A Stu d y on Late Closu re in Sp an ish : Prin cip le-g rou n d ed v s. Freq u en cy-b ased Accou n...

A Study on Late Closure in Sp an ish

Princip le-grounded v s Freq uency-based

Accounts of Attachm ent Preferences

JoseAcirc M Igoa

Universidad AutoAcirc noma de Madrid Madrid Spain

Manuel Carreiras and Enrique Meseguer

Universidad de La Laguna Tenerife Spain

A much-debated issue in current research on sentence parsing concerns the resolution of

attachment ambiguities Parsing theories differ on the procedures used to guide on-line

attachment decisions principle-grounded theories (eg garden-path construal) propose

universal principles that minimize processing load frequency-based accounts (such as

linguistic tuning) claim that attachment decisions are shaped by readersrsquo previous experience

with their particular language lexically based models in turn assert that attachment choices

are determined by the properties of individual lexical items in the sentence This paper

reports six studies on late closure in the resolution of attachment ambiguities in Spanish

a questionnaire study on attachment preferences and three self-paced reading experiments

where ambiguous PPs could be attached as arguments of two VP-hosts in NPplusmn VP1plusmn NPplusmn

VP2plusmn PP structures The results show a clear preference towards low attachment (late

closure) thus supporting principle-grounded theories In addition two corpus studies

were carried out to obtain records of relative frequencies of the attachment choices involved

in the experiments A coarse-grained measure revealed that in accordance with linguistic

tuning low-attachment structures are more common in Spanish NPplusmn VP1plusmn NPplusmn VP2plusmn PP

sentences However a reg ne-grained count showed that low-attachment preferences cannot

be explained by arguing that the specireg c verbs positioned lower on the tree (VP2) are more

likely to take an extra argument than those located at a higher position (VP1) as lexical

models would assume

When reading a text the reader is faced with many decisions that have to be made rather

quickly Some of these decisions concern the syntactic structure of the input messages

THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 1998 51A (3) 561plusmn 592

Requests for reprints should be sent to JoseAcirc M Igoa Departamento de PsicologotildeAcirc a BaAcirc sica Facultad de

PsicologotildeAcirc a Universidad AutoAcirc noma de Madrid Campus de Cantoblanco E-28049 Madrid Spain E-mail

josemanueligoauames

This work was partially supported by grants nos PB96plusmn 1021 and PB96plusmn 1048 from the Spanish Ministry of

Education

We wish to thank Don Mitchell and two anonymous reviewers for their many helpful comments and sugges-

tions as well as Rosa SaAcirc nchez-Casas for helping us with the questionnair e study at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili

q 1998 The Experimental Psychology Society

particularly how the words identireg ed in the string should be labelled and grouped together

in phrases and how each incoming phrase should be attached to the fragment of the

sentence that has been previously parsed A major concern of psycholinguistic research

on sentence parsing is to reg nd out the grounds on which attachment decisions are made and

whether or not there are general procedures for carrying out this task T he empirical

literature on attachment decisions in parsing has shown that readers express consistent

interpretation preferences when they come across a sentence that contains more than one

possible attachment site for a given phrase Such sentences create local syntactic ambi-

guities that the reader must overcome in order to provide a sensible interpretation of the

message However such local ambiguities very seldom disrupt the interpretation processes

in reading which entails either that readers keep track of all possible parses simultaneously

and subsequently choose one of them or that they are initially biased towards one of the

available parses of the sentence How is this accomplished

Some theories of sentence parsing claim that attachment ambiguities are resolved

through the application of a reg xed and universal set of parsing strategies or principles

that favour those choices that minimize the processing load of the parser T his is what we

call the principle-grounded accounts of sentence parsing On this account when building

the phrase structure of the sentence the parser operates by following structurally moti-

vated principles that favour those structures that show the simplest geometry thereby

ignoring in principle any constraints that may stem from other sources of information

such as the discourse context the properties of individual lexical items in the sentence or

the frequency of occurrence of the alternative parses in the language of the input

Strategies such as ``minimal attachmentrsquo rsquo and ``late closurersquo rsquo have been proposed by

principle-grounded theories like the Garden-path T heory of human parsing (Frazier

1987 Rayner Carlson amp Frazier 1983) and to a more limited extent by the recently

launched Construal T heory (Frazier amp Clifton 1996 Gilboy Sopena Clifton amp Frazier

1995)

A great deal of research has been devoted to testing the universality of these parsing

strategies and more importantly to exploring the constraints under which they operate

As a consequence the claims of the garden-path and construal theories have been criti-

cized on two different grounds reg rst it is far from clear that minimal attachment and late

closure apply across the boardETH that is in all languages that have been examined so far

and irrespective of nonsyntactic constraints such as the ones listed above second the

reasons why readers tend to comply with these strategies might not be those envisaged by

their proponents (ie computational efreg ciency) but quite different reasons such as the

readerrsquo s past experience with the syntactic structures of his her own language (Cuetos

Mitchell amp Corley 1996 Mitchell amp Cuetos 1991) the preference for syntactic frames

that are most commonly associated with the heads of phrases or with the predicates of

sentences (Ford Bresnan amp Kaplan 1982) or the constraints given by the pragmatic

presuppositions of the previous discourse or by the readerrsquos world knowledge

T his criticism has led to the two alternative theoretical proposals to the garden-path

construal theories that are examined in this paper One is the linguistic tuning hypothesis

which claims that parsing strategies are selected for use on the basis of the readerrsquos

previous contact with the language (Cuetos Mitchell amp Corley 1996 Mitchell amp Cuetos

1991) On this account readers will not necessarily favour the computationally simplest

562 IGOA CARREIRAS MESEGUER

parse of those currently available but rather the structure that is more commonly

encountered in his or her language in comparative terms Obviously the most frequent

structure may at the same time be the computationally simplest one thus the tuning

hypothesis and the garden-path construal theory may provide the same predictions for

certain kinds of structures In fact it might be argued that less burdensome structures

from the point of view of language production will tend to be more frequent across the

language and hence preferred by readers to other more complex and less frequent

parses

T he other proposal belongs to the lexically grounded theories of parsing (Ford Bresnan

amp Kaplan 1982 MacDonald Pearlmutter amp Seidenberg 1994a 1994b Taraban amp

McClelland 1988 Trueswell amp Tanenhaus 1994) which claim that attachment choices

are made on the basis of constraints that are set by lexical heads of phrases particularly by

verbs According to lexically grounded theories individual lexical items that are asso-

ciated with more than one syntactic structure may in fact show a preference towards any

one of these alternative structures T his may show up in terms of the frequency of usage

of certain lexically motivated syntactic frames Verb subcategorization information (ie

argument structure) and verb thematic role information are two cases in point Verbs

having more than one argument structure often show an asymmetry in the use of their

various argument structures T herefore attachment preferences that comply with parsing

strategies might be explained by an underlying preference towards the most commonly

employed argument structure of verbs Similarly thematic information can provide

strong constraints on syntactic ambiguity In this case attachment choices might be a

by-product of decisions involving a semantic reg t between a given phrase and the thematic

role with which it is assigned

Lexically grounded theories of parsing belong to the broader class of ``constraint-

satisfactionrsquo rsquo models of human sentence processing (Bates amp MacWhinney 1989

MacDonald 1994 Spivey-Knowlton Trueswell amp Tanenhaus 1993 Trueswell

Tanenhaus amp Kello 1993) In contrast to principle-grounded accounts of parsing which

sharply distinguish between an initial stage in which parsing decisions are exclusively

based on structural information and a later stage where nonstructural factors come into

play constraint-satisfaction models assume that multiple sources of information (struc-

tural lexical pragmatic and contextual) may be partially and simultaneously activated

with varying degrees of strength and may contribute to the resolution of syntactic

ambiguities from initial processing stages However the most representative authors of

this approach also claim that constraints on syntactic ambiguity resolution are priority

ranked in such a way that lexical information can take precedence over other constraints

In other words syntactic and semantic information that is accessed when a word is

recognized provides many of the constraints the parser uses to select among the syntactic

choices available at a given moment

Generally speaking principle-grounded accounts of sentence parsing are thus con-

fronted with an alternative account based on the frequency of use of the syntactic struc-

tures encountered by the reader However the tuning hypothesis and the lexically

grounded models differ in the source of constraints that govern the parsing process

whereas the former claims that the constraints are set at the level of the surface syntactic

representation of sentences the latter state that the constraints are set at the level of

LATE CLOSURE IN SPANISH 563

lexical representations T hus the linguistic tuning model sides with the principle-

grounded accounts in that both claim that the initial attachment decisions readers and

listeners make during sentence comprehension are based on the conreg guration of the

phrase structure marker of the sentence as a whole regardless of the kind of constituents

to be attached and the properties of the individual lexical items involved Lexical infor-

mation is used at this stage only to determine the syntactic category of words which is

necessary to build the phrase structure marker of the sentence However other sources of

lexical or thematic information particularly the argument structure of verbs or the

thematic requirements of the heads of phrases are only used to reject or conreg rm the

initial analysis carried out on the basis of purely structural information and to direct

reanalysis processes (Clifton Frazier amp Connine 1984 Mitchell 1987)

T he aim of this paper is to report some evidence about the use of the Late Closure

principle in Spanish and to analyse this evidence against the background of principle-

motivated and frequency-based models of sentence parsing T he late closure strategy has

been one of the most extensively studied parsing principles on a cross-linguistic basis

(Brysbaert amp Mitchell 1996 Carreiras 1992 1995 Carreiras amp Clifton 1993 Cuetos amp

Mitchell 1988 De Vincenzi amp Job 1993 1995 Gilboy Sopena Clifton amp Frazier 1995

Mitchell Cuetos amp Zagar 1990) T he Late Closure principle states that incoming items

(ie words or phrases) should be attached to the clause or phrase currently being

processed (Frazier 1987) and it has been shown to apply to different constructions

such as those of the examples in (1) among others

(1) (a) While Mary was mending the sock fell off her lap

(b) Tom said Bill will give a lecture yesterday

(c) T he journalist interviewed the daughter of the salesman who had had the

accident with her classmates

In Example 1a Late Closure forces the attachment of the NP the sock as direct object of

the VP was mending instead of as subject of the main clause which results in a garden-

path effect when the reader reg nds that the subject of the main verb fell appears to be

missing Similarly following Late Closure in Example 1b drives the reader to attach the

adverb yesterday wrongly as a modireg er of the VP will giv e Finally the RC who had had the

accident in Example 1c can be attached to either of the two NPs of the previous complex

NP the daughter of the salesman In this case Late Closure would predict attachment of the

RC to the most recent NP (the salesman) which would in turn create a garden-path effect

when reading the continuation of the sentence (with her classmates) as this continuation is

only compatible with the RC having been attached to the more distant NP (the daughter)

As has been repeatedly reported in the literature the most consistent evidence in favour

of Late Closure comes from constructions in which a noun phrase (or an adverbial

phrase) is attached to a VP as in Examples 1a and 1b T his attested preference however

has been explained on different grounds by the different models mentioned earlier T hus

for the garden-path model the LC preference stems from the application of a universal

cognitive principle on the surface phrase marker of the sentence In contrast frequency-

based models appeal either to the predominance of late closure sentences in the language

(the tuning hypothesisETH see Cuetos Mitchell amp Corley 1996) or to the relative frequency


of coplusmn occurrence of certain VPplusmn NP or VPplusmn AdvP sequences (lexically based modelsETH see

Juliano amp Tanenhaus 1993)

On the other hand decisions involving the attachment of constituents to NPs (as in

Example 1c) do not follow a consistent pattern particularly when it comes to cross-

linguistic comparisons (Cuetos amp Mitchell 1988 Carreiras 1992 Carreiras amp Clifton

1993 Hemforth Konieczny amp Scheepers 1994 Gilboy et al 1995 Brysbaert amp

Mitchell 1996)

It was precisely the evidence against the use of LC in Spanish constructions involving

the attachment of RCs to complex NPs with two potential attachment sites reg rst reported

by Cuetos and Mitchell (1988) that set the stage for some current models of sentence

parsing and for later revisions of the garden-path model itself Briemacr y stated the depar-

ture from the original formulation of Late Closure as a universal parsing principle embo-

died in the Garden-path theory has followed two different paths within the framework of

principle-grounded models

One of them is Construal theory which draws on the distinction between primary and

nonprimary syntactic relations among sentence constituents According to this theory

primary relations include those that hold between the subject and main predicate of a

reg nite clause and complements and obligatory constituents of primary phrases1

Parsing

decisions regarding primary relations involve immediate attachment and are governed by

structural preferences such as Minimal Attachment and Late Closure All other kinds of

relations among constituents are labelled as nonprimary and refer to the elaboration of

argument positions through adjunct predicates relative clauses or conjunction (Frazier amp

