonly have the form of the reduced relative in the preceding sentence) actually select a particular instance from a set of potential referents established by context. 10. We defer the issue of whether the highest node in a referential nominal phrase should be NP or DP until we take up the topic of extended projections at the end of chapter 1 (and see further discussion in section 2.1.2). 11. We will later adopt a different structure for NP conjunction, but it does not affect the point here. Chapter 2 1. Although we do not have experimental evidence on this point, we will assume that a disambiguated structure is eventually built. We adduce some reasons for this assumption in later chapters. 2. We will use NP, not DP, in the phrase markers here and avoid issues about whether relative clauses attach to NPmax or N'. To view a noun phrase with an overt determiner as a Determiner Phrase (DP) is now rather standard in syntactic theory (see, e.g., Abney 1987). However, since NP (nongeneric beavers) and DP (the beavers) share roughly the same distribution and satisfy the same subcategorization requirements, we will continue to identify the maximal projection

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dominating a noun phrase containing a determiner as a nominal phrase and distinguish NPs containing a determiner as determinate NPs. Grimshaw (1991) discusses what seems to be a very promising direction for reconciling the insight of the DP analysis with the facts mentioned immediately above. At the most general level, the idea is to view functional projections as extensions of lexical projections. 3. We assume that only primary or "referential" thematic roles, such as agent and patient, initiate new thematic domains (see Rizzi 1990). Also, if no theta assigner has yet been received, then by default the next required theta assigner defines the current thematic processing domain; see discussion in chapter 5. 4. Since the relative clause in (4) is related in the association structure to N, the association structure is indeterminate in allowing either N' or N to be interpreted as the head of the relative clause. But what about N itself? Often the difference between an N' and an N head is coupled with both a syntactic difference in the level of attachment of the relative clause and the semantic difference(s) between restrictive and nonrestrictive relatives (see Stockwell, Schachter, and Partee 1973). We might instead assume that restrictive and nonrestrictive relatives do not differ in terms of the attachment level of the relative clause, but only prosodically and semantically (the truth conditions of the nonrestrictive being independent of the truth conditions of the remainder of the sentence, for example). The idea that the syntactically indeterminate (association) structure is shared by restrictive and nonrestrictive relatives comports well with the fact that the two types of relative may conjoin as in (i), due to van Gestel (1986) (whose examples were Dutch). The fact that the restrictive must precede the nonrestrictive is presumably due to the intonational requirements of restrictives. (i) The soprano who gives a recital tonight, and who has a good reputation as a soloist, . . . Further, in a language like Japanese, apparently there may be no structural difference at all between restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses (Kameshima 1989), and in languages like Hittite all relative clauses appear only in extraposed position (Bach and Cooper 1978). This strengthens the idea that interpretation as a restrictive or nonrestrictive may occur in natural languages even in the absence of a difference in the structures being interpreted. As we will show later in this chapter, an alternative is to assume that what is special about (i), conjunction of syntactically and semantically unlike structures, is due to the way noninitial conjuncts are represented in the syntactic phrase marker. In this case one might want to maintain the traditional syntactic description of the structure of restrictive versus nonrestrictive relative clauses, at least in a language like English, retaining a syntactic account of the distinctive properties. 5. Similarly, in a sentence like (i) there may be indeterminacy about whether the intended relation is collective, involving only one act of weighing, or distributive. Semantic information may, from the very outset, influence how this relation is construed. (i) The talk show host weighed Mary and Bill. We have not studied the interpretations assigned to conjoined NPs in object posi-

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tion. However, Frazier, Pacht, and Rayner (1995) report eye movement data showing that readers do not maintain a neutral, vague, or underspecified representation of conjoined NPs in subject position. Sometime before the end of an ambiguously collective or distributive predicate, readers commit themselves to the interpretation where the conjoined NP denotes the sum of atomic individuals (the collective interpretation). This supports the conclusion of Heim, Lasnik, and May (1991) that plural NPs are ambiguous, not vague. 6. At S-Structure, conjunction simply does not look like secondary predication at all. However, at LF it may, at least according to an analysis like that presented by Munn (1993). At LF the conjunction is interpreted like a pro and each conjunct is predicated of pro. In effect, this allows a single theta role to be shared by all conjuncts of a conjoined NP. 7. The parsing system proposed here predicts that the infinitival clause will associate to VP, where it can happily be interpreted as a rationale clause (unless the head noun of the direct object assigns a theta role). Our intuitions suggest, however, that the infinitival clause will be interpreted as a relative clause under conditions where the direct object would otherwise contain a quantifier with no restrictor clause. The need for a restrictor clause often attracts descriptive material that would otherwise preferentially be analyzed in some other manner (see Portner 1989; Ni and Crain 1990). Whether the analysis of a clause as restrictor reflects the parser's first analysis of the clause or only the finally preferred analysis cannot be decided on the basis of intuitions (or experimental studies comparing different lexical versions of one syntactic structure, as in Ni and Crain's study where temporarily ambiguous sentences were always disambiguated to a relative clause analysis). 8. D-Structure, S-Structure, NP-Structure, and Cascade Structure are all consistent with the reasoning here. Chapter 3 1. With a comma or a major prosodic break, an XP is attached high, where it has only the interpretation of the attachment shown in (3b). 2. If leave (John) is already presupposed, presumably leave will be mapped onto the restrictor clause (Diesing 1990; Kratzer 1989) and thus not be interpreted as falling under the scope of negation. Otherwise, leave will remain in the VP, where it may be mapped into the nuclear scope and thus be interpreted under the scope of negation (Diesing 1990). The negation may, but need not, take scope over the subject, as illustrated by the ambiguity of (i). (i) All the guests didn't leave. This can be explained in any of several ways. Following Diesing (1990), we might adopt the VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis and appeal to the trace of the subject in VP to get the reading where the subject receives narrow scope. Alternatively, following Williams (1993), we could assume that the Head Scope Rule gives the wide scope negation reading and that the Quantified Argument Scope Rule (QR) accounts for the wide scope universal subject reading.

