WHY ARE WORDS HARD TO UNDERSTAND?
Initial research showed us that our brain had a hard time understanding words that were miss-said, like hack instead of hat. But later, Gaskell et al found that people are actually faster for natural changes than they are for unnatural changes (e.g., pime bench would be interpreted as pine bench because the m in pime seems to be preparatory for the b in bench).
WHY ARE SENTENCES HARD?
He gave the example of the sentence "Time flies like an arrow" and how this particular sentence could have many different meanings.
Sentence Processing
To understand sentence processing we need to understand about syntax and grammar. Grammar refers to a set of rules that describe the legal sentences that can be constructed in a language. Proscriptive grammar is telling a person what to do and descriptive grammar is a description of what grammar is being used.
Syntax & Semantics
"The psychologist slept fitfully, dreaming new ideas." or "Fitfully the slept new, ideas dreaming psychologist" or The new ideas slept fitfully, dreaming a psychologist" show that sentences can have grammar, it can have semantic meaning, it can have both or it can have neither.
WORD CHAIN GRAMMARS
We have a tendency to select grammatical sentences word by word and we can fill in blanks because there are certain words we would expect to be next. For example, "the boy hit the ____ with the bat" we would usually say "ball" but it could be any number of other things. When we select a word to start a sentence we now have a specific path we have to follow because some words don't pair up such as "I" and "are." We know that those two words don't go together but instead we would pair "I" with "am."
Dependencies
The basic idea behind word chain grammar and dependencies is that the verbs must agree; "either" implies "or," "at" implies a noun. Dependencies like these can be embedded in each other. When it comes down to it, word chain grammars don't work to explain sentence structure because they can be continually embedded in each other.
PHRASE STRUCTURE GRAMMAR
These use hierarchical organization and not linear organization. They also specify a limited number of sentence parts and a limited number of ways the parts can be combined. So how do we get embeddedness? Basically the words themselves have meaning imbedded in them in this type of grammar. What cues does the parser use to decide which phrase structures are which?
Cues
There are four specific cues that we use to decide phrase structures; key words, word order, context, and principle of minimal attachment.
Phrase Structure Ambiguities
Phrase structures can account for (some) ambiguities of language. Ambiguity is basically the idea that interpretation of a phrase can be one way or another and it is not clear exactly which way is the "correct" way. Our top-down expectations are what make us hear a sentence one way or another.
Initial research showed us that our brain had a hard time understanding words that were miss-said, like hack instead of hat. But later, Gaskell et al found that people are actually faster for natural changes than they are for unnatural changes (e.g., pime bench would be interpreted as pine bench because the m in pime seems to be preparatory for the b in bench).
WHY ARE SENTENCES HARD?
He gave the example of the sentence "Time flies like an arrow" and how this particular sentence could have many different meanings.
Sentence Processing
To understand sentence processing we need to understand about syntax and grammar. Grammar refers to a set of rules that describe the legal sentences that can be constructed in a language. Proscriptive grammar is telling a person what to do and descriptive grammar is a description of what grammar is being used.
Syntax & Semantics
"The psychologist slept fitfully, dreaming new ideas." or "Fitfully the slept new, ideas dreaming psychologist" or The new ideas slept fitfully, dreaming a psychologist" show that sentences can have grammar, it can have semantic meaning, it can have both or it can have neither.
WORD CHAIN GRAMMARS
We have a tendency to select grammatical sentences word by word and we can fill in blanks because there are certain words we would expect to be next. For example, "the boy hit the ____ with the bat" we would usually say "ball" but it could be any number of other things. When we select a word to start a sentence we now have a specific path we have to follow because some words don't pair up such as "I" and "are." We know that those two words don't go together but instead we would pair "I" with "am."
Dependencies
The basic idea behind word chain grammar and dependencies is that the verbs must agree; "either" implies "or," "at" implies a noun. Dependencies like these can be embedded in each other. When it comes down to it, word chain grammars don't work to explain sentence structure because they can be continually embedded in each other.
PHRASE STRUCTURE GRAMMAR
These use hierarchical organization and not linear organization. They also specify a limited number of sentence parts and a limited number of ways the parts can be combined. So how do we get embeddedness? Basically the words themselves have meaning imbedded in them in this type of grammar. What cues does the parser use to decide which phrase structures are which?
Cues
There are four specific cues that we use to decide phrase structures; key words, word order, context, and principle of minimal attachment.
Phrase Structure Ambiguities
Phrase structures can account for (some) ambiguities of language. Ambiguity is basically the idea that interpretation of a phrase can be one way or another and it is not clear exactly which way is the "correct" way. Our top-down expectations are what make us hear a sentence one way or another.
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