Clifton 1996 p 41) Parsing decisions concerning nonprimary relations involve associa-

tion (as opposed to attachment) and are made on the basis of the Construal Principle

which states that all phrases that do not instantiate a primary relation shall be associated to

the current processing domainETH that is the extended maximal projection of the last theta-

assigner (Frazier amp Clifton 1996 p 42) Construal theory may be understood as a

development of previous parsing proposals that emphasized the distinction between

attachment to arguments versus adjuncts (Pritchett 1988 Abney 1989) Not only does

it make entirely different predictions regarding parsing decisions falling under different

kinds of structural relations but it also bears processing implications concerning the time

course of such decisions

A somewhat different approach to the study of parsing decisions within principle-

grounded models stems from the assumption that attachment decisions may be based

on more than one factor operating at the same time Given this assumption attachment

choices could be ranked in a non-monotonic fashion whenever the various factors at

play tend to favour different decisions As the proponents of this approach claim most

available evidence on attachment ambiguities comes from constructions that provide

only two possible attachment sites In such cases a monotonic ordering of attachment

preferences is expected In contrast in ambiguities with more than two attachment sites


1Frazier and Clifton (1996) admit the possibility that ` there exist optional arguments that fall under the class

of primary relations for example the object of an optionally transitive verb like read or singrsquo rsquo (p 46) As will be

seen later the fact that non-obligatory arguments may also stand in a primary relation to their heads is essential

for the purposes of the present study

a non-monotonic ordering of attachment preferences is possible A very recent proposal in

this direction has been made by Gibson and colleagues (Gibson amp Pearlmutter 1994

Gibson Pearlmutter Canseco-GonzaAcirc lez amp Hickok 1996) who provide cross- linguistic

evidence from English and Spanish for the use of two preference factors in RC attach-

ments with three possible attachment sites a ``Recency Preferencersquo rsquo factor (quite similar

to Late Closure) according to which the human parser prefers attachments to more

recent words in the sentence over less recent words and a ` Predicate Proximityrsquo rsquo factor

according to which the preference is to attach an incoming constituent as close as possible

to the head of a predicate phrase

T he principle of Late Closure has been criticized for its lack of cross-linguistic support

in RC attachments to complex NPs It relies mostly on evidence from English (Gilboy et

al 1995) and Italian (De Vincenzi amp Job 1993 1995) but meets counterevidence from

other languages such as Spanish (Carreiras 1992 Carreiras amp Clifton 1993 Cuetos amp

Mitchell 1988) Dutch (Brysbaert amp Mitchell 1996) and German (Hemforth et al

1994) However even in those languages in which the Late Closure preference obtains it

appears to be constrained by thematic and referential factors (Carreiras amp Clifton 1993

Gilboy et al 1995) Proponents of principle-grounded models of parsing have offered a

number of different yet compatible explanations of this fact First given that RCs are

modireg ers of NPs they stand in a nonprimary relation to their potential attachment sites

T hus according to the Construal theory they are parsed under the Construal Principle

and not under a structural principle like Late Closure (Frazier amp Clifton 1996) Second

cross- linguistic differences on RC attachment may be explained by the relative strength of

the Recency and Predicate Proximity factors across different languages in a language like

English where arguments are close to their heads the Predicate Proximity preference will

be weaker as predicates need not be a priori highly activated to help keep track of distant

arguments In contrast in a language like Spanish where arguments may occupy

relatively distant positions from their verbal heads the heads of predicate phrases must

be comparatively more activated to allow for distant attachments Consequently the

Predicate Proximity factor is also bound to be stronger (Gibson et al 1996) T hus the

relative predominance of recency over predicate proximity would result in the preference

towards Late Closure observed in English whereas the predominance of predicate proxi-

mity over recency would account for the Early Closure preference found in Spanish

T hird it has been argued that attachment ambiguities concerning RCs not only involve an

attachement decision but also an anaphor resolution process where the relative pronoun

has to be bound to its proper antecedent (Hemforth et al 1994) Hence the referential

factors that may come into play in these cases might interact with purely structural

principles to render different results from those found in other kinds of attachments

Attachment of ambiguous RCs to complex NPs has been the focus of much recent

research on human sentence parsing However there is another potential source of evi-

dence for the use of the Late Closure principle that seems to be much less controversialETH

namely decisions involving the attachment of constituents to VPs VP-attachment

ambiguities provide an equal opportunity to contrast the claims of computationally

grounded models with those of frequency-based accounts of attachment decisions A

simple case to test these predictions from these models and at the same time gather

further evidence on the use of Late Closure in VP-attachments is to use globally ambig-


uous structures that allow for both high and low attachments of PPs to VPs Construc-

tions such as those exemplireg ed in Example 2 may serve this purpose

(2) RauAcirc l v endioAcirc el libro que habotilde Acirca robado a su amigo

[literal English translation ``RauAcirc l sold the book that he had stolen to from his

friendrsquo rsquo (Alternatively read as RauAcirc l sold his friend the book he had stolen or RauAcirc l sold

the book he had stolen from his friend)]

Given the ambiguity of the Spanish preposition `àrsquo rsquo [ to from] the reg nal PP of this

sentence can be alternatively understood as an argument of the main verb (VP1) vendioAcirc

[sold] ETH that is a high-attachment reading or of the subordinate verb (VP2) habotilde Acirca robado

[had stolen] ETH that is a low-attachment reading Both attachment possibilities are enabled

by the fact that the two verbs involved are ditransitiveETH that is they may take either one

(direct object) or two (direct object and indirect object) complements T he high-

attachment alternative however may also be realized by placing the reg nal PP next to

the main verb (as in the reg rst of the two English translations) However both alternative

interpretations of the VP1plusmn VP2plusmn PP structure are grammatical in Spanish and as we

shall see later on both high and low attachments for these structures can and do occur in

Spanish

In what follows we will report a questionnaire study three self-paced reading experi-

ments and two corpus studies with Spanish sentences such as the one in Example 2 that

were carried out to test the claims of principle-grounded and frequency-based theories of

sentence parsing T he questionnaire was intended to gather preliminary data on attach-

ment preferences of various kinds in Spanish One of the structures tested was then

selected for the self-paced reading experiments In the experiments subjects were given

sentences to read with a prepositional phrase that had two potential attachment sites the

ambiguous PP could be an argument of two different antecedent verbs labelled VP1 and

VP2 T he critical sentences thus constructed were of the form NPplusmn VP1plusmn XPplusmn VP2plusmn PP

where VP1 contained the main verb of the sentence NP was its subject XP was its direct

object VP2 contained a subordinate verb in an embedded relative clause and PP was an

`òpenrsquo rsquo complement that could be attached either to VP1 or to VP2 Late Closure

predicts attachment to VP2 (or low attachment of the PP) We decided to use these

two measures of attachment choices in order to compare an `òn-linersquo rsquo reading time

measure of preferences which is more likely to remacr ect comparatively earlier parsing

decisions with an `òff-linersquo rsquo judgement measure that allows for the inmacr uence of non-

syntactic factors such as pragmatic plausibility in making attachment decisions and

eventually correcting them

T he corpus studies were intended to test two different versions of frequency-based

theories First a frequency count of structures of the form NPplusmn VP1plusmn XPplusmn VP2plusmn PP was

carried out in order to see whether the results obtained in the experiments were compa-

tible with an explanation in terms of linguistic tuning In particular the aim was to reg nd

out whether there is a statistical bias in Spanish that favours low over high attachment in

structures of this kind Second a more reg ne-grained count was carried out based on the

verbs that were used in VP1 and VP2 in the questionnaires and experiments to reg nd out

to what extent there is a preference for a given argument structure (ie one-complement


versus two-complements) in the use of these verbs in written sentences in Spanish T he

purpose of this second frequency count was to reg nd out whether the preference for Late

Closure stems from a bias of verbs in the embedded clauses of the sentences to take two

complements instead of one thereby favouring a low-attachment preference (for a

discussion of frequency record keeping see Mitchell Cuetos Corley amp Brysbaert 1995)

EXPERIMENT 1Questionnaire on Attachment Preferences

Method

Subjects

Thirty-one subjects of both sexes participated in this study 29 of them were recruited from the

community of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona Spain) and had Castilian Spanish as their

reg rst language and the remaining two subjects were Castilian Spanish monolinguals from the

Universidad AutoAcirc noma de Madrid

Materials

The questionnaire consisted of 120 globally ambiguous sentences that were classireg ed in three

main categories of 30 sentences each plus four additional categories intended as reg llers Examples of

all the three main categories are given in Examples 3 4 and 5 (literal English translations are

provided with each example)

(3) NPplusmn VP1plusmn XPplusmn VP2plusmn PP structures

RauAcirc l vendioAcirc el libro que habotilde Acirca robado a su amigo

[RauAcirc l sold the book he had stolen to from his friend]

(4) NPplusmn VPplusmn NPplusmn PP structures

El profesor castigoAcirc a los alumnos con malas notas

[T he teacher punished the students with bad grades]

(5) Relative clauses (NP1plusmn de plusmn NP2plusmn RC)

Los periodistas entrevistaron a la hija del coronel que tuvo un accidente

[T he journalists interviewed the daughter of the colonel who had an accident]

In addition NPplusmn VPplusmn NPplusmn PP structures (eg Example 4) were of two kinds with 10 sentences of each

kind the ambiguous PP was headed either by the preposition ` dersquo rsquo [of] or by the preposition ``conrsquo rsquo

[with] (see Examples 6 and 7 respectively) and this turned out to make a signireg cant difference as will

shortly be shown The logic of this distinction lies in the syntactic properties of prepositions ``dersquo rsquo and

` conrsquo rsquo whereas the former does not assign a thematic role to its complement the latter usually does

therefore PPs headed by ``dersquo rsquo should be considered as arguments of their parent NP whereas PPs

headed by ``conrsquo rsquo should be considered as modireg ers of their parent NP (see De Vincenzi amp Job 1995)

(6) El reg sico dedujo las conclusiones del experimento

[T he physicist deduced the conclusions of (from) the experiment]


(7) El profesor castigoAcirc a los alumnos con malas notas


Similarly relative clause constructions (NP1plusmn deplusmn NP2plusmn RC) (eg Example 5) belonged to three dif-

ferent subcategories with 10 instances of each type (1) the ``kinshiprsquo rsquo group where the reg rst noun of

the complex object NP always named some kind of relative of the second noun (Example 8) (2) the

` functional-occupationalrsquo rsquo group where the two nouns of the object NP were related by a profes-

sional relationship (Example 9) and the so-called ``possessivesrsquo rsquo group where the reg rst noun was

always an inanimate possession of a possessor denoted by the second noun of the object NP (Example

10) As already noted Gilboy et al found that attachment preferences showed signireg cant variations

among these three relative clause types

(8) Los periodistas entrev istaron a la hija del coronel que tuvo un accidente

[T he journalists interviewed the son of the colonel who had an accident]

(9) La explosioAcirc n ensordecioAcirc al ayudante del comisario que estaba junto al almaceAcirc n

[T he explosion deafened the assistant of the inspector who was near the ware-

house]

(10) El profesor leotilde Acirca el libro del estudiante que estaba en el comedor

[T he teacher read the book of the student that was in the dining-room]

The main concern of this questionnaire study was to reg nd out whether conscious interpretation

preferences stemming from attachment decisions differed based on the kind of syntactic relationship

between the ambiguous items and the constituents that could act as their hosts As mentioned earlier

NPplusmn VP1plusmn XPplusmn VP2plusmn PP structures (see Example 3) contain two ditransitive verbs which in prin-

ciple make it equally possible to attach an ambiguous object-NP (PP in Spanish) to any of them

Most importantly however the ambiguous PP has in either case a primary relationship with the VP

host The second structural type NPplusmn VPplusmn NPplusmn PP structures (see Example 4) combines a primary

relationship of an ambiguous PP with the sentence verb and a relationship of the same ambiguous PP

with the object NP that could be regarded as primary or nonprimary depending on the type of

preposition heading the PPETH that is the PP may be either an argument of the verb on the one hand

or an argument or a modireg er of the object-NP on the other hand As mentioned earlier the third

structural type includes ambiguous relative clauses of three different kinds (taken from the Gilboy et

al 1995 study)

The other three categories of ambiguous items were included as reg llers and the results regarding

these items are not discussed in this paper T he reg llers comprised other kinds of ambiguities involving

scope of quantireg ersETH eg Todos los pacientes fueron examinados por un meAcirc dico [All the patients were

examined by a doctor] adjunct predicate vs adjectiveETH eg El camarero empujoAcirc al cliente irritado

[The waiter pushed the customer annoyed (in annoyance)] nonreg nite clause attachmentsETH eg

Javier vio a su amigo esperando al autobuAcirc s [Javier saw his friend waiting for the bus] and closure

of a subordinate clauseETH eg Si Pedro conduce su coche ganaraAcirc la carrera [If Pedro drives his car (he)

will win the race]

Procedure and Scoring

Subjects were instructed to read each of the sentences carefully and make a quick decision as to

which of their two alternative readings they considered most likely T hey were told that all sentences

were globally ambiguous (ie had two possible interpretations) Sentences were presented in written


form in a booklet with a forced choice between two alternative readings and in sets of 8 items on

each page The order of sentences within each page was reg xed and randomized with no more than two

consecutive sentences of the same type the order of pages was randomized for each subject Mean

percentages of each attachment choice (labelled early vs late closure choice) were calculated for every

category for subsequent statistical comparison The percentages of early closure choices are provided

under different headings for each category namely VP1 choices for NPplusmn VP1plusmn XPplusmn VP2plusmn PP struc-

tures VP choices for NPplusmn VPplusmn NPplusmn PP structures and NP1 choices for NP1plusmn deplusmn NP2plusmn RC structures