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3. The degrees of freedom are low, because only 10 sentences received relevant questions, and because of an unintended quirk of assigning sentences to counter-balancing conditions so only half the subjects received relevant questions for both types of experimental sentences. As indicated in the text, question-answering accuracy cannot be treated too seriously because of the nature of the questions. However, we cannot identify any extraneous property of the questions that would have resulted in low accuracy for the early closure sentences. 4. Frazier and Rayner (1982) found a larger late closure effect for long than short ambiguous phrases in an eye movement study of sentence-medial ambiguities. They suggest that long ambiguous phrases, which by definition involve later disambiguation, show larger garden path effects because there is time for the erroneous decision to influence subsequent decisions and time for the first analysis to be semantically interpreted. Changing semantically interpreted decisions may be more costly than, say, immediately changing a structural decision that has not yet had semantic consequences. The present case contrasts with this since disambiguation involves semantic interpretation for both the short and long ambiguous phrases. In addition, the end of a sentence may be a distinguished position: sentences may be perceived as difficult to comprehend only if a successful final parse is not complete when the input is terminated. 5. See Tunstall (1994) for further evidence that phrases taken to be given are immediately related to a discourse antecedent. 6. The Thematic Reanalysis Constraint proposed by Pritchett (1988) superficially appears similar to the proposal made here. The Thematic Reanalysis Constraint specifies that reanalysis of a constituent into a new government thematic domain is computationally more expensive than reanalysis within a domain. (Note that Pritchett's use of thematic domain is very different from ours. We use the term to refer to the domain around a theta assigner, including all the roles of that theta assigner, whereas Pritchett uses it to refer to a particular abstract role assigned by a theta assigner.) We think that Pritchett's Thematic Reanalysis Constraint is often descriptively correct (e.g., whenever reanalysis within a domain does not lead to a revision of already computed semantic relations and reanalysis across domains does). However, we think it is the wrong way of capturing these facts, and we find it to be inconsistent with the data presented here. The experiments reported in section 3.3 showed that reanalysis of the because clause within a clause (from S to VP of the same clause, not in violation of Pritchett's constraint) was at least as costly as reanalysis from the lower to the higher thematic domain for the closure sentences. Chapter 4 1. Here and throughout we treat as a separate issue questions about the interplay of sentence processing with biasing information in discourse. 2. De Vincenzi and Job present an argument somewhat different from ours. They suggest that the relative clause is best interpreted within the current thematic domain, but they assume that this preference holds for all phrases, primary and nonprimary, and that the preference overcomes an initial Late Closure parsing strategy that applies to all phrases in Italian. We are proposing that nonprimary

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phrases will associate within the current thematic domain as their initial analysis but that they are not subject to Late Closure. 3. Crain and Steedman (1985) have proposed the widely cited Principle of Referential Success, which should not be confused with the Referentiality Principle proposed here. The former applies only in cases where one reading of the sentence "succeeds in referring to an entity already established in the hearer's mental model" (p. 331), whereas the latter favors analyses in which the relative clause modifies an NP that refers to either already present or newly added discourse entities. 4. Normative data indicated that the variability in preferences could not be attributed to differences in the semantic or pragmatic plausibility of the relations expressed. 5. We are grateful to Emmon Bach for suggesting that we look at these sentence types. 6. In the text we have treated (10c,d) simply as control sentences for (10a,b). However, if with assigns a theta role in the phrase the only supervisor with employees, then the following relative clause should associate to the extended projection of with, resulting in a longer reading time for region 3 for (10d) than (10c). The observed difference is rather small, only 34 ms. Post hoc inspection of the data indicates that the difference that does exist can be attributed to the 4 (of 12) sentences in which the object of with is referential (introduced by a determiner). In these sentences the mean reading time for region 3 was 1197 ms in (10c) and 1339 ms in (10d). In the remaining 8 sentences the with phrase (the current thematic processing domain) does not contain a potential referential host for the relative clause. In these sentences the processor may not commit itself immediately to interpreting the relative clause as modifying a (nonreferential) noun phrase within the current domain. Hence, reading would not be disrupted by verb-number information that forces the high attachment (10c) reading. In fact, for these sentences the mean reading times for region 3 are 1287 and 1267 ms for (10c) and (10d), respectively. A second question concerning experiment 1 is why the difficulty of (10a) relative to (10b) shows up in region 4 as well as in region 3. This could be due to a carryover effect, given that the self-paced reading technique allows the subject to pace the presentation of the input. Some subjects may choose an average rate so fast that comprehension may lag behind presentation. For such subjects, difficulty may appear in later regions. Alternatively, some subjects may assume that the verb in region 3 of (10a) is a typographical error and therefore take the first relative clause to modify the higher nominal. In this case the appearance of the second relative clause might lead the subjects to question their earlier decision, slowing reading times in region 4. 7. M. Steedman (personal communication) suggests that the PP, of the tree, will also require presuppositions similar to those required by the relative clause, neutralizing the difference we have proposed in the text. Thus, The sketch of the tree . . . always requires the postulation in the discourse model of multiple sketches, at least one of which is of a tree. As Steedman puts it, "When a processor has heard . . . the sketch of the tree that . . . , [it] can either accommodate one sketch unique by

