Semantic constraints and judged preference for interpretations of ambiguous sentences

Abstract

It is proposed that the degree of sensibleness of sentences is determined by semantic constraints which may be more or less satisfied. Such continuous semantic constraints were examined in two experiments in which subjects judged the likelihood of obtaining each of the interpretations of ambiguous sentences. The sentences were factorially generated by independently varying the degree to which semantic constraints for each interpretation were satisfied. In one experiment, the semantic constraints were manipulated by varying critical words within the ambiguous sentence; in the other experiment, a preceding context sentence was used. The results of both experiments supported the hypotheses that the judged likelihood was a direct function of the relative sensibleness of the interpretations, that semantic constraints determined the degree of sensibleness of each interpretation, and that these semantic constraints are continuous restrictions which are independent of each other and stable from sentence to sentence in which they occur. © 1978 Psychonomic Society, Inc.