The resolution of local syntactic ambiguity by the human sentence processing mechanism

Abstract

The resolution of local syntactic ambiguity by the Human Sentence Processing Mechanism is a topic which has provoked considerable interest in recent years. At issue is whether such ambiguities are resolved on the basis of syntactic information alone (cf. Minimal Attachment Frazier, 1979), or whether they are resolved on some other basis. Crain & Steedman (1982) suggest that the resolution process is governed not by Minimal Attachment but instead by whether or not a referring expression provides sufficient information with which to identify a unique referent. Such an approach relies on the provision of adequate contextual information, something which has been lacking in experiments which have been claimed to support Minimal Attachment. In this paper I shall consider a number of such experiments, and the different patterns of results which emerge once contextual information is provided. Although the importance of contextual information will be stressed, I shall briefly consider reasons why parsing preferences arise in the absence of any explicit prior context. The conclusion is that computational models of syntactic ambiguity resolution which are based on evidence which has ignored contextual considerations are models of something other than natural language processing.