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virtue of being of one unique tree and of having some other property, plus some other sketches of the same tree not having that other property, plus some sketches of something else. Or [it] can accommodate one sketch which is unique by being of one tree which is unique by having some property, plus some other trees without that property, plus some sketches of something else." In addition to questioning whether readers actually make all these accommodations (see Clifton and Ferreira 1989), we note that these two sets of accommodations differ in just the way we have described in the text. The former set, appropriate when the relative clause modifies the sketch, requires the assumption of multiple sketches of a particular tree; the latter set, appropriate when the relative clause modifies the tree, requires the more generally available assumption of multiple trees. Chapter 5 1. We thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this question. 2. Apparently, there are only six verbs in German that allow two PPs as internal arguments. A. Feldhaus (personal communication) argues that the processor does not in general seem to recognize this as a possible complement structure. 3. Feldhaus suggests that the preferences may be altered with very long adverbialsan issue we will not go into here. 4. Feldhaus argues that construal of the Adverb with the thematic domain of V2 is unpreferred because of the Minimal Revisions Principle: to interpret the Adverb as modifying V2, the PP would need to be analyzed as an adjunct of V2, not an argument, requiring an adjoined VP node to be added as a new node and the new mother of the PP. 5. The sentences in question were actually included in four different questionnaires containing a variety of other types of items. 6. Even the Complement Principle can be overridden in extreme cases by interpretive necessity. Ninety-six University of Massachusetts undergraduates interpreted and rated the difficulty of sentences like (i) (iv). (i) The father of the unfortunate girl died who had been impregnated by the mayor's son. (ii) The father of the unfortunate girl took ill and didn't leave the house who had been impregnated by the mayor's son. (iii) The director of the movie got married who had fallen in love with the leading actress. (iv) The director of the movie went to Las Vegas and got married who had fallen in love with the leading actress. Sentences were disambiguated toward N2 ((i) and (ii)) or N1 ((iii) and (iv)). Subjects answered a wh-question about the head of the relative clause (e.g., who had been impregnated . . . or who had fallen in love with the leading actress). When a sentence was disambiguated toward N2, 92.5% of the answers to questions about sentences with short verb phrases and 89.5% of the answers to questions about sentences with long ones indicated that the head of the relative clause was taken to

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be N2. When sentences were disambiguated toward N1, only 5.5% and 15.3% of the answers indicated that the head of the relative clause was N2. Comprehension values on the 7-point difficulty scale did not differ markedly between sentences disambiguated toward N1 or N2. N2 sentences Short 3.67

N1 sentences Long Short 3.93 3.58

Long 3.36

Chapter 6 1. One might think that Minimal Attachment would also favor the analysis in (2a), but following our assumption that X' nodes are not introduced unless they are required (e.g., if they branch), there is no difference in the number of nodes that must be introduced to accommodate the AP in (2a) versus (2b). The V node must be added to (2a) and the XP node to (2b). 2. See Clifton, Frazier, and Rapoport 1994 and Rapoport 1993, for a more complete discussion of why it was thought that these two classes of verbs might differ in a relevant way. Chapter 7 1. The preference in (12) for the primary relation (small clause) analysis may appear to violate Minimal Attachment, since the small clause analysis in (ii) has more nodes than the alternative in (iii). However, (iii) involves a revision of the initial analysis in (i) whereas (ii) arguably does not.

