The misinterpretation of noncanonical sentences
The misinterpretation of noncanonical sentences
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DOI：
10.1016/s0010-0285(03)00005-7
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发表时间：
2003-09-01
影响因子：
2.6
通讯作者：
Ferreira, F
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Ferreira, F
语言理解的研究主要集中在解决句法歧义，大多数研究采用花园路径句子来确定系统的偏好，并评估其使用的非句法源信息。一个被忽视的话题是如何处理句法上具有挑战性但本质上明确的句子，包括被动句和宾语分裂句，这些句子需要以非典型顺序分配主题角色。这里描述的三个实验测试了句子同时被算法和语法处理的想法。句子通过听觉呈现，参与者的任务是识别句子中的主题角色（例如，（谁是凶手？）第一个实验表明，被动句经常被系统地误解，特别是当它们表达不可信的想法时。第二个结果表明，句法形式的表面频率并不决定加工的难易程度，因为主动句和主语切分同样容易理解，尽管后者很少见。第三个实验比较了主语和宾语分裂的处理，结果表明，他们是类似的主动和被动，分别，再次，尽管很少出现在英语中的任何类型的分裂。这三个实验的结果表明，一个全面的语言理解理论必须假设，简单的处理过程中使用的语法算法，除了（有时可能是代替）语法算法。此外，实验支持的想法，语言处理往往是基于浅层处理，产生一个仅仅是“足够好”，而不是一个详细的语言表达的话语的意义。(C)2003 Elsevier Science（美国）。All rights reserved.
Research on language comprehension has focused on the resolution of syntactic ambiguities, and most studies have employed garden-path sentences to determine the system's preferences and to assess its use of nonsyntactic sources information. A topic that has been neglected is how syntactically challenging but essentially unambiguous sentences are processed, including passives and object-clefts-sentences that require thematic roles to be assigned in an atypical order. The three experiments described here tested the idea that sentences are processed both algorithmically and heuristically. Sentences were presented aurally and the participants' task was to identify the thematic roles in the sentence (e.g., Who was the do-er?). The first experiment demonstrates that passives are frequently and systematically misinterpreted, especially when they express implausible ideas. The second shows that the surface frequency of a syntactic form does not determine ease of processing, as active sentences and subject-clefts were comprehended equally easily despite the rareness of the latter type. The third experiment compares the processing of subject- and object-clefts, and the results show that they are similar to actives and passives, respectively, again despite the infrequent occurrence in English of any type of cleft. The results of the three experiments suggest that a comprehensive theory of language comprehension must assume that simple processing heuristics are used during processing in addition to (and perhaps sometimes instead of) syntactic algorithms. Moreover, the experiments support the idea that language processing is often based on shallow processing, yielding a merely "good enough" rather than a detailed linguistic representation of an utterance's meaning. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.