Results

Table 1 shows mean percentages of early closure choices for the three main categories

of attachment structures Separate computations for VPplusmn NPplusmn PP structures and for

NP1plusmn deplusmn NP2plusmn RC were also performed and mean percentages of early closure choices

of the two subcategories of VPplusmn NPplusmn PP sentences and for the three subcategories of

NP1plusmn deplusmn NP2plusmn RC sentences are also given in the table

T he following pairwise comparisons were computed First early closure choices in

NPplusmn VP1plusmn XP plusmn VP2plusmn PP structures were signireg cantly lower than in NP1plusmn deplusmn NP2plusmn RC

structures z = 59 p lt 05 Second early closure choices in NPplusmn VP1plusmn XPplusmn VP2plusmn PP

structures were also signireg cantly lower than in VPplusmn NPplusmn PP structures z = 1138

p lt 05 T hird subjects showed a signireg cant preference for early closure choices with

` conrsquo rsquo ambiguous PPs as compared to ``dersquo rsquo ambiguous PPs z = 1226 p lt 05 Similar

comparisons were carried out with the three relative clause subcategories showing sig-

nireg cant differences in all cases z = 293 p lt 05 for the kinship-funct occup compar-

ison z = 261 p lt 05 for the kinship-possessives comparison and z = 554 p lt 05 for

the funct occup-possessives comparison From this last result we may infer that the

preference for early or late closure in ambiguous relative clauses depends on the thematic

relationship that holds between the two potential NP-hosts Almost identical results were

obtained by Gilboy et al in their questionnaire study with the same materials in Spanish

In addition each of the reported attachment choices was compared with chance mea-

sures (ie 50 of early and 50 of late closure preferences) rendering the following


TABLE 1Mean Percentages of Overall Early Closure Choices in the Questionnaires of

Experiments 1 and 2

Experiment Structure Type Percentage of Early

Closure Choices

Choices

1 NPplusmn VP1plusmn XPplusmn VP2plusmn PP 4143 VP1

NPplusmn VPplusmn NPplusmn PP 6834 VP

NP1plusmn deplusmn NP2plusmn RC 5539 NP1

2 VPplusmn NPplusmn PP ``dersquo rsquo PPs 4647 VP

``conrsquo rsquo PPs 8857 VP

NP1plusmn deplusmn NP2plusmn RC kinship 5473 NP1

funct occup 6677 NP1

possessives 4467 NP1

results the late closure preference for NPplusmn VP1plusmn XPplusmn VP2plusmn PP structures differed signireg -

cantly from chance z = 358 p lt 05 Similarly the early closure choice for VPplusmn NPplusmn PP

structures was signireg cantly different from chance z = 777 p lt 05 As previously stated

this difference was accounted for by the early closure preference in ` conrsquo rsquo ambiguous PPs

z = 1093 p lt 05 as compared to ``dersquo rsquo ambiguous PPs which showed no signireg cant

closure bias either way z = 09 p gt 05 Finally in NP1plusmn de plusmn NP2plusmn RC structures we

found a slight but signireg cant bias towards early closure z = 234 p lt 05 which was

solely dependent on the early closure preference shown by the funct occup category

z = 417 p lt 05 with no signireg cant differences from chance in the other two

categories (kinship z = 124 p gt 05 possessives z = 136 p gt 05)

Discussion

According to the attachment preference data drawn from our questionnaire late closure

choices are generally favoured whenever there is a primary relationship between an

ambiguous constituent and all of its possible host constituents as revealed by the pre-

ference of VP2 attachment over VP1 attachment in NPplusmn VP1plusmn XPplusmn VP2plusmn PP structures

However when the attachment choice entails a syntactic decision between primary and

nonprimary phrases subjects tend to favour a primary relationship reading T his is

particularly clear in ambiguous PPs headed by the preposition ` conrsquo rsquo [with] as opposed

to ``dersquo rsquo [of] Finally our results on relative clause attachment preferences are compatible

with the view that closure choices when parsing ambiguous relative clauses depend on the

thematic domains created by conceptual relations between NP hosts However it should

be borne in mind that the data supporting these conclusions are off-line judgements

which merely remacr ect reg nal parsing decisions T herefore on the basis of existing evidence

there are no grounds for questioning the claim that thematic differences are just revision

effects of ` reg rst-passrsquo rsquo preferences towards early closure in RC-attachment

Some of our results are consistent with previous research on parsing in Spanish and

lend prima facie support to the claims of principle-grounded models In particular a close

replication of the Gilboy et al (1995) results was accomplished for the relative clause

sentences Also the NPplusmn VP1plusmn XPplusmn VP2plusmn PP constructions showed a signireg cant preference

towards late closure (4143 for VP1plusmn early closure choices) And reg nally the VPplusmn NPplusmn PP

structures which provide a contrast between primary and nonprimary relations showed

an overall signireg cant bias towards the early closure reading (6834 for VP choices) In

this connection there was a signireg cant asymmetry between early closure choices in PP

structures with the prepositional head ``dersquo rsquo and those with the prepositional head ` conrsquo rsquo

the latter showing the largest percentage of VP attachment choices (8857 as compared

to 4647 for ` dersquo rsquo plusmn PPs) T his asymmetry deserves some comments

In our view the different patterns of attachment choices for ` dersquo rsquo and ``conrsquo rsquo PPs might

be due to the following reasons First ``dersquo rsquo plusmn PPs are usually associated with post-nominal

modireg ers that have an adjectival interpretation in Spanish (recall Cuetos amp Mitchellrsquos

1988 comments on this issue) T his enables the preference to associate a ` dersquo rsquo plusmn PP to the

immediately preceding NP rather than to the VP dominating this NP Second as noted

earlier preposition ` conrsquo rsquo unlike ``dersquo rsquo is a theta-role assigner which entails that PPs

headed by ``dersquo rsquo are more often regarded as arguments and those headed by ``conrsquo rsquo as


modireg ers of their parent NPs Hence ``dersquo rsquo plusmn PPs are usually associated in Spanish with a

wider range of thematic roles than PPs headed by ``conrsquo rsquo If we look at the consistency of

attachment preferences for these two kinds of PPs across items we reg nd that whereas the

early closure preference obtains in all but one of the ``conrsquo rsquo plusmn PPs the distribution of

attachment preferences among ``dersquo rsquo plusmn PPs is far more heterogeneous out of the 10 items

of this kind used in our questionnaire 2 were clearly biased towards early closure and 4

towards late closure the remaining 4 showed no signireg cant bias in either direction

In accordance with claims set forth by construal theory the clear preference for the

high attachment of ``conrsquo rsquo plusmn PPs may be explained by the fact that they stand in a non-

primary (adjunct) relation with the more recent NP and in a primary (argument) relation

with the more distant VP However the inconsistent attachment preferences shown by

``dersquo rsquo plusmn PPs seem more difreg cult to explain from the point of view of principle-grounded

theories If we assume that for ``dersquo rsquo plusmn PPs both attachment sites (VP and NP) bear a primary

relationship to the ambiguous PP a preference for low attachment should have emerged

from the point of view of both garden-path and construal theories However the data raise

the possibility that attachment decisions were driven by nonsyntactic factors such as the

plausibility of certain VPplusmn PP or NPplusmn PP associations T his plausibility bias could in turn

be associated to the frequency of co-occurrence of the target PPs with specireg c VP or NP

hosts in the materials employed in this study Consequently a computation of VPplusmn PP and

NPplusmn PP co-occurrence frequencies on the ``dersquo rsquo plusmn PP sentences used in the questionnaire

should be carried out to test this supposition T his alternative interpretaton seems to be

more consistent with lexically grounded models Moreover a lexicalist framework could

also be posited to account for the steady preference for high attachment of ``conrsquo rsquo plusmn PPs

reported earlier if any of the three following claims could be empirically substantiated (1)

that the verbs used in our VPplusmn NPplusmn PP sentences show a consistent bias towards taking an

instrument thematic role (headed by preposition ` conrsquo rsquo ) (2) that the argument nouns of

the ` conrsquo rsquo plusmn PPs employed in our questionnaire are consistently assigned an instrument

thematic role in Spanish and or (3) that the ``conrsquo rsquo plusmn PPs of the questionnaire receive more

plausible interpretations when attached to the more distant VPs than when attached to the

closer NPs However pending further inquiries of this sort no dereg nitive conclusions can

be raised so far from this questionnaire in support of any of the models discussed in this

paper

SELF-PACED READING EXPERIMENTS

T he purpose of these experiments was to test whether the attachment preferences con-

cerning NPplusmn VP1plusmn XPplusmn VP2plusmn PP structures shown in the questionnaire just reported can

be replicated when using an on-line measure such as the self-paced reading task We

wanted to reg nd out whether the late closure preference expressed in the subjectsrsquo reg nal

interpretation in the questionnaire remacr ects a bias in the same direction in earlier parsing

decisions


EXPERIMENT 2

Method

Subjects

Twenty-four monolingual Castilianplusmn Spanish-speakers of the Universidad AutoAcirc noma de Madrid

participated in this experiment as volunteers They had no previous experience in experiments of this

sort

Materials and Design

Thirty triplets of sentences were constructed in the form NPplusmn VP1plusmn NPplusmn VP2plusmn PP One sentence

in each triplet ended with an ambiguous PP (headed by the preposition ` arsquo rsquo [to] having VP1 and VP2

as potential hosts (Example A)

(A) Ambiguous-PP


[RauAcirc l sold the book that he had stolen from to his friend]

The other two members of each triplet were unambiguous sentences in one the PP had to be

attached to VP1ETH high attachment (Example B) and in the other to VP2ETH low attachment

(Example C)

(B) VP1-attachment

RauAcirc l vendioAcirc el libro que tenotilde Acirca subrayado a su amigo

[RauAcirc l sold the book that he had underlined to his friend]

(C) VP2-attachment

RauAcirc l examinoAcirc el libro que habotilde Acirca robado a su amigo

[RauAcirc l examined the book that he had stolen from his friend]

A full list of the triplets of experimental sentences with their English translations is available from the

reg rst author by E-mail

Sixty reg ller sentences were added to construct three different lists of 90 sentences each with

each critical sentence appearing once in each list in one of the three following conditions

ambiguous PP VP1-attachment or VP2-attachment Every subject was given 10 different

sentences to read under each of the three experimental conditions Thus each member in each

triplet of sentences was read by a different subject which resulted in a within- and between-

subject design

Each sentence was divided into several (2plusmn 5) fragments for self-paced reading the critical

sentences had the following three fragments main clause NPplusmn VP1plusmn NP relative clause with VP2

PP In addition comprehension questions in upper case were added to one-third of the items one

half (15 questions) following experimental sentences and the other half after reg ller sentences Subjects

were required to respond verbally ``yesrsquo rsquo or ``norsquo rsquo to these questions


Procedure and Apparatus

Subjects seated in a dimly lit room in front of a computer screen were instructed to press the

space bar of the computer keyboard to make the reg rst fragment of each sentence appear on the screen

A reg xation point appeared on the left of the screen immediately followed by the reg rst fragment of a

sentence T hey were instructed to press a key as soon as they had read each fragment appearing

succesively on the screen Sentences were presented in a cumulative fashion spanning only one line

in the critical cases In one third of the trials a comprehension question appeared for 3 sec once the

subject had pressed the key upon reading the last fragment of the sentence Once subjects had

answered this question or pressed the key after reading the last fragment of the sentence in trials

with no comprehension question they could proceed to press the space bar to begin the next trial

Subjects were told that the experiment was intended to test their reading comprehension abilities

An item-display program of the DMaster package (Monash University) controlled the self-paced

presentation of the items and stored the reading times of the last fragment of each sentence Items

were randomized for every subject T he experiment was preceded by a practice block of 8 items

Verbal responses to comprehension questions were written down by the experimenter and later

checked against the printed random sequence of items for each subject Subjects with more than

10 errors in the comprehension task (3 errors out of 30 questions) were discarded and replaced

Results

T he mean reading times for the three experimental conditions are (1) ambiguous PP

1526 msec (2) VP1 attachment 1702 msec VP2 attachment 1477 msec An analysis of

variance with repeated measures was conducted with subjects and items as random

variables T he overall pattern of differences turned out to be signireg cant in both subject

and item analysis F1(2 21) = 1174 p lt 001 F2(2 27) = 765 p lt 002 and also by

MinF 9 (2 47) = 463 p lt 02 Pairwise comparisons showed a 176-msec signireg cant

difference between the ambiguous-PP and the VP1-attachment conditions F1(1 21) =

1270 p lt 002 F2(1 27) = 771 p lt 01 MinF 9 (1 47) = 480 p lt 04 and a 225-msec

signireg cant difference between the VP1-attachment and the VP2-attachment conditions