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2. We are not surprised that interpretive processes are sensitive to the preceding discourse context. We would be surprised if context were readily available to guide the construction of the first syntactic analysis of a phrase that could be analyzed as instantiating a primary relation (see Rayner, Garrod, and Perfetti 1992). 3. Philip studied a variety of questions, including the effects of specific verbs. Overall he observed a strong matrix preference for the matrix verb tell, as determined by the answer given to the questions, a preference that was reversed to a mild embedded preference with say. Philip speculates that the important difference between say and tell is the presence of a second internal argument with tell (e.g., tell Mary it rained). We suggest as an alternative possibility that a verb like tell is more likely to receive focus, by focusing its argument, than is a verb like say, accounting for the interpretation preference. Kimberly Broderick pursued these observations in a written questionnaire testing additional verbs. She also included both how and why adjuncts. She found an overwhelming preference for matrix readings for both verb types (tell and say) and for both adjuncts. Using sentences in isolation may promote the matrix bias since no contextual support will be available to induce perceivers to adopt the embedded interpretation of the adjunct. 4. This principle is most clearly applicable to when and where adjuncts. We take up the peculiarities of how and why adjuncts later. 5. Thanks to Jesse Glick for the example. 6. To make it possible to shift the preferences with the tense, aspect, and predicate manipulations in (20) (24), we have avoided matrix verbs that are information laden since this strengthens the matrix bias, thereby obscuring the more subtle effects in (23) (24). Using where instead of when in (23) (24) gives rise to effects similar to those discussed in the text, though additional factors complicate some of the examples. For example, one easily interprets (22b) as "The firemen are altruistic where" if when is changed to where.

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Chapter 8 1. Ted Gibson (personal communication) points out that he finds little difference between (6), repeated as (i), and (ii), suggesting to him that thematic roles are assigned only when a thematic element is encountered in the complement, as proposed in Gibson 1991. (i) John seems unkind on Fridays. (ii) John seems to be unkind on Fridays. We think that it will be worthwhile to determine just what the facts are. In support of our proposal, however, we suggest that the lack of a contrast between (i) and (ii) may be illusory, stemming largely from the difficulty of separating the distinct readings of (i) and (ii). Consider (iii) and (iv), for example, where the readings are more easily distinguished from one another. (iii) John seems shy in Paris. (iv) John seems to be shy in Paris. (v) John seems to Mary shy in Paris. Sentence (iii) seems ambiguous to us, whereas both (iv) and (v) are first interpreted with in Paris modifying shy. Thus, we continue to assume that thematic roles are assigned as soon as possible, perhaps before the thematic element is encountered in the complement of sentences like (ii) and (iv). 2. These intuitions are clearest when one neutralizes prosodic cues that indicate that a relative clause presents given information, such as a break before the relative or deaccenting of the relative. We think there is actually a complex interplay of factors concerning juncture, prosody, and the importance of focus or discourse salience; but this topic takes us well beyond the scope of this book. 3. We thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this issue. 4. By theta assignee, we mean a recipient of a primary or "referential" theta role such as agent or patient (see Rizzi 1990). 5. Assuming, as implied in the earlier discussion, that each independent thematic processing domain defines the readily available context for parsing operations, the parser may need a notation for indicating that two of three hosts are syntactically available within a domain. For example, given (23) the syntactic parser might need some way to indicate that the supervisor and the owner but not the car are permissible hosts for a who relative clause. 6. We are grateful to Gerry Altmann for pointing out the relevance of this example.

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Weinberg, A. 1993. Parameters in the theory of sentence processing: Minimal commitment theory goes East. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 22, 339 364. Williams, E. S. 1980. Predication. Linguistic Inquiry 11, 203 238. Williams, E. S. 1993. Thematic structure in syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Winograd, T. 1972. Understanding natural language. New York: Academic Press. Wittenburg, K. 1987. Extraposition from NP as anaphora. In G. J. Huck and A. E. Ojeda, eds., Discontinuous constituency. Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press.

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Page viii Appendix: Sentences Used in Experiments

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References

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Index

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Index A Abney, S., 3, 8, 11, 21, 27, 45, 49, 50, 88, 153 Active Filler Strategy, 9 Adams, B., 17, 25 Adjunct, 2 3, 22, 37, 46, 55, 76, 83, 93, 95, 169 identification of, 132 134 Adjunct clause, 43, 105 Adjunct extraction, 129 149, 152 matrix vs. embedded extraction bias 136 141 Adjunct predicate, 37, 40, 41, 93, 99 103, 107 127, 129, 152, 160, 168 crossed vs. nested interpretation, 101 103 gerundive, 111, 113, 117 118, 125 nonresultative, 37 39, 107 127 object-host preference, 110, 117, 125, 127 resultative, 37, 107 108, 153 theme interpretation, 110, 113, 119, 122, 126, 127 Adverbial clause, 53, 56, 60, 62, 67, 68 Adversative clause, 65 Altmann, G. T. M., 16, 37, 89, 91, 159 Ambiguity, 4 5, 50, 53 choice point, 5, 15 syntactic, 4, 5, 7, 11 temporary, 4, 8, 9 10, 14, 16, 20, 49, 57, 77, 84 85, 113 Ambiguity resolution, 6 Analysis alternative, 6, 16, 19 final, 11, 50, 76, 81 initial or preferred, 6, 9, 13, 17 18, 35, 50, 55, 56, 76, 80, 162 Appositives, 93 94 A Priori Plausibility Principle, 89 91 Argument, 13 14, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 43, 45, 94, 95 96, 160 external, 27, 39, 161 Argument Attachment, 26 Argument extraction, 130 Argument preference principle, 3, 21 22, 26, 153, 169 Aspectual information, 38, 118 Association, 4, 29, 31, 33, 34 35, 38, 41, 45, 53, 54, 93, 103 105, 107, 145, 155, 166, 167, 171 Attachment, 29, 31, 34, 43, 45, 54, 107 Attachment preferences, 21, 30. See also Structural preferences

