TY - JOUR
T1 - The influence of contextual contrast on syntactic processing
T2 - Evidence for strong-interaction in sentence comprehension
AU - Grodner, Daniel
AU - Gibson, Edward
AU - Watson, Duane
N1 - Funding Information:
We are indebted to Neal Pearlmutter, Lyn Frazier, Julie Sedivy, three anonymous reviewers, and the audience at the 14th annual CUNY conference on human sentence processing for helpful comments on previous presentations of this work. This work was supported in part by a grant to the first author from the National Institutes of Health (F32 MH65837-01).
PY - 2005/4
Y1 - 2005/4
N2 - The present study compares the processing of unambiguous restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses (RCs) within both a null context and a supportive discourse using a self-paced reading methodology. Individuals read restrictive RCs more slowly than non-restrictive RCs in a null context, but processed restrictive RCs faster than non-restrictive RCs in supportive context, resulting in an interaction between context and RC type. These results provide evidence for two theoretical points. First, principles analogous to those in referential theory [Altmann G. T. M., & Steedman, M. (1988). Interaction with context during human sentence processing. Cognition, 30, 191-238; Crain, S., & Steedman, M. (1985). On not being led up the garden path: The use of context by the psychological parser. In D. Dowty, L. Karttunnen, A. Zwicky (Eds.), Natural language parsing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press] apply not only in resolving ambiguity but also in processing unambiguous sentences. Second, the discourse context can guide and facilitate interpretive processing. This result suggests that intrasentential factors such as syntax are not autonomous from contextual processing, contrary to the modularity hypothesis [Fodor, J. A. (1983). Modularity of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press].
AB - The present study compares the processing of unambiguous restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses (RCs) within both a null context and a supportive discourse using a self-paced reading methodology. Individuals read restrictive RCs more slowly than non-restrictive RCs in a null context, but processed restrictive RCs faster than non-restrictive RCs in supportive context, resulting in an interaction between context and RC type. These results provide evidence for two theoretical points. First, principles analogous to those in referential theory [Altmann G. T. M., & Steedman, M. (1988). Interaction with context during human sentence processing. Cognition, 30, 191-238; Crain, S., & Steedman, M. (1985). On not being led up the garden path: The use of context by the psychological parser. In D. Dowty, L. Karttunnen, A. Zwicky (Eds.), Natural language parsing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press] apply not only in resolving ambiguity but also in processing unambiguous sentences. Second, the discourse context can guide and facilitate interpretive processing. This result suggests that intrasentential factors such as syntax are not autonomous from contextual processing, contrary to the modularity hypothesis [Fodor, J. A. (1983). Modularity of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press].
KW - Discourse
KW - Modularity
KW - Sentence processing
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2004.01.007
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2004.01.007
M3 - Article
C2 - 15788160
AN - SCOPUS:15444363400
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 95
SP - 275
EP - 296
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
IS - 3
ER -