F1(1 21) = 1695 p lt 001 F2(1 27) = 1489 p lt 001 MinF 9 (1 47) = 793 p lt 006

In contrast the 49-msec difference between the ambiguous-PP and the VP2-attachment

conditions fell short of signireg cance F1(1 21) = 138 p gt 2 F2 lt 1

Discussion

Spanish readers clearly prefer a low attachment (VP2) over a high attachment (VP1) of an

ambiguous object-PP thus folowing the late closure strategy proposed by the garden-path

and construal theories for this kind of ambiguous structure T he longer reading times for

unambiguous PPs that had to be attached to the main verb of the sentence (VP1) seem to

indicate that in this condition subjects are forced to counter the late closure strategy

which induces a temporary garden-path-like effect Very few subjects reported having

been aware of the ambiguities in the materials and those who did tended to reg nd ambi-

guities in the comprehension questions rather than in the experimental sentences them-

selves As both verbs (main and subordinate) of the critical sentences were ditransitive

readers could choose between the two argument structures of these verbsETH that is by the


time readers reached the main clause boundary all obligatory arguments of the main verb

had been instantiated and by the time they read the subordinate verb all its obligatory

arguments had been identireg ed as well (note that a WH-trace should be postulated as the

object-argument of the subordinate verb) T herefore the preference for late closure

cannot in principle be accounted for by any syntactic asymmetry between main and

subordinate verbs other than their syntactic position in the phrase structure tree

T he results reported in this experiment should be viewed with caution due to a couple

of methodological drawbacks First the use of a cumulative display procedure as that

employed in this experiment has been criticized by several authors (cf Ferreira amp

Henderson 1990) who argue that cumulative displays are susceptible of introducing

unwanted effects of backtracking thus providing unreliable measures of parsing pro-

cesses A second problem derives from the fact that the region where reading times

were measured in this experiment (ie the reg nal PP of the sentence) was also the last

fragment of the sentence which entails the risk that reading times get distorted by

sentence wrap-up processes T hese methodological pitfalls made it advisable to run a

second experiment with similar procedure and materials

EXPERIMENT 3

Method

Subjects

Twenty-seven monolingual Castilianplusmn Spanish-speaking Psychology students of the Universidad

AutoAcirc noma de Madrid participated in this experiment as part of their course credit None of them had

participated in the previous experiment or had experience in experiments of this sort


Thirty triplets of sentences similar to those used in Experiment 2 as critical sentences were

constructed with two important modireg cations First the clitic pronoun ` lersquo rsquo [him her] used in

Spanish as indirect object pronoun was preposed to the VP1 in order to create a bias in favour of high

attachment In many sentences with verbs that take two complements (dative constructions) in

Spanish it is customary to make a ` clitic doublingrsquo rsquo in order to keep the indirect object in focus

This dative clitic thus enhances the likelihood that a full NP will appear as indirect object later in the

sentence provided that there is no prior antecedent to the clitic (as is the case in isolated sentences

like those used in the experiment) Clitic doubling is optional in Spanish constructions involving

transitive verbs which includes ditransitive verbs like those used in these experiments (see Example

11a) However it is obligatory in sentences with psychological verbs that subcategorize for an

experiencer argument (Example 11b) and with transitive verbs that take an optional indirect object

argument (Example 11c) (FernaAcirc ndez Lagunilla amp Anula 1995) This makes clitic doubling a rather

common type of structure in Spanish sentences T herefore by introducing this post-VP1 clitic we

expected that subjects would be inclined to expect a full NP as indirect object later in the sentence

which would increase the preference for attaching the PP high

(11) (a) A Juan le han regalado un reloj

[To John him have given a watch [John was given a watch] ]


(b) A Juan le gusta la muAcirc sica

[To John him likes the music [John likes music] ]

(c) A Juan le han escayolado un brazo

[To John him have plastered an arm [John had his arm cast in plaster]]

The second modireg cation was to add an extra PP (usually a locative PP as modireg er) at the end of each

sentence to provide an extra reading region and thus avoid sentence wrap-up effects Thus all critical

sentences consisted of four regions divided up as follows main clause NPplusmn VP1plusmn NP relative clause

VP1 PP PP For plausibility reasons the last region of the VP1-attachment sentences differed from

that of the other two conditions the reading times of Region 4 in this condition were therefore not

included in the analysis (see Results section) All critical and reg ller sentences were otherwise exactly

the same as in Experiment 2 as shown in Examples D E and F

(D) Ambiguous-PP

Rosa les devolv ioAcirc los exaAcirc menes que habotilde Acirca corregido a sus alumnos el dotilde Acirca anterior

[Rosa them returned the exams that she had marked for to her students the day

before]

(E) VP1-attachment

Rosa ensenAuml oAcirc los exaAcirc menes que estaban suspensos a sus alumnos de psicologotilde Acirca

[Rosa showed the exams that had failed to her students of psychology]

(F) VP2-attachment

Rosa miroAcirc los exaAcirc menes que habotilde Acirca corregido a sus alumnos el dotilde Acirca anterior

[Rosa looked at the exams that she had marked for her students the day before]

A full list of experimental sentences in their three versions along with their English translations is

available from the reg rst author by E-mail The design of this experiment was the same as that of

Experiment 2


The procedure and apparatus were the same as those employed in Experiment 2 except for a few

modireg cations A noncumulative mode of display was used in this experiment Reading times of both

Regions 3 and 4 were recorded In addition comprehension questions were answered by pressing a

YES NO key and directly recorded by the computer

Results

T he mean reading times for the three experimental conditions measured at Regions 3

and 4 were as follows (1) ambiguous PPETH Region 3 989 msec Region 4 1230 msec

(2) high-attachment VP1ETH Region 3 1061 msec (3) low-attachment VP2ETH Region 3

947 msec Region 4 1214 msec An analysis of variance with repeated measures was

conducted on the reading times of the third and fourth regions of display across the

three experimental conditions with subjects and items as random variables T he overall

pattern of differences turned out to be signireg cant in both subject and item analysis at

Region 3 F1(2 24) = 780 p lt 002 F2(2 27) = 500 p lt 02 In contrast reading


times at Region 4 did not differ F1 and F2 lt 1 Pairwise comparisons among the three

conditions at Region 3 showed a 72-msec signireg cant difference between the ambiguous-

PP and the VP1 (high-attachment) conditions F1(1 24) = 629 p lt 02 F2(1 27) = 367

p = 06 and a 114-msec signireg cant difference between the VP1 (high-attachment) and

VP2 (low-attachment) conditions F1(1 24) = 1598 p lt 0001 F2(1 27) = 1135

p lt 003 MinF 9 (1 50) = 664 p lt 02 In contrast the 42-msec difference between the

ambiguous-PP and the VP2 (low attachment) conditions fell short of signireg cance

F1(1 24) = 190 p gt 1 F2(1 27) = 110 p gt 1 At region 4 the 16-msec difference

between the low-attachment and the ambiguous conditions was negligible F1 and F2 lt 1

Discussion

Taken together the results of Experiments 2 and 3 show that there is a preference to

attach an ambiguous PP as argument of the latest predicate (the VP of the embedded

relative clause) T he longer reading times for unambiguous PPs that have to be

attached to the main verb of the sentence (VP1) appear to indicate that subjects

undergo a greater computational load when they have to counter the late closure

strategy In addition it seems that the attachment decision is taken before reaching

the end of the sentence given its inmacr uence on reading times at the very region where

the ambiguity takes place T he lack of differences found in Region 4 between the two

relevant conditions reinforces this interpretation Moreover this pattern of results

holds even when subjects are biased to expect a full indirect object by introducing

a preverbal dative clitic Apparently by the time the reader reaches the ambiguous

PP the expectation raised earlier by the clitic is overridden by the processing of

subsequent materials probably due to memory limitations T hese results are consis-

tent both with the garden-path model in its original formulation and with Construal

theory as both predict the application of late closure under the syntactic relationship

that holds between a predicate and its arguments or between a verb and its

complements

T here are however two alternative accounts for these results On the one hand

according to the linguisitc tuning model the preference for low attachment could remacr ect

a bias in the statistical frequency with which PP arguments are actually attached to the

latest predicate available instead of to an earlier predicate positioned higher on the tree

For the linguistic tuning model to be adequate one should have to demonstrate that

there is a bias in the Spanish language to attach object-PPs to the most recent VP in

constructions of this sort In addition the preference for late closure could be explained

by a syntatic asymmetry between main and subordinate verbs on the assumption that

subordinate verbs are more biased than main verbs to take an extra argument T hus in

order for lexically based models to account for the data it should be shown that the

particular verbs used in the embedded clauses (VP2) are more commonly employed

with a two-complement argument structure than the verbs used in the main clauses

(VP1) We will now present two corpus studies intended to test each of these

possibilities


CORPUS STUDIES

T he following corpus studies were carried out on a sample of the Corpus of Written

Spanish (Alameda amp Cuetos 1995) which comprises texts excerpted from novels press

articles and other written materials in Spanish T he database employed in this study

amounted to 225000 words of written texts of various kinds

Frequencies of Attachment in VP1-XP-VP2-PP Structures

T he purpose of this study was to obtain a record of frequencies of attachment of PPs to

structures containing a main verb followed by a complement with an embedded relative

clause Following the criteria laid down by Mitchell Cuetos Corley amp Brysbaert (1995)

we decided to use a coarse-grained measure which does not take into account the

different prepositions that appear as heads of PPs A minimal constraint that the struc-

tures computed had to comply with was that the main verbs of sentences had to take at

least one overt complement just as the experimental sentences did Subordinate verbs in

turn could optionally have an overt subject and or any number of complements Other

measures with coarser grains were not included because other kinds of double-VP con-

structions such as those involving complement or adverbial clauses entail a substantial

modireg cation of the phrase structure tree when compared to the sentences used in our

experiments (ie a matrix clause modireg ed by a relative clause) Similarly reg ner-grained

measures such as those involving only dative verbs were excluded due to the small size of

the corpus available and because our classireg cation criterion for this study was not based

on syntactic properties of lexical items but on the conreg guration of the phrase structure

marker of the sentence

Accordingly a text-extraction procedure was used to search for sentences of the form

VP1plusmn XPplusmn [(XP)plusmn VP2plusmn (XP)] plusmn PP where XP stands for any kind of overt argument

phrase and indicates ` one or morersquo rsquo (constituents between square brackets belong to

the embedded RC optional XPs are between parentheses) T hree categories of PP attach-

ments were found (1) unambiguous VP1 attachment (2) unambiguous VP2 attachment

and (3) ambiguous VP1 VP2 attachment PP attachments were independently categor-

ized by two judges (two of the three authors of the paper) T he few cases in which they

disagreed were either settled by the third author or classireg ed as ambiguous T he results

are presented in Table 2 Data for PPs attached as modireg ers and arguments are presented

separately

T he 160 sentences included in the count do not include cases of `àsymmetricalrsquo rsquo

attachment in which the PP could only be attached as argument or modireg er to one of

the two VPs T his was done to ensure that both attachment sites were in principle

available to the reader and not a priori excluded on purely grammatical grounds T his

may happen for pragmatic reasons in the case of modireg er attachments (see Example 12)

or due to the subcategorization properties of verbs in the attachment of arguments as in

Example 13 T here were 27 cases of asymmetrical modireg er attachment to VP2 and only

one to VP1 and 42 instances of asymmetrical argument attachment to VP2 and one to

VP1 Another two sentences also removed from the count were cases in which the PP

could be attached to VP2 as an argument and to VP1 as a modireg er (see Example 14) T he


reason for excluding `àsymmetricalrsquo rsquo attachments was to ensure that the materials drawn

from the corpus were closely comparable to the sentences used in the experiments in their

syntactic properties

(12) Se rereg rioAcircV P1

al cadaAcirc ver que sostenotilde AcircaV P2

POR LAS AXILAS

[(He) was talkingVP1

about the corpse (he) was holdingVP 2

by the armpits]

(13) Para no encontrarseV P1

con los invitados que estaban agasajandoVP2

A SU SUCESOR

[Not to meetVP1

(with) the guests who were overwhelming with attentionsVP2

(to) his successor]

(14) SoyV P1

un profesional que cumpleV P2

CON SUS OBLIGACIONES

[I amVP 1

a professional who compliesVP 1

(with) his duties]

Another interesting fact is that only one-third (45 sentences) of the 136 sentences in

which the PP was attached as a modireg er and one-sixth (4 sentences) of the 24 sentences in

which it was attached as an argument had exactly the same syntactic structure as the

sentences used in the experimentsETH that is VP1plusmn XPplusmn VP2plusmn PP with VP1 taking only an

object-argument and VP2 taking no object-arguments at all (except the to-be-attached PP

in VP2-attachments) However in this subset of 49 sentences the trend towards VP2-

attachment did not differ signireg cantly from the general results with only a slight decrease

when compared to the overall reg gures (40 VP2-attachments 2 816 5 VP1-attachments

2 102 and 4 ambiguous attachments 2 82 )

As the results show there is an overwhelming tendency in Spanish for PPs to be

attached either as modireg ers or as arguments to the more recent VP that has been

encountered We decided to include the modireg er-PPs along with the argument-PPs in

the count as the structural consequences of attachment are the same in both cases and a

great majority of PP attachments with two VP-hosts (as much as 85 ) were modireg er

attachments


TABLE 2Frequencies of Attachment of PPs to VP1plusmnXPplusmn VP2plusmn PP Structures as Recorded from aSample of the Corpus of Written Spanish