Auditory comprehension difficulty task, 18 Australian languages 104 B Bader, M., 12, 18, 25, 27, 96 Barry, G., 145 Because clauses, 43, 53 55, 56, 57, 60, 62, 67, 68, 129, 152, 157, 162, 168, 171 Bermudéz, M., 72 Bever, T. G., 1, 9, 44, 65 66, 67, 88, 89, 122 Binding, 48 Blocking, 155 156 Blosfelds, M., 89 Bradley, D. C., 89 Bresnan, J., 1 Britt, M. A., 89 Broderick, K., 142 C Cairns, H. S., 87 Caplan, S., 66 Carlson, M., 4, 8, 11, 13, 20, 88, 89 Carpenter, P. A., 91, 157 Carreiras, M., 12, 30, 77, 78, 86 Carroll, J. M., 148 Carter, J., 97, 164 Case theory, 24 25, 26 Chapman, R. M., 87 Chomsky, N., 4, 26, 27, 105 Church, K., 44 45, 169 Cinque, G., 130 Clahsen, H., 48

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Clefts, 160 Click location studies, 148 Clifton, C., Jr. 4, 8, 11, 17, 20, 21, 25, 30, 38, 45, 49, 50, 59, 73, 78, 86, 88, 89, 110, 116, 117 118, 122, 123, 125, 153 Collins, C., 131 Commitment to analysis, 15, 18 Complement, 38, 41 Complement Principle, 97, 103 Complement vs. relative clause, 70 71 Comprehension difficulty. See Processing difficulty Computational load, 15 Conjunction, 35 37, 40 41, 43 Connine, C., 20 Constituent structure, 47 49 Construal, 2, 29, 34 35, 38, 40, 44, 56, 69, 76, 81, 95, 109, 110, 125, 151 152, 154, 162, 163, 167, 171 Construal Hypothesis, 3, 29, 40, 41, 44, 45, 49, 50, 53, 54, 56, 69, 73, 76, 77, 81 83, 86, 87, 92, 93, 97 98, 105, 110, 113, 127, 129, 152, 154, 165, 167 169 Construal Principle, 4, 41, 42, 54, 103, 152 Contextual appropriateness, 3 4 Context effects, 140 141 Conversational maxims. See Gricean maxims Corley, M. B., 17, 21, 72, 78, 92 Cowart, W., 35, 36 37, 87 Crain, S., 4, 19, 21, 22, 70, 89 92, 158, 159 Crocker, M., 15, 21, 25 26, 145 Cuetos, F., 12, 21, 30, 71 73, 77 78, 92, 155 Culicover, P., 40, 96 97, 99, 100, 102, 155 Cupples, L., 89 Current thematic processing domain, 32, 33, 34, 35, 41 42, 53, 69, 73 74, 75, 81, 83, 84, 88, 92, 93, 95, 97, 103 105, 151, 154, 164, 166, 167 168 D Déchaine, R.-M., 108 Deep-Structure Attachment, 26 Definite NP, 23, 90 Delayed binding, 44 Dell, G., 122 Dennis, Y., 16 Déprez, V., 131 Determiner, 30, 31, 72, 74, 75, 76, 90, 158 159 De Vincenzi, M., 9, 11, 73, 80 83, 92, 97 98, 135 Direct access mechanism, 115, 116 117, 126 Disambiguation, 5 6, 7, 11, 18, 47, 50, 81, 99

