Comparing Good-Enough Parsing Effects in Written and Spoken Sentences

The objective of this thesis is to provide a comparison of good-enough parsing effects in written and spoken sentences. The written portion of the experiment functions as a close replication of the effect of lingering misinterpretation of garden-path sentences found in Christianson et al (2001) and the effect of the frequent misinterpretation of implausible passive sentences found in Ferreira & Stacey (2000). In an online experiment with writ- ten and spoken content, participants read and heard garden path and implausible passive sentences and were asked to answer comprehension questions about them. Effects of good-enough parsing were found for both target sentence types. No significant effect of mode of presentation was detected, but interactions of mode of presentation and control conditions of the sentences turned out to be significant. It can be concluded that the re- plication effort was successful, but the comparison of good-enough parsing effects for written and spoken...Show moreThe objective of this thesis is to provide a comparison of good-enough parsing effects in written and spoken sentences. The written portion of the experiment functions as a close replication of the effect of lingering misinterpretation of garden-path sentences found in Christianson et al (2001) and the effect of the frequent misinterpretation of implausible passive sentences found in Ferreira & Stacey (2000). In an online experiment with writ- ten and spoken content, participants read and heard garden path and implausible passive sentences and were asked to answer comprehension questions about them. Effects of good-enough parsing were found for both target sentence types. No significant effect of mode of presentation was detected, but interactions of mode of presentation and control conditions of the sentences turned out to be significant. It can be concluded that the re- plication effort was successful, but the comparison of good-enough parsing effects for written and spoken sentences did not deliver clear-cut results.Show less

Leiden University Student Repository

Documents

In Collections

Comparing Good-Enough Parsing Effects in Written and Spoken Sentences