PP as Attachment Number

Modireg er VP1 6 45

VP2 115 845

Ambiguous 15 110

136 100

Argument VP1 2 85

VP2 21 875

Ambiguous 1 40

24 100

As mentioned in the Introduction the tuning hypothesis can accommodate the results

of the self-paced reading experiments by arguing that readers tend to favour those

attachment decisions that are the most frequently used attachments in their language

It seems safe to assume that at least for the structures reviewed in Spanish computational

parsimony and frequency of use square perfectly well

Frequencies of Argument Structures of Verbs in VP1and VP2

T he second corpus study was conducted to obtain a record of the argument structure of

the verbs that were used as main (VP1) and subordinate (VP2) verbs in the critical

sentences of the two self-paced reading experiments Given that the main and subordinate

verbs used in the experiments were different (though they overlapped to a certain degree

in VP1 and VP2 positions) it might be the case that the verbs employed in subordinate

position were more likely to take an extra argument than were those employed as main

verbs thus rendering the low attachment preference shown in the two experiments

Lexically based models such as the one proposed by MacDonald et al (1994a 1994b)

claim that lexical preference as described here is a major source of constraint in syntactic

ambiguity resolution However the argument structure of verbs is by no means the only

lexical constraint that may be brought into play nor are lexical factors the only constraints

that the parser follows when resolving attachment ambiguities Among other kinds of

lexical information used by the parser when making parsing decisions the proponents of

these models cite tense morphology and frequency of usage of individual words In

addition to lexical constraints parsing decisions may be inmacr uenced by contextual and

pragmatic factors (eg animacy and plausibility) and frequency of structural types across

the language (eg active versus passive sentences) According to the models we have

dubbed ``lexically basedrsquo rsquo in this paper all these factors are eventually considered in

the form of a constraint-satisfaction process where activation and inhibition spread

over a network of representational units that stand for choices at various levels to settle

to a reg nal decision at each different level of ambiguity However there is a rank of priorities

as to the relative weight of these constraints on the parsing process frequency of argu-

ment structures being the most prominent factor

Given the nature of the attachment ambiguity examined in our study the only lexical

factor that could be taken into account was the frequency of argument structures of verbs

Accordingly a record was kept of the argument structure of main (VP1) and subordinate

(VP2) verbs each time they appeared in the corpus sample T he results of this count are

shown in Table 32

A general count of two-place versus three-place predicate sentences in

Spanish (ie simple transitive versus dative constructions) seemed to us pointless

because it would only have provided irrelevant information Other possible sources of

constraint that have proved to be relevant in previous studies such as animacy (Ferreira amp


2It should be understood that the chi-square analysis was used for descriptive purposes in this study ETH that is

to suppor t the observation that the distribution of argument structure preferences of verb tokens among verb

positions was not homogeneous In this regard we must stress that most verbs recorded from the corpus (ie

verb types) contributed multiple entries to all the cells in the frequency count shown in Table 3

Clifton 1986 Trueswell Tanenhaus amp Garnsey 1994) were kept as constant as

possible3

T he results show an asymmetrical distribution of verb tokens across the two

experimental conditions (VP1 and VP2) in terms of their most frequent argument

structure T his uneven distribution was signireg cant for both experiments [Experiment

2 c 2(2) = 4636 p lt 001 Experiment 3 c 2

(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were

more likely to take one argument instead of two than were VP1 verbs in either

experiment (even more so in Experiment 3) If anything this pattern of results would

have been more compatible with a high attachment preference T herefore the results

of the experiments do not lend themselves to an interpretation in terms of a lexical

preference for VP2 verbs to take an extra argument as lexically based models would

have predicted

A possible explanation for this pattern of results lies in the particular kind of

syntactic ambiguity examined in this study We must recall that lexically based models

of human parsing seek to reg nd a common explanation for the resolution of lexical and

syntactic ambiguities under the appealing assumption that syntactic ambiguities have

their roots in lexical ambiguities at various levels T hat is the underlying claim of these

models is that strictly speaking there are no syntactic ambiguities per se However in

our view it is quite difreg cult to reduce the attachment ambiguity involved in VP1plusmn XPplusmn

VP2plusmn PP constructions to a lexical origin T he claim that this ambiguity arises from a

conmacr ict in choosing between the alternative argument structures of the verbs that are


TABLE 3Frequencies of Argument Structures of the VP1 and VP2 Verbs Used in the

Self-paced Reading Experiments of This Study

Experiment Verbs One Argument Two arguments Other

N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)

Note Agent-arguments are not considered

3Animacy was kept constant in the NPplusmn VP1plusmn NPplusmn VP2plusmn PP sentences used in our study in the following way

all NPs used as subjects of main verbs (VP1) were animate entities as well as most PPs that could be attached

either to VP1 as an indirect object or to VP2 as a direct object These were reg ve inanimate NPs (``the police

government press factory ministryrsquo rsquo ) used in each experiment as PP indirect objects but they could be

pragmatically construed as animate In addition all but one of the NPs used as direct objects of main verbs

were inanimate entities (` the patientrsquo rsquo ) This control of the animacy distribution would suppress any possible

plausibility bias in the combination of verbs with their subject- and object-NPs

used in this type of sentences has been challenged by our data Moreover MacDonald

et al (1994a) have recognized the difreg culty of reducing VP-attachment ambiguities in

general to a lexical basis A different issue is whether the recency preference remacr ected in

the attachment of PPs to VPs should be explained in terms of a domain-specireg c

structural principle like Late Closure or by the level of activation of alternative attach-

ment sites T here are to be sure other kinds of ambiguities that lend themselves in a

more plausible way to lexical reduction one is the long-discussed MV RR (main verb

versus reduced relative) ambiguity in English (Ferreira amp Clifton 1986 MacDonald et

al 1994a 1994b Rayner et al 1983 Trueswell 1996) and another is the attachment

of PPs to complex NPs (Gibson amp Pearlmutter 1994)

Nevertheless there are still two reg nal points of concern regarding the general inter-

pretation of the results obtained in the studies reported in this paper T he reg rst of these

concerns is that the consistent preference for late closure found in VP1plusmn XPplusmn VP2plusmn PP

structures could be accounted for in terms of plausibility if one makes the assumption

that the late closure reading of the ambiguous sentences used in our experiments renders

more plausible meanings than does the early closure reading (Garnsey Pearlmutter

Myers amp Lotocky 1997 Taraban amp McClelland 1988)4

In other words it might be

the case that the PPs used in our experiments make a more plausible reg t with verbs in

VP2 position than with verbs in VP1 position Although the second of our corpus studies

has revealed that verbs biased towards taking two arguments (instead of one) were

predominantly located at VP1 position we have not directly tested the contingent fre-

quencies of verbs at VP1 and VP2 positions with the ambiguous PPs used as arguments

T he best way to rule out this interpretation would be to introduce two parallel ambiguous

conditions in which either of the two verbs used in each sentence could occupy either of

two structural positions either as main verb of the matrix clause or as subordinate verb of

the embedded relative clause A related question concerns the argument involving the use

of the structural information of verbs (ie argument structure) in our experiments T he

strength of our argument against a lexically based account of the late closure attachment

preference was merely based on the post-hoc results of our corpus study regarding the

argument structure frequencies of verbs However in order to make this argument more

compelling we would need to manipulate argument structure information in advance in a

self-paced reading study In this way we would be able to observe whether or not verbs

with a preference towards taking two arguments `àttractrsquo rsquo the reg nal PP to a greater extent

when they are located at VP2 position than when they are located at VP1 position or even

more whether or not verbs with a two-argument bias determine a preference towards late

closure (when located at VP2 position) or towards early closure (when located at VP1

position)

With these two cautions in mind we designed another self-paced reading experiment

based on the materials used in our two previous experiments but this time we used two

ambiguous conditions where the materials were counterbalanced in such a way that each

verb appeared equally often in the VP1 and the VP2 slots


4We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this question to us

EXPERIMENT 4

T he purpose of this experiment was to test the role of verbs with different preferred

argument structures (one argument vs two arguments) and with presumably different

plausibility ratings when combined with complement PPs in determining attachment

choices for PPs in VP1plusmn XPplusmn VP2plusmn PP structures T he underlying logic of this experiment

was that if either the preferred argument structure of verbs or the plausibility of specireg c

VPplusmn PP combinations are dominant factors in making early attachment decisions we

should expect no general bias towards late closure attachments as that found in the two

previous experiments More specireg cally if verb argument structure is the key factor we

should expect a bias towards early closure when the verb at VP1 position is a two-argument

verb and a bias towards late closure when the verb at VP2 position is a two-argument verb

Table 4 shows the distribution of verbs across the four experimental conditions used in this

experiment (see also Examples Gplusmn J for examples of sentences of the four experimental

conditions) If we look closely at the materials across experimental conditions we see that

verbs in the VP1 slot were the same in Conditions 1 and 3 whereas verbs in the VP2 slot

were identical in Conditions 1 and 4 T he argument structure asymmetry should render

similar reading times for ambiguous PPs in sentences with two-argument verbs at the VP1

slot (hereafter ``two-argument verbs at VP1rsquo rsquo ) (Condition 1) and for unambiguous PPs in

high-attachment sentences (Condition 3) and longer reading times for PPs in unambig-

uous low-attachment sentences (Condition 4) than in sentences with two-argument verbs

at the VP2 slot (hereafter ` two-argument verbs at VP2rsquo rsquo ) (Condition 2) as VP2 verbs in

Condition 2 (eg ``showrsquo rsquo ) have a two argument bias when compared to VP2 verbs in

Condition 4 (eg ``deliverrsquo rsquo )

Alternatively if plausibility turns out to be the dominant factor we should expect

similar attachment decisions involving particular verbs regardless of the VP slot each

verb occupies T his should result in different reading times across the two ambiguous

conditions (where verbs are counterbalanced across the two VP slots) and similar reading

times in those conditions in which the same verb appears at one of the two VP slotsETH that

is Conditions 1 and 3 for VP1 verbs or Conditions 1 and 4 for VP2 verbs (see Table 4)

depending on the direction of the plausibility bias T he critical comparison would be

between the reading times of Conditions 3 and 4 and those of Condition 1


TABLE 4An Example of the Distribution of One- and Two-argument-biase d

Verbs Across VP Slots and Experimental Conditions in theMaterials Employed in Experiment 4

Attachment Experimental Conditions VP1 Slot VP2 Slot

Optional (1) two-argument verb at VP1 show deliver

(2) two-argument verb at VP2 deliver show

Obligatory (3) high attachment (VP1) show publish

(4) low attachment (VP2) publish deliver

Method

Subjects

Forty monolingual Castilianplusmn Spanish psychology students at the Universidad AutoAcirc noma de

Madrid participated in this experiment as part of their course credit None of them had participated

in any of the two previous experiments


Thirty-two quartets of sentences similar to those used in Experiments 2 and 3 were constructed

The only change was that the verb at VP2 position (in the embedded relative clause) was in the simple

past tense instead of the past perfect in order to make the embedded RC shorter and thus facilitate

high attachment T he preverbal clitic used in the ambiguous sentences of Experiment 3 was

removed and 56 reg ller sentences were added to construct four different lists of 88 sentences each

with each critical sentence appearing once in each list in one of the four following conditions

(G) Ambiguous-PP two-argument bias verb at the VP1 slot

RauAcirc l ensenAuml oAcirc los libros que repartioAcirc a sus amigos en la bilioteca

[RauAcirc l showed the books that he delivered to his friends in the library]

(H) Ambiguous-PP two-argument bias verb at the VP2 slot

RauAcirc l repartioAcirc los libros que ensenAuml oAcirc a sus amigos en la bilioteca

[RauAcirc l delivered the books that he showed to his friends in the library]

(I) VP1-attachment

RauAcirc l ensenAuml oAcirc los libros que publicoAcirc a sus amigos en la bilioteca

[RauAcirc l showed the books that he published to his friends in the library]

( J) VP2-attachment

RauAcirc l publicoAcirc los libros que repartioAcirc a sus amigos en la biblioteca

[RauAcirc l published the books that he delivered to his friends in the library]

A full list of experimental sentences with their English translations is available from the reg rst author

by E-mail One third of trials ended with a comprehension question to be answered with a YES NO

response key The same design as in Experiments 2 and 3 was used for this experiment

The argument structure frequencies of the two verbs employed in each ambiguous sentence

taken from the Alameda and Cuetos (1995) corpus were used to select the position of each verb

in the two ambiguous versions of the sentences From this frequency count the following data

emerged in 14 out of 32 critical sentences one of the verbs was biased towards one argument and

the other was biased towards two arguments There were 10 sentences in which both verbs were

biased towards one argument one sentence in which one verb was equibiased and the other was

biased towards one argument and 3 sentences in which both verbs had a two-argument bias

Whenever both verbs were biased in the same direction verbs with a comparatively higher ratio

of one vs two arguments were selected as one-argument verbs and those with a comparatively

lower ratio were selected as two-argument verbs The remaining 4 sentences had one or both

verbs lacking frequency data In these sentences the classireg cation criterion was drawn from the

argument structure preference shown by synonyms of these verbs that did appear in the corpus

