PSYC3311 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Phrase Structure Rules, Lexical Item, Parse Tree
Week 9 lec 2
Minimal attachment explains the difficulty with garden-path sentences. E.g., "The horse raced
past the barn" is parsed with a simple structure NP+VP with PP attached. So, when "fell" comes
along it doesn't meaningfully fit into this sentence structure. The phrase structure of the
unreduced sentence "The horse that was raced past the barn fell" is quite complex (with a
complement and auxiliary needing to be incorporated). So, when "that was" is left out, it is even
harder to construct such a complex phrase marker and the simple structure is preferred (leading to
confusion when "fell" is presented).
Doubly embedded sentences are also explained by minimal attachment:
THE ACTRESS, THE POLITICIAN, MY MOTHER MET LOVED DIED
In the first processing window there is a chain of NPs. The only way to package them is as a list
(as in THE ACTRESS, THE POLITICIAN, MY MOTHER, AND HER SECOND HUSBAND
WERE ALL BLOWN UP).
If the first NP was made longer, it would be processed as a separate package hence potentially
avoiding a list of three NPs. Does this mean that it would be easier to follow the sentence?
Counterintuitive, but possibly true – the example below is possibly a bit easier to understand than
the shorter version despite having more words to process.
THE FAMOUS FILM ACTRESS FROM THE 1950s, THE POLITICIAN MY MOTHER MET
WAS VERY MUCH IN LOVE WITH DIED.
If doubly embedded sentences are hard to process because the first "package" of words is
processed as a string of noun phrases, such sentences with only six words should be processed in
the single window and hence be easy to process. Not true: RATS CATS DOGS CHASE HUNT
SQUEAL
So, even within a single window, the listing of NPs and verbs does not provide a simple way of
sensibly parsing the sentence.
The reason why *I FIGURED WHAT THE STORY WAS ABOUT OUT could also potentially
be given in terms of FIGURE and OUT being processed in different packages. However, even
when there are only 6 words, the particle cannot be moved to the end (e.g., *I FIGURED WHAT
WE NEEDED OUT). So it seems that when the rightmost attachment (Kimball’s idea) fails (i.e.,
WAS OUT and NEEDED OUT are not lexical items), processing does not default to the
attachment of the particle to the higher verb (even though FIGURE OUT exists as a lexical item).
Turning to the potentially ambiguous sentence SHE WROTE THAT JOHN CAME
YESTERDAY, adding the adverb (YESTERDAY) to the VP are both simple attachments. That
she wrote yesterday or that john came yesterday. Most ppl go w rightmost attachment. But w
minimal attachment, there’s no choice and u would just attach it to the verb ‘came’.
Why is the lower attachment preferred? Frazier & Fodor concede that Right Association is
brought into play when Minimal Attachment can't adjudicate.
What information is used to decide what syntactic structure to give the package being
processed? Are there phrase structure rules based purely on syntactic information as is central
to surface structure parsing models? Presumably, but also information contained within the
lexical items. This will be explored in next week's tutorial class.
S → NP VP. Do u just blindly follow the rules.
^ important, but also info found in lexical items themselves
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