Di Sciullo, A. M., 155 Discourse appropriateness, 7, 17 Discourse context, 16, 32 Discourse entity, 23, 66, 74, 90, 157, 158, 159 Discourse information, 5, 13 14, 89, 159 Disruption of processing, 5, 6, 50. See also Processing difficulty D-theory, 44, 167 168 Dutch 12, 94 E Early Closure, 35, 72, 88, 151 Empty categories, 4, 27, 97, 129 130, 164 End-of-sentence "got-it" task, 59, 118 End-of-sentence grammaticality judgment task, 10, 11, 118 English, 2, 12, 30, 42, 67, 71 73, 74 80, 83, 86, 92, 93 94, 107, 156, 168 Epstein, S., 33 Epstein, W., 7, 22 Erteschik-Shir, N., 132 Extended projection, 27, 31, 33, 42, 48, 54, 73, 93 94, 105, 145 146, 165, 166 Extended Projection Principle, 27 Extended syntactic domains, 129, 146 149 Extraction domains, 33 Extragrammatical information, 8, 13 Extraposed relative clause, 32, 34, 40, 41, 43, 89, 93, 96 105, 168 Eye movement measurement, 11, 50, 79, 166 Eventive predicates, 142 145 F Feature attraction, 115, 126 Ferreira, F., 8, 11, 15, 17, 50, 89, 99, 116 Filler-gap processing, 142, 152 First-analysis preference for gaps, 130, 140 Fleck, M., 44, 167 Flores d'Arcais, G. B., 11 Focus, 66, 97, 101 103, 132, 142, 145, 159 160 Focus Constraint, 132 Fodor, J. A., 1, 88 Fodor, J. D., 4, 5, 9, 12, 15, 18, 154, 166 Ford, M., 1, 89 Forster, K. L., 48 Frauenfelder, U., 88, 89 Frazier, L., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 11, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 25, 27, 30, 38, 44, 48, 49, 50, 55, 56, 59, 66, 80, 88, 89, 98, 109, 110, 117 118, 122, 123, 125, 152 153, 154, 157, 166, 169, 170 Frequency, 16, 19, 21, 50, 72, 127, 156 157 Friederici. A. D., 12

Fully determinate phrase marker, 29, 41, 151, 167 Functional elements, 25 26 Functional projection, 27, 33

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G Gap-postulation, 89 Garden-pathing, 9, 19 20, 26, 43, 68, 81, 89, 110, 113, 151 absence of, 34, 35, 92, 115, 117, 125 Garden path theory, 8, 14 21, 23, 50, 163 Garnham, A., 16, 17, 37 Garnsey, S. M., 17, 19, 87, 89 Garrett, M. F., 1, 3, 88 Garrod, S., 17, 89 Generalized transformations, 105 German, 12, 27, 67, 94, 95 96, 164 165, 168 Gibson, E. A. F., 3, 6, 21, 80, 145, 153 Gilboy, E., 30, 72, 74 76, 79, 90 92 Gorrell, P., 89 Government-Binding Theory, 24 25 Grammatical knowledge, 1, 3 Grice, H. P., 74 Gricean maxims, 74, 75 76, 80, 92, 155 156, 159, 163, 164 of cooperativeness, 143 of manner or clarity, 74, 75 Grimshaw, J., 27, 33, 146 H Hale, K., 104 Head, 14, 18, 27 Head-final languages, 18, 94, 103 Head-initial languages, 103 105 Hemforth, B., 164 Henderson, J. M., 11, 17, 50, 99 Henstra, 37 Hickok, G., 145 High attachment, 30, 35, 38, 40, 43, 55, 60, 64 65, 71 72, 84 85, 86, 87, 92, 161 Hindi, 105 Hindle, D., 18, 44, 167 Holmes, V. M., 11, 50, 88 Hong. U., 48 How, 130, 132, 135 136, 137, 144 145, 147 Human sentence-processing mechanism, 2, 4, 8, 29 30, 129, 153, 168, 169 I Immediate interpretation, 65 67, 86, 94, 162, 164, 168 Immediate Interpretation Principle, 62, 94, 157, 168 Immediate memory, 7, 8, 15

limitations of, 4, 5, 21, 47 48 Indirect binding, 119, 122, 126 127 Indo-European languages, 104 Inoue, A., 5, 12, 15, 18 Interpretation, structural early closure, 10, 57, 61 62, 63, 64 65, 71, 78 late closure, 10, 57, 58, 61 62, 63, 64 65, 71, 75, 77, 78, 79, 90 minimal attachment, 10, 20, 71 nonminimal attachment, 10, 23 Interpretive domains, 49, 148 Interpretive Nesting Requirement, 99, 100 103 Interpretive preferences, 130, 142, 155 Interpretive principles, 3, 41, 42, 56, 92, 99, 105, 152 162, 164 Italian, 12, 73, 80 83, 92 J Jablon, A. D., 87 Japanese, 12, 105 Job, R., 73, 80 83, 92 Just, M. A., 91, 157 K Kaplan, R., 1, 70, 89 Kello, C., 17 Kennedy, A., 11, 120 Kimball, J., 1, 5, 8 9, 30, 109, 154 Konieczny, L., 164 Kroch, A., 130, 144 Kupin, J., 23 Kurtzman, H., 69 70, 89 L Language change, 93, 103 105 Language comprehension system, 13, 14 Language learning, 16 Language typology, 93, 103 105 Lasnik, H., 23, 130 Lasser, I., 12, 18, 25, 27, 96 Late Closure, 9, 18, 26, 30, 31, 35, 39, 40, 42, 46, 53, 54, 62, 69, 71 72, 74, 77, 80 81, 82 83, 86, 88, 97, 109, 110, 151, 153, 154, 169 virtual, 56 Lebeaux, D., 105, 168 Length effect, 53, 62, 63, 64, 97 Levin, B., 38 Lexical Criterion, 170 Lexical elements, 25, 33, 145