On an overall frequency count verbs belonging to the `òne-argument biasrsquo rsquo category had a one-


argument use summed frequency of 1054 and a two-argument use summed frequency of 401

verbs of the ` two-argument biasrsquo rsquo category had a one-argument use summed frequency of 352

and a two-argument use summed frequency of 453 T his distribution was highly signireg cant by

c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001

As in Experiments 2 and 3 each sentence was divided into several fragments (from 2 to 5) for self-

paced reading T he critical sentences had the following four fragments main clause NPplusmn VP1plusmn NP

relative clause VP1 PP PP


The procedure and apparatus were the same as those employed in Experiment 3ETH that is self-

paced reading with noncumulative display Reading times of Regions 3 and 4 were measured and

comprehension questions were directly recorded by the computer

Results

Reading times for Regions 3 and 4 across the four experimental conditions are as follows

(1) ambiguous PP 2-argument verb at VP1ETH Region 3 987 msec Region 4 1168 msec


(3) high attachment to VP1ETH Region 3 1063 msec Region 4 1158 msec (4) low attach-

ment to VP2ETH Region 3 944 msec Region 4 1120 msec An analysis of variance with

repeated measures was conducted with subjects and items as random variables One

experimental item per list had to be removed from the analysis due to transcription

errors T he overall pattern of differences among conditions turned out to be signireg cant

in both subject and item analysis at Region 3 F1(3 36) = 590 p lt 001 F2(3 24) = 485

p lt 003 and also by MinF 9 (3 54) = 266 p = 05 However the pattern of reading time

differences at Region 4 did not reach statistical signireg cance F1(3 36) = 145 p gt 2

F2(3 24) = 111 p gt 3 Pairwise comparisons at Region 3 revealed that the PP was read

signireg cantly more slowly in the ` High attachment to VP1rsquo rsquo condition than in all other

three experimental conditions both by subjects and items 76-msec advantage of

``2-argument verb at VP1rsquo rsquo F1(1 36) = 599 p lt 02 F2(1 24) = 846 p lt 008 87-msec

advantage of ``2-argument verb at VP2rsquo rsquo F1(1 36) = 628 p lt 02 F2(1 24) = 875

p lt 007 and 119-msec advantage of ``low attachment to VP2rsquo rsquo F1(1 36) = 1285

p lt 0001 F2(1 24) = 1418 p lt 0001 Conversely none of the differences among these

three latter conditions turned out to be signireg cant 11-msec difference between the two

ambiguous-PP conditions F1 and F2 lt 1 43-msec difference between ``2-argument verb

at VP1rsquo rsquo and ` low attachment to VP2rsquo rsquo F1(1 36) = 330 p gt 05 F2(1 24) = 163 p gt 2

and 32-msec difference between ``2-argument verb at VP2rsquo rsquo and ``low attachment to

VP2rsquo rsquo F1(1 36) = 165 p gt 2 F2 lt 1

Discussion

As the results of this experiment show the preference for the low attachment of an

ambiguous PP (ie late closure) to a VP host remains dominant regardless of the argu-

ment structure bias shown by the two potential VP hosts and of the possible effects of


plausibility We will examine each of these two alternative interpretations in the light of

our data If attachment decisions to VPs had been primarily governed by the argument

structure properties of the potential attachment hosts we should have found that verbs

that are relatively biased towards a two-argument structure attracted the constituent to be

attached whatever position they occupied in the tree T his would have resulted in a

preference for high attachment in Conditions 1 (two-argument verb at VP1) and 3

(high attachment to VP1) with similar reading times and a preference for low attachment

in Conditions 2 (two-argument verb at VP2) and 4 (low attachment to VP2) In addition

given that VP2 verbs in Condition 2 (``showrsquo rsquo ) have a two-argument bias when compared

to VP2 verbs in Condition 4 (``deliverrsquo rsquo ) we should have found longer reading times in

the latter condition even though both might show a preference towards low attachment

However this ordered ranking of reading times faster in Condition 2 than in Condition 4

and equal in Conditions 1 and 3 was not conreg rmed by our reading time data at Region 3

Although there was a slight trend towards longer reading times of the ambiguous PP in

the ``two-argument verb at VP1rsquo rsquo condition this trend fell short of signireg cance S imilarly

the same trend is apparent in the pattern of results at Region 4 but again the differences

did not reach signireg cance

T he results of this experiment also speak against an interpretation of the results of the

two previous experiments based on plausibility T he materials of this experiment were

counterbalanced in such a way that every verb appeared equally often at VP1 and VP2

positions in the ambiguous conditions T herefore the possibility of verb-specireg c biases

due to pragmatic reasons was directly tested and discarded on the basis of our data As

Table 4 and Examples Gplusmn J show Conditions 1 and 3 share the same verbs at the VP1 slot

and Conditions 1 and 4 do so at the VP2 slot If the readersrsquo attachment decisions were

grounded on the plausibility of specireg c VPplusmn PP sequences (or for that matter on the co-

occurrence frequencies of specireg c VPplusmn PP sequences) we should have obtained similar

reading times in Conditions 1 and 3 or 1 and 4 (depending on the direction of the verb

biases) and different reading times in conditions 1 and 2 where the same verbs were used

at different VP slots However this was not the observed pattern of results

T herefore the most sensible interpretation of our results is that low attachment is the

preferred choice in early parsing decisions as revealed through reading time measures in

the self-paced reading task As we have previously stated this preference squares with the

predictions laid down by both principle-grounded models of human parsing and tuning

accounts of attachment preferences but they contradict the expectations based on lexi-

cally grounded theories to the extent that these theories assert that the attachment

choices are primarily driven by the structural and thematic properties of lexical items

particularly lexical heads of phrases and the availability of alternative lexical representa-

tions as determined by frequency

GENERAL DISCUSSION

T he main conclusions of this study may be summarized as follows First Spanish readers

clearly prefer a low attachment (VP2) over a high attachment (VP1) of an ambiguous

object-PP thus following the late closure principle proposed by the garden-path and

construal theories for these kinds of ambiguous structures T his conclusion is supported


by the reg nding that ambiguous PPs that have two potential attachment hosts were read as

quickly as were low-attached unambiguous PPs In contrast unambiguous PPs that have

to be attached high to the main verb of the sentence took longer to read At the same time

these results are compatible with a tuning account that claims that attachment preferences

are based on the readerrsquo s previous experience with the most common structures in his

her own language Frequency records have shown that in Spanish low-attached PPs are

much more usual than high-attached PPs in VP1plusmn XPplusmn VP2plusmn PP structures

On the other hand the results reported in this paper are more difreg cult to reconcile

with lexically based theories of sentence parsing According to these theories parsing

decisions are guided by the properties of individual verbs and by the relative ``strengthrsquo rsquo

of the alternative verb forms as they are used in the language (Ford et al 1982) T hus in

the present circumstances a preference for low attachment would only have been possible

if there had been a bias in the distribution of verbs such that verbs with a preferred ` two-

argument structurersquo rsquo should have predominated at VP2 position and verbs with a

preferred `òne-argument structurersquo rsquo should have predominated at VP1 position T he

results of the second corpus study show that the opposite was the case VP2 verbs

were signireg cantly biased towards taking a single argument in comparison with VP1 verbs

T his marked tendency seems to have been unable to override the attachment preference

based on syntactic information alone Moreover the results of Experiment 4 in which

argument structure preferences were manipulated show that the low-attachment prefer-

ence previously found obtains for both one-argument or two-argument-biased verbs at

VP2 position

Furthermore we have found evidence that attachment decisions in Spanish may vary

according to the kind of relationship that the constituent to be attached holds with its

potential hosts As the results of the questionnaire study indicate late closure preferences

seem to be more dominant in attachment to VPs than to NPs and in primary syntactic

relations than in nonprimary ones Off-line questionnaire judgements on attachment

preferences revealed that attachment decisions for relative clauses are highly dependent

on the thematic relations between the two potential NP-hosts of the ambiguous RC

replicating previous results obtained in Spanish by Gilboy et al (1995) Moreover

when subjects have to decide whether to attach an ambiguous PP to a more recent NP

or to a more distant VP their decision appears to depend on the kind of relationship

between the PP and its potential hosts when the prepositional head assigns a thematic

role to the PP (as with preposition ` conrsquo rsquo [with]) the PP is construed as a potential

modireg er of the previous NP thus standing in a nonprimary relation to it and as a

potential argument of the VP In this case the preference is to attach the PP as an

argument of the VP instead of as a modireg er of the more recent NP In this latter case

the recency preference is overridden by predicate proximity On the other hand attach-

ment preferences seem to be unstable when the PP can be attached as argument of both

VP and NP (ie stands in a primary relationship to either of them) T his appears to be the

case when the prepositional head of the PP does not assign a specireg c thematic role to it

(ie the preposition ` dersquo rsquo [of] ) In this case the expected recency effect appears not to be

able to override other conmacr icting sources of attachment preference

Nevertheless a word of caution is in order when interpreting the results of the VPplusmn NP

attachment sentences First the sharp distinction that has been drawn between


prepositional heads as to their ability to assign thematic roles is far from clear T he

Spanish preposition ``dersquo rsquo is especially ambiguous as to the kind of thematic roles it

may assign to its complements which obviously does not entail that it does not assign

any thematic roles at all it is sometimes used to assign the thematic role of possessor

whereas in other cases it is used to introduce modireg er phrases Similarly the preposition

` conrsquo rsquo may assign a range of different thematic roles (instrument accompaniment

manner etc) whereas it is used less often to introduce modireg er phrases (see FernaAcirc ndez

Lagunilla amp Anula 1995 for a discussion) T herefore the mere distinction between

prepositional heads does not necessarily lead to a parallel distinction between primary

and nonprimary phrases Second there is a complexity factor in the attachment of PPs to

VPplusmn NP constructions in Spanish as the low-attachment alternative entails the postula-

tion of an N 9 node between the bottom node N and the higher NP node whereas the

attachment of the PP can be made directly to the VP node T hus it can be argued that

attachment decisions of this sort appeal to parsing principles other than late closure such

as minimal attachment

Turning to the main results reported in this paper the observed preference for low

attachment in VP1plusmn XPplusmn VP2plusmn PP structures in Spanish deserves some additional com-

ments First and foremost the results of our three experiments and of our two corpus

studies seem to rule out an explanation that postulates lexical factors as the source of

initial parsing decisions However they cannot discriminate between principle-grounded

accounts based on universal parsing principles and frequency-based explanations that

involve the readersrsquo experience with structures of a particular language such as

linguistic tuning Still there are two possible ways to pursue the origin of the late

closure preference for attachments to VPs as those examined in this paper One is to

investigate whether late closure preferences apply to all kinds of PPs irrespective of

their being primary or nonprimary phrases According to construal theory only

argument-PPs and not PPs that are adjuncts or modireg ers of a VP should be imme-

diately attached to their VP-hosts However corpus data have shown that low attached

PPs are most frequent in the Spanish language both as arguments and as adjuncts

T hus for Construal theory to be right a different pattern of results from that found in

our experiments with argument-PPs should be obtained with nonargument-PPs We are

currently investigating this issue

T he other line of research is to reg nd out whether low-attachment decisions involving

argument-PPs are sensitive to structural distinctions that cannot possibly be captured by a

coarse-grained measure of structural frequency such as the one proposed by the tuning

hypothesis In particular if it could be demonstrated that ambiguous PPs that are

syntactically disambiguated are more readily attached to the closest VP than ambiguous

PPs that are semantically or pragmatically disambiguated this evidence would be difreg cult

to accommodate in a linguistic tuning account A recent study we have conducted with an

eyetracking procedure shows that this seems to be the case (Carreiras Igoa amp Meseguer

1996)

It seems beyond dispute that the results of our experiments are easily accommodated

by principle-grounded accounts of sentence parsing In particular they square with the

predictions laid down by the garden-path and construal theories However there are other

principle-based theories of sentence parsing that abide by the principle-based approach


and which might also explain our results We will briemacr y refer to two of these models

Gibsonrsquos parsing model for instance postulates an interplay between two factors in the

resolution of attachment ambiguities Recency understood as a universal parsing prin-

ciple that follows from properties of human working memory and Predicate Proximity a

secondary modulating factor that is parameterized across languages T he relative weight-

ing of these two factors in particular languages accounts for cross-linguistic differences in

attachment of RCs to complex NPs (Gibson et al 1996) However in attachments to VPs

the recency and predicate proximity theory predicts a preference ordering among attach-

ments based entirely on recency since according to its proponents predicate proximity

has no effect on competing VP sites

Another principle-based theory of human sentence parsing that may also account for

our results is the ``parameterized head attachment modelrsquo rsquo (PHA Konieczny Hemforth

Scheepers amp Strube 1994 for evidence and an extensive discussion see Konieczny

1996) T his model belongs to the class of models that claim that the parsing principles

used in sentence processing should incorporate information sources other than the struc-

tural ones postulated by the garden-path model PHA has been proposed as a weakly

interactive reg rst analysis model that assumes that attachment decisions are guided by the

availability of lexical heads on the sentence surface as well as their lexical properties

Contrary to garden-path and construal it is a lexically-driven sentence parser Despite its

differences with these models PHA shares with them its emphasis on syntactically

grounded parsing principles

PHA proposes three ordered parsing principles (see Konieczny et al 1994 Scheepers

Hemforth amp Konieczny 1994) that prima facie make the same predictions as garden-

path construal for VPplusmn XPplusmn VPplusmn PP structuresETH namely late closure According to the

``head attachmentrsquo rsquo principle of the PHA model the ambiguous constituent should be

attached to a phrase with its lexical head already read in our critical sentences there are

two lexical heads available the main and the subordinate verb T he second principle

labelled ``preferred role attachmentrsquo rsquo states that the ambiguous constituent should be

attached to a phrase whose head provides a requested role for it however both VP1 and

VP2 are as likely to provide this requested role Finally the ` recent head attachmentrsquo rsquo

principle which operates in default cases such as our experimental sentences states that

the ambiguous constituent should be attached to the phrase whose head was read most

recently and this is VP2 So this parsing principle favours late closure for the kind of

ambiguous materials we have studied

A reg nal point concerns the difference between on-line initial decisions and off- line reg nal

decisions in attachment ambiguities Although this issue has not been explicitly addressed

in our study and notwithstanding the fact that off- line judgement data cannot be directly

compared with on-line reading time measures it is worth noting that the strong bias

towards low attachment remacr ected in reading time data and frequency records appears to

be much more attenuated when subjects made conscious judgements on the resolution of

attachment ambiguities in VP1plusmn XP plusmn VP2plusmn PP structures Recall that low-attachment

choices were favoured in 59 of cases against 41 for the high-attachment choices

T his contrasts sharply with the 85 reg gure of low-attachment sentences found in the reg rst

corpus study reported in this paper and with the garden-path-like effect found in the

high-attachment sentences of our experiments T his observation is consistent with the


claim that frequency biases operate in the initial stages of parsing before other pragmatic

and discourse-based constraints are brought into play to arrive at a reg nal interpretation of

the sentence

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129plusmn 144

Alameda JR amp Cuetos F (1995) Corpus de textos escritos del espanAuml ol Unpublished manuscript

Universidad de Oviedo

Bates E amp MacWhinney B (1989) Functionalism and the competition model In B MacWhinney amp

E Bates (Eds) The cross-linguistic study of sentence processing New York Cambridge University Press

Brysbaert M amp Mitchell DC (1996) Modireg er attachment in sentence parsing Evidence from Dutch

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 49A 664plusmn 695

Carreiras M (1992) Estrategias de anaAcirc lisis sintaAcirc ctico en el procesamiento de frases Cierre temprano

versus cierre tardotildeAcirc o Cognitiva 4 3plusmn 27

Carreiras M (1995) Inmacr uencia de las propiedades del verbo en la comprensioAcirc n de frases In M

Carretero J Almaraz amp P FernaAcirc ndez-Berrocal (Eds) Razonamiento y comprensioAcirc n Madrid Trotta

Carreiras M amp Clifton C Jr (1993) Relative clause interpretation preferences in Spanish and English

Language and Speech 36 353plusmn 372

Carreiras M Igoa JM amp Meseguer E (1996) Is the linguistic tuning hypothesis out of tune

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the Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing (AMLaP) Turin Italy

September

Clifton C Jr Frazier L amp Connine C (1984) Lexical expectations in sentence comprehension

Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 23 696plusmn 708

Cuetos F amp Mitchell DC (1988) Cross-linguistic differences in parsing Restrictions on the use of the

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Cuetos F Mitchell DC amp Corley M (1996) Parsing in different languages In M Carreiras

JE GarcotildeAcirc a-Albea amp N SebastiaAcirc n-GalleAcirc s (Eds) Language processing in Spanish Mahwah NJ

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc

De Vincenzi M amp Job R (1993) Some observations on the universality of the late closure strategy

Evidence from Italian Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 22 189plusmn 206

De Vincenzi M amp Job R (1995) An investigation of late closure T he role of syntax thematic

structure and pragmatics in initial and reg nal interpretation Journal of Experimental Psychology

Learning Memory and Cognition 21 1plusmn 19

FernaAcirc ndez Lagunilla M amp Anula A (1995) Sintaxis y cognicioAcirc n Madrid Trotta

Ferreira F amp Clifton C Jr (1986) T he independence of syntactic processing Journal of Memory and

Language 25 348plusmn 368

Ferreira F amp Henderson JM (1990) Use of verb information during syntactic parsing Evidence from

eye-movements and word-by-word self-paced reading Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning

Memory and Cognition 16 555plusmn 568

Ford M Bresnan J amp Kaplan RM (1982) A competence-based theory of syntactic closure In

J Bresnand (Ed) The mental representation of grammatical relations Cambridge MA MIT Press

Frazier L (1987) Sentence processing A tutorial review In M Coltheart (Ed) Attention and perfor-

mance Vol XII The psychology of reading Hillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc

Frazier L amp Clifton C Jr (1996) Construal Cambridge MA MIT Press

Garnsey SM Pearlmutter NJ Myers E amp Lotocky MA (1997) The contributions of verb bias

and plausibility to the comprehension of temporarily ambiguous sentences Journal of Memory and


Gibson E amp Pearlmutter NJ (1994) A corpus-based analysis of psycholinguistic constraints on


prepositional phrase attachment In C Clifton Jr L Frazier amp K Rayner (Eds) Perspectiv es on

sentence processing Hillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc

Gibson E Pearlmutter NJ Canseco-GonzaAcirc lez E amp Hickok G (1996) Recency preference in the

human sentence processing mechanism Cognition 59 23plusmn 59

Gilboy E Sopena JM Clifton C amp Frazier L (1995) Argument structure and association

preferences in Spanish and English complex NPs Cognition 54 131plusmn 167

Hemforth B Konieczny L amp Scheepers C (1994) Principle-based or probabilistic approaches to

human sentence processing In First analysis reanalysis and repair IIG-Berichte 8 94 Albert-Ludwigs

UniversitaEgrave t Freiburg Germany

Juliano C amp Tanenhaus M (1993) Contigent frequency effects in syntactic ambiguity resolution In

Proceedings of the 15th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp 593plusmn 598) Hillsdale NJ


Konieczny L (1996) Human sentence processing A semantics-oriented parsing approach

Unpublished PhD Albert-Ludwigs UniversitaEgrave t Freiburg Germany

Konieczny L Hemforth B Scheepers C amp Strube G (1994) Semantics-oriented syntax processing

In S Felix C Habel amp G Rickheit (Eds) Kognitive Linguistik RepraEgrave sentationen und Prozesse

Opladen Westdeutscher Verlag

MacDonald MC (1994) Probabilistic constraints and syntactic ambiguity resolution Language and

Cognitive Processes 9 157plusmn 201

MacDonald MC Pearlmutter NJ amp Seidenberg MS (1994a) T he lexical basis of syntactic

ambiguity resolution Psychological Review 101 676plusmn 703

MacDonald MC Pearlmutter NJ amp Seidenberg MS (1994b) Syntactic ambiguity resolution as

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processing Hillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc

Mitchell DC (1987) Lexical guidance in human parsing Locus and processing characteristics In

M Coltheart (Ed) Attention and performance Vol XII The psychology of reading Hillsdale NJ


Mitchell DC amp Cuetos F (1991) T he origins of parsing strategies In C Smith (Ed) Current issues in

natural language processing Austin TX Center for Cognitive Science University of Texas

Mitchell DC Cuetos F Corley M amp Brysbaert M (1995) Exposure-based models of human

parsing Evidence for the use of coarse-grained (non-lexical) statistical records Journal of Psycho-

linguistic Research 24 469plusmn 488

Mitchell DC Cuetos F amp Zagar D (1990) Reading in different languages Is there a universal

mechanism for parsing sentences In DA Balota GB Flores drsquo Arcais amp K Rayner (Eds)

Comprehension processes in reading Hillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc

Pritchett B (1988) Garden-path phenomena and the grammatical basis of language processing


Rayner K Carlson M amp Frazier L (1983) T he interaction of syntax and semantics during sentence

processing Eye movements in the analysis of semantically biased sentences Journal of Verbal Learning

and Verbal Behavior 22 358plusmn 374

Scheepers C Hemforth B amp Konieczny L (1994) Resolving NP-attachment ambiguities in German

verb- reg nal constructions In First analysis reanalysis and repair IIG-Berichte 8 94 Albert-Ludwigs


Spivey-Knowlton MJ Trueswell JC amp Tanenhaus MK (1993) Context effects in syntactic ambi-

guity resolution Discourse and semantic inmacr uences in parsing reduced relative clauses Canadian

Journal of Experimental Psychology 47 276plusmn 309

Taraban R amp McClelland JL (1988) Constituent attachment and thematic role assignment in

sentence processing Inmacr uences of content-based expectations Journal of Memory and Language

27 597plusmn 632

Trueswell JC (1996) T he role of lexical frequency in syntactic ambiguity resolution Journal of

Memory and Language 35 566plusmn 585

Trueswell JC amp Tanenhaus MK (1994) Toward a lexicalist framework of constraint-based syntactic


ambiguity resolution In C Clifton Jr L Frazier amp K Rayner (Eds) Perspectives on sentence


Trueswell JC Tanenhaus MK amp Garnsey SM (1994) Semantic inmacr uences on parsing Use of

thematic role information in syntactic ambiguity resolution Journal of Memory and Language 33

285plusmn 318

Trueswell JC Tanenhaus MK amp Kello C (1993) Verb-specireg c constraints in sentence processing

Separating effects of lexical preference from garden-paths Journal of Experimental Psychology


Original manuscript received 13 August 1996

Accepted revision received 3 November 1997


particularly how the words identireg ed in the string should be labelled and grouped together

in phrases and how each incoming phrase should be attached to the fragment of the

sentence that has been previously parsed A major concern of psycholinguistic research

on sentence parsing is to reg nd out the grounds on which attachment decisions are made and

whether or not there are general procedures for carrying out this task T he empirical

literature on attachment decisions in parsing has shown that readers express consistent

interpretation preferences when they come across a sentence that contains more than one

possible attachment site for a given phrase Such sentences create local syntactic ambi-

guities that the reader must overcome in order to provide a sensible interpretation of the

message However such local ambiguities very seldom disrupt the interpretation processes

in reading which entails either that readers keep track of all possible parses simultaneously

and subsequently choose one of them or that they are initially biased towards one of the

available parses of the sentence How is this accomplished

Some theories of sentence parsing claim that attachment ambiguities are resolved

through the application of a reg xed and universal set of parsing strategies or principles

that favour those choices that minimize the processing load of the parser T his is what we

call the principle-grounded accounts of sentence parsing On this account when building

the phrase structure of the sentence the parser operates by following structurally moti-

vated principles that favour those structures that show the simplest geometry thereby

ignoring in principle any constraints that may stem from other sources of information

such as the discourse context the properties of individual lexical items in the sentence or

the frequency of occurrence of the alternative parses in the language of the input

Strategies such as ``minimal attachmentrsquo rsquo and ``late closurersquo rsquo have been proposed by

principle-grounded theories like the Garden-path T heory of human parsing (Frazier

1987 Rayner Carlson amp Frazier 1983) and to a more limited extent by the recently

launched Construal T heory (Frazier amp Clifton 1996 Gilboy Sopena Clifton amp Frazier

1995)

A great deal of research has been devoted to testing the universality of these parsing

strategies and more importantly to exploring the constraints under which they operate

As a consequence the claims of the garden-path and construal theories have been criti-

cized on two different grounds reg rst it is far from clear that minimal attachment and late

closure apply across the boardETH that is in all languages that have been examined so far

and irrespective of nonsyntactic constraints such as the ones listed above second the

reasons why readers tend to comply with these strategies might not be those envisaged by

their proponents (ie computational efreg ciency) but quite different reasons such as the

readerrsquo s past experience with the syntactic structures of his her own language (Cuetos

Mitchell amp Corley 1996 Mitchell amp Cuetos 1991) the preference for syntactic frames

that are most commonly associated with the heads of phrases or with the predicates of

sentences (Ford Bresnan amp Kaplan 1982) or the constraints given by the pragmatic

presuppositions of the previous discourse or by the readerrsquos world knowledge

T his criticism has led to the two alternative theoretical proposals to the garden-path

construal theories that are examined in this paper One is the linguistic tuning hypothesis

which claims that parsing strategies are selected for use on the basis of the readerrsquos

previous contact with the language (Cuetos Mitchell amp Corley 1996 Mitchell amp Cuetos

1991) On this account readers will not necessarily favour the computationally simplest









parses

























































































Mitchell 1996)












Parsing


























































































Spanish


































Method

Subjects





Materials






































house]















al 1995 study)








will win the race]













Results























Experiments 1 and 2


Closure Choices

Choices



















Discussion

































































paper







decisions


EXPERIMENT 2

Method

Subjects



sort





(A) Ambiguous-PP





(Example C)

(B) VP1-attachment



(C) VP2-attachment










subject design
























Results













Discussion




























EXPERIMENT 3

Method

Subjects


































(D) Ambiguous-PP



before]

(E) VP1-attachment



(F) VP2-attachment





Experiment 2






Results



















Discussion

















complements














possibilities


CORPUS STUDIES































separately

















POR LAS AXILAS



by the armpits]



A SU SUCESOR

[Not to meetVP1


(to) his successor]

(14) SoyV P1



[I amVP 1


(with) his duties]















attachments




Modireg er VP1 6 45

VP2 115 845

Ambiguous 15 110

136 100

Argument VP1 2 85

VP2 21 875

Ambiguous 1 40

24 100


































shown in Table 32











possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318














parses

























































































Mitchell 1996)












Parsing


























































































Spanish


































Method

Subjects





Materials






































house]















al 1995 study)








will win the race]













Results























Experiments 1 and 2


Closure Choices

Choices



















Discussion

































































paper







decisions


EXPERIMENT 2

Method

Subjects



sort





(A) Ambiguous-PP





(Example C)

(B) VP1-attachment



(C) VP2-attachment










subject design
























Results













Discussion




























EXPERIMENT 3

Method

Subjects


































(D) Ambiguous-PP



before]

(E) VP1-attachment



(F) VP2-attachment





Experiment 2






Results



















Discussion

















complements














possibilities


CORPUS STUDIES































separately

















POR LAS AXILAS



by the armpits]



A SU SUCESOR

[Not to meetVP1


(to) his successor]

(14) SoyV P1



[I amVP 1


(with) his duties]















attachments




Modireg er VP1 6 45

VP2 115 845

Ambiguous 15 110

136 100

Argument VP1 2 85

VP2 21 875

Ambiguous 1 40

24 100


































shown in Table 32











possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318

























































Mitchell 1996)












Parsing


























































































Spanish


































Method

Subjects





Materials






































house]















al 1995 study)








will win the race]













Results























Experiments 1 and 2


Closure Choices

Choices



















Discussion

































































paper







decisions


EXPERIMENT 2

Method

Subjects



sort





(A) Ambiguous-PP





(Example C)

(B) VP1-attachment



(C) VP2-attachment










subject design
























Results













Discussion




























EXPERIMENT 3

Method

Subjects


































(D) Ambiguous-PP



before]

(E) VP1-attachment



(F) VP2-attachment





Experiment 2






Results



















Discussion

















complements














possibilities


CORPUS STUDIES































separately

















POR LAS AXILAS



by the armpits]



A SU SUCESOR

[Not to meetVP1


(to) his successor]

(14) SoyV P1



[I amVP 1


(with) his duties]















attachments




Modireg er VP1 6 45

VP2 115 845

Ambiguous 15 110

136 100

Argument VP1 2 85

VP2 21 875

Ambiguous 1 40

24 100


































shown in Table 32











possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318





































































Spanish


































Method

Subjects





Materials






































house]















al 1995 study)








will win the race]













Results























Experiments 1 and 2


Closure Choices

Choices



















Discussion

































































paper







decisions


EXPERIMENT 2

Method

Subjects



sort





(A) Ambiguous-PP





(Example C)

(B) VP1-attachment



(C) VP2-attachment










subject design
























Results













Discussion




























EXPERIMENT 3

Method

Subjects


































(D) Ambiguous-PP



before]

(E) VP1-attachment



(F) VP2-attachment





Experiment 2






Results



















Discussion

















complements














possibilities


CORPUS STUDIES































separately

















POR LAS AXILAS



by the armpits]



A SU SUCESOR

[Not to meetVP1


(to) his successor]

(14) SoyV P1



[I amVP 1


(with) his duties]















attachments




Modireg er VP1 6 45

VP2 115 845

Ambiguous 15 110

136 100

Argument VP1 2 85

VP2 21 875

Ambiguous 1 40

24 100


































shown in Table 32











possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318













Method

Subjects





Materials






































house]















al 1995 study)








will win the race]













Results























Experiments 1 and 2


Closure Choices

Choices



















Discussion

































































paper







decisions


EXPERIMENT 2

Method

Subjects



sort





(A) Ambiguous-PP





(Example C)

(B) VP1-attachment



(C) VP2-attachment










subject design
























Results













Discussion




























EXPERIMENT 3

Method

Subjects


































(D) Ambiguous-PP



before]

(E) VP1-attachment



(F) VP2-attachment





Experiment 2






Results



















Discussion

















complements














possibilities


CORPUS STUDIES































separately

















POR LAS AXILAS



by the armpits]



A SU SUCESOR

[Not to meetVP1


(to) his successor]

(14) SoyV P1



[I amVP 1


(with) his duties]















attachments




Modireg er VP1 6 45

VP2 115 845

Ambiguous 15 110

136 100

Argument VP1 2 85

VP2 21 875

Ambiguous 1 40

24 100


































shown in Table 32











possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318





















house]















al 1995 study)








will win the race]













Results























Experiments 1 and 2


Closure Choices

Choices



















Discussion

































































paper







decisions


EXPERIMENT 2

Method

Subjects



sort





(A) Ambiguous-PP





(Example C)

(B) VP1-attachment



(C) VP2-attachment










subject design
























Results













Discussion




























EXPERIMENT 3

Method

Subjects


































(D) Ambiguous-PP



before]

(E) VP1-attachment



(F) VP2-attachment





Experiment 2






Results



















Discussion

















complements














possibilities


CORPUS STUDIES































separately

















POR LAS AXILAS



by the armpits]



A SU SUCESOR

[Not to meetVP1


(to) his successor]

(14) SoyV P1



[I amVP 1


(with) his duties]















attachments




Modireg er VP1 6 45

VP2 115 845

Ambiguous 15 110

136 100

Argument VP1 2 85

VP2 21 875

Ambiguous 1 40

24 100


































shown in Table 32











possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318














Results























Experiments 1 and 2


Closure Choices

Choices



















Discussion

































































paper







decisions


EXPERIMENT 2

Method

Subjects



sort





(A) Ambiguous-PP





(Example C)

(B) VP1-attachment



(C) VP2-attachment










subject design
























Results













Discussion




























EXPERIMENT 3

Method

Subjects


































(D) Ambiguous-PP



before]

(E) VP1-attachment



(F) VP2-attachment





Experiment 2






Results



















Discussion

















complements














possibilities


CORPUS STUDIES































separately

















POR LAS AXILAS



by the armpits]



A SU SUCESOR

[Not to meetVP1


(to) his successor]

(14) SoyV P1



[I amVP 1


(with) his duties]















attachments




Modireg er VP1 6 45

VP2 115 845

Ambiguous 15 110

136 100

Argument VP1 2 85

VP2 21 875

Ambiguous 1 40

24 100


































shown in Table 32











possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318

















Discussion

































































paper







decisions


EXPERIMENT 2

Method

Subjects



sort





(A) Ambiguous-PP





(Example C)

(B) VP1-attachment



(C) VP2-attachment










subject design
























Results













Discussion




























EXPERIMENT 3

Method

Subjects


































(D) Ambiguous-PP



before]

(E) VP1-attachment



(F) VP2-attachment





Experiment 2






Results



















Discussion

















complements














possibilities


CORPUS STUDIES































separately

















POR LAS AXILAS



by the armpits]



A SU SUCESOR

[Not to meetVP1


(to) his successor]

(14) SoyV P1



[I amVP 1


(with) his duties]















attachments




Modireg er VP1 6 45

VP2 115 845

Ambiguous 15 110

136 100

Argument VP1 2 85

VP2 21 875

Ambiguous 1 40

24 100


































shown in Table 32











possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318






































paper







decisions


EXPERIMENT 2

Method

Subjects



sort





(A) Ambiguous-PP





(Example C)

(B) VP1-attachment



(C) VP2-attachment










subject design
























Results













Discussion




























EXPERIMENT 3

Method

Subjects


































(D) Ambiguous-PP



before]

(E) VP1-attachment



(F) VP2-attachment





Experiment 2






Results



















Discussion

















complements














possibilities


CORPUS STUDIES































separately

















POR LAS AXILAS



by the armpits]



A SU SUCESOR

[Not to meetVP1


(to) his successor]

(14) SoyV P1



[I amVP 1


(with) his duties]















attachments




Modireg er VP1 6 45

VP2 115 845

Ambiguous 15 110

136 100

Argument VP1 2 85

VP2 21 875

Ambiguous 1 40

24 100


































shown in Table 32











possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318







EXPERIMENT 2

Method

Subjects



sort





(A) Ambiguous-PP





(Example C)

(B) VP1-attachment



(C) VP2-attachment










subject design
























Results













Discussion




























EXPERIMENT 3

Method

Subjects


































(D) Ambiguous-PP



before]

(E) VP1-attachment



(F) VP2-attachment





Experiment 2






Results



















Discussion

















complements














possibilities


CORPUS STUDIES































separately

















POR LAS AXILAS



by the armpits]



A SU SUCESOR

[Not to meetVP1


(to) his successor]

(14) SoyV P1



[I amVP 1


(with) his duties]















attachments




Modireg er VP1 6 45

VP2 115 845

Ambiguous 15 110

136 100

Argument VP1 2 85

VP2 21 875

Ambiguous 1 40

24 100


































shown in Table 32











possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318
























Results













Discussion




























EXPERIMENT 3

Method

Subjects


































(D) Ambiguous-PP



before]

(E) VP1-attachment



(F) VP2-attachment





Experiment 2






Results



















Discussion

















complements














possibilities


CORPUS STUDIES































separately

















POR LAS AXILAS



by the armpits]



A SU SUCESOR

[Not to meetVP1


(to) his successor]

(14) SoyV P1



[I amVP 1


(with) his duties]















attachments




Modireg er VP1 6 45

VP2 115 845

Ambiguous 15 110

136 100

Argument VP1 2 85

VP2 21 875

Ambiguous 1 40

24 100


































shown in Table 32











possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318























EXPERIMENT 3

Method

Subjects


































(D) Ambiguous-PP



before]

(E) VP1-attachment



(F) VP2-attachment





Experiment 2






Results



















Discussion

















complements














possibilities


CORPUS STUDIES































separately

















POR LAS AXILAS



by the armpits]



A SU SUCESOR

[Not to meetVP1


(to) his successor]

(14) SoyV P1



[I amVP 1


(with) his duties]















attachments




Modireg er VP1 6 45

VP2 115 845

Ambiguous 15 110

136 100

Argument VP1 2 85

VP2 21 875

Ambiguous 1 40

24 100


































shown in Table 32











possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318


















(D) Ambiguous-PP



before]

(E) VP1-attachment



(F) VP2-attachment





Experiment 2






Results



















Discussion

















complements














possibilities


CORPUS STUDIES































separately

















POR LAS AXILAS



by the armpits]



A SU SUCESOR

[Not to meetVP1


(to) his successor]

(14) SoyV P1



[I amVP 1


(with) his duties]















attachments




Modireg er VP1 6 45

VP2 115 845

Ambiguous 15 110

136 100

Argument VP1 2 85

VP2 21 875

Ambiguous 1 40

24 100


































shown in Table 32











possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318
















Discussion

















complements














possibilities


CORPUS STUDIES































separately

















POR LAS AXILAS



by the armpits]



A SU SUCESOR

[Not to meetVP1


(to) his successor]

(14) SoyV P1



[I amVP 1


(with) his duties]















attachments




Modireg er VP1 6 45

VP2 115 845

Ambiguous 15 110

136 100

Argument VP1 2 85

VP2 21 875

Ambiguous 1 40

24 100


































shown in Table 32











possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318







CORPUS STUDIES































separately

















POR LAS AXILAS



by the armpits]



A SU SUCESOR

[Not to meetVP1


(to) his successor]

(14) SoyV P1



[I amVP 1


(with) his duties]















attachments




Modireg er VP1 6 45

VP2 115 845

Ambiguous 15 110

136 100

Argument VP1 2 85

VP2 21 875

Ambiguous 1 40

24 100


































shown in Table 32











possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318












POR LAS AXILAS



by the armpits]



A SU SUCESOR

[Not to meetVP1


(to) his successor]

(14) SoyV P1



[I amVP 1


(with) his duties]















attachments




Modireg er VP1 6 45

VP2 115 845

Ambiguous 15 110

136 100

Argument VP1 2 85

VP2 21 875

Ambiguous 1 40

24 100


































shown in Table 32











possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318








































shown in Table 32











possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318








possible3





(2) = 11353 p lt 001] VP2 verbs were






have predicted














N N N

2 Main (VP1) 479 (49) 318 (32) 188 (19)

Subordinate (VP2) 687 (63) 238 (22) 159 (15)

1166 (56) 556 (27) 347 (17)

3 Main (VP1) 374 (40) 419 (45) 138 (15)

Subordinate (VP2) 683 (61) 238 (24) 159 (15)

1057 (52) 657 (33) 297 (15)














































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318












































position)







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318







EXPERIMENT 4







































Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318







Method

Subjects

















(I) VP1-attachment



( J) VP2-attachment























c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318










c 2(1) = 18172 p lt 001








Results
























Discussion











































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318













































GENERAL DISCUSSION



























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318




























VP2 position

































































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318















































1996)






















































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318























































the sentence

REFERENCES


129plusmn 144
















September













































































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318























































27 597plusmn 632









285plusmn 318











285plusmn 318







A Stu d y on Late Closu re in Sp an ish : Prin cip le-g rou n d ed v s. Freq