Lexical projection, 27 Li, Y., 33, 146 Liversedge, S. P., 17, 90 Logical Form, 48, 171 Logical interpretation, 48 Low attachment, 30, 39, 53, 56, 60, 64 65, 71, 86, 87, 92, 110, 118, 126, 152, 166 low attachment/association, 63, 82, 161 M McClelland, J. R., 16, 18, 20, 89 MacDonald, M. C., 4, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 27, 89, 122 McElree, B., 18, 122 McKoon, G., 122 Main assertion, 80, 159 Main clause vs. reduced relative, 12, 20, 42, 89 92 Maratsos, M., 1 2, 88 89

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Marcus, M., 1, 5, 44, 167 Marslen-Wilson, W. D., 4, 66 Maximal projection, 27, 32 May, R., 48 Mehler, J., 88, 89 Miller, G. A., 7 Minimal Attachment, 9, 17, 22, 24, 36, 46, 54, 83, 95, 110, 151, 153, 169 Minimal Chain Principle, 9, 12, 26, 34, 97, 135, 141, 161 Minimal Commitment Principle, 167 Minimalist Program, 27 Minimal Revisions Principle, 55, 62, 157, 162 Mitchell, D. C., 2, 11, 12, 17, 21, 25, 30, 49, 50, 71 73, 77 78, 92, 155 Modifiers, 22, 23, 26, 32, 80 81, 83, 84, 90, 105, 161, 164 165 Modularity, 13 14, 17, 163 Modules of the parser, 3, 8, 13, 26 constituent structure module, 13 thematic processor, 13 Morris, R., 4 Movement, 26 Moving-window display, 59, 120, 136 Munn, A. B., 36 Murray, W. S., 11, 17, 90, 120 N Nagai, N., 12 Nakajima, H., 99 100 Ni, W., 19 Nicol, J., 48, 122 No-Bookkeeping Constraint, 14, 15 Nonminimal Attachment, 151 Nonprimary phrases, interpretation of, 96 105 Nonprimary relations, 35, 41, 42, 43, 46 47, 49 50, 55, 88, 93, 109, 125, 133, 152 155, 163, 167, 171 Nonstructural factors, 19, 29, 31, 37, 40, 41, 54, 56, 69, 97 98, 110, 151, 163 Normative preferences, 16 NP-movement, 48 NP-trace, 27 O O'Regan, J. K., 88 P Parsimony Principle, 89 91, 159 Parsing principles, structural, 1, 2, 8, 9, 42, 50, 77, 113, 117, 125, 170 Pearlmutter, N. J., 4, 16, 18, 19, 20, 27, 89

Perfetti, C. A., 17, 44, 89, 168 Philip, B., 142, 145 Pickering, M., 145 Pieces parser, 168 Plausibility, 3 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 16, 57, 97 Portner, P., 23, 90 PP-attachment, 12, 17, 20, 22 23, 42, 81, 153 Pragmatics, 13, 32, 35, 50 51, 57, 157, 161 Predicate Opacity Condition, 119 Predicate Proximity Principle, 21, 80 Predication, 66, 107, 126 127, 160, 164 Predication theory, 27 Prepositions con, 81 82, 92 de, 72, 92 di, 81 82 non-theta-assigning, 73, 82, 92 of, 72, 73, 81, 92, 166 theta-assigning, 30, 73, 82, 92 with, 73, 81, 92 Presuppositions, 21, 22, 55, 90, 144, 158 presupposition violations, 23, 90 Primary relations, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45 47, 49, 51, 54, 56, 76, 83, 85, 88, 89, 95, 107, 125, 133 134, 145, 146, 152 153, 155, 163, 167, 170 171 Principle of Incremental Comprehension, 26 Pritchett, B. L., 3, 15, 21, 27, 153 PRO, 27 pro, 12, 27 Probabilistic constraints, 16, 20 Probe-recognition study, 123 125 Processing complexity, 26, 38, 45, 57, 126, 162 asymmetries in, 14 15, 21, 49, 50 51, 56 Processing difficulty, 1, 9, 10, 60, 115, 122 Processing models constrained parallel, 6, 7 Constraint Satisfaction, 16 20, 21, 27 delay, 5 6 lexically based, 18 licensing, 19, 25 parallel, 5, 6, 14 15, 21, 89, 91 principle-based, 19, 26 27 sausage machine, 166 serial, 5, 6, 7, 14 15, 21, 89, 91 Prosody, 48, 99, 132, 164

Pseudoattachment, 44, 169 Q Quantifier, 19 Quantifier raising, 48 Quantifier scope, 66 Questionnaire study, 63, 74, 77, 78, 93, 100, 136 R Radó, J., 48 Randall, J., 59, 118 Rapoport, T., 38, 45, 108, 110, 117 118, 122, 123, 125 Ratcliff, R., 122

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Rayner, K., 4, 8, 11, 13, 17, 20, 48, 50, 66, 88, 89, 98, 110, 153, 157, 170 Reanalysis, 9, 13, 15, 18, 20, 39, 48, 62, 67, 81, 84, 87, 95, 110, 118, 126, 140, 153, 161 absence of, 125 Recency Principle, 80 Reduced relative clause, 19. See also Main clause vs. reduced relative Referentiality, 31, 73, 75, 91, 158 159 Referentiality Principle, 74, 75 76, 91 92, 158 159 Referential Success Principle, 89 92, 159 Reflexives, 35 36, 48 Relative Clause Construal Hypothesis, 31 32 Relative clauses, 30, 34 35, 40, 69, 88 92, 129, 153 with complex heads, 29, 41, 43, 45, 69, 71 88, 89, 147, 154, 159 restrictive, 93 94, 158, 160 Relativized Minimality Condition, 99 Relativized Relevance Principle, 80 Resonance. See Feature attraction Revision. See Reanalysis Riesbeck, C. K., 2 Right Association, 30, 109, 154 Rizzi, L., 95, 99, 131 Roberts, C., 158 Rochemont, M., 40, 96 97, 99, 100, 102, 155 Romance languages, 161 Ronat, M., 132 Rooth, M., 18 Rullman, H., 131 Russian, 95 96 S Saito, M., 130 Schank, R., 2 Scheepers, C., 164 Schriefers, H., 12 Scope of negation, 54 55, 67, 162 Scope principle, 54 Secondary predication, 40 41, 43, 83, 107. See also Adjunct predicate object predication, 108, 112, 115, 127 subject predication, 108, 115, 127 Sedivy, J., 17, 23 Segui, J., 88, 89 Seidenberg, M. S., 4, 16, 18, 19, 27, 89

Self-paced reading, 11, 20, 23, 49, 77, 78, 79, 84, 86, 111, 115, 120, 134, 136, 138 Selkirk, E., 142 Semantic disambiguation, 84, 115, 129 Semantic influence, 110 Semantic information 8, 11, 32, 35, 38, 39, 44, 46, 50 51, 54, 84, 89, 97, 168 Semantic interpretation, 7, 14, 15, 29, 55, 67, 161 Semantic requirement of modification, 69, 83 86, 92 Sentence comprehension, 1 2, 3, 7, 13 14 Sentence matching task, 48 Shiner, S., 70, 89 Sisterhood, 5, 13 14, 27, 40, 81 Smith, C., 23 Sonnenstuhl-Henning, I., 48 Sopena, J. M., 72, 79 Spanish, 12, 30, 71 73, 74 80, 83, 92, 156 Speas, M., 23, 27 Speed-accuracy trade-off task, 18 Speer, S., 8, 11, 21, 45, 49, 50, 153 Sperber, D., 74 Spivey-Knowlton, M., 17, 23 Srivastav, V., 105 Steedman, M., 4, 16, 21, 22, 70, 89 92, 158, 159 Stevenson, B., 48 Stowe, L., 88 Stowell, T., 24 Structural indeterminacy, 2, 35, 38, 55 56, 110, 163, 167 168 Structural information, 29, 31, 41, 42, 56, 88, 152 Structural parsing theories, 17, 21. See also Processing models Structural preferences, 16, 19 20, 40, 44, 47, 49, 53 54, 88, 118, 125, 151, 152 153, 169 absence of, 110, 127 Structural underspecification. See Association, Structural indeterminacy Subcategorization, 17, 20 Subject-adjunct sentences, 38 Subject-predicate binding, 107, 110, 126 127 Subject-predicate relation, 29, 41 Swinney, D., 48, 122 Szabolcsi, A., 131 T Tanenhaus, M. K., 2, 4, 16, 17, 19, 21, 87, 89, 145, 148 Taraban, R., 16, 18, 20, 89 Temporal adverbial, 56, 57, 62, 63 Thematic constraint, 39, 40 Thematic interpretation, 48

Thematic processing domain, 31, 33, 48 49, 56, 67 68, 96, 145, 147 149 Thematic relations, 16 Thematic role, 133, 135 Theta-assigner, 13 14, 31, 32, 33, 42, 48, 54, 56, 85, 93 94, 95, 145, 146, 147 148, 165 166, 168 Theta Criterion, 21

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Theta theory, 24 25 Top-down postulation of nodes, 2, 25, 27 Townsend, 65 66, 67, 89 Traces, 4, 27, 161 of adjuncts, 129 132, 145, 148 Trueswell, J. C., 4, 16, 17, 19, 21 Tuning account, 72 Tunnstall, S., 159 Tyler, L. K., 4, 66 V Vallduvi, E., 160 W Wanner, E., 1 2, 2, 70, 88 89 Waters, G. S., 66 Weak islands, 130 131 When, 132, 135 136, 137 Where, 132, 135 136, 137 wh-movement, 48 wh-trace, 27 Why, 131, 132, 142 Weinberg, A., 44, 169 Williams, E., 27, 39, 40, 48, 119, 131, 155 Wilson, D., 74 Winograd, T., 2 Wittenburg, K., 159 World knowledge, 5, 13 14, 91, 159 X X' structure, 48 X' theory, 24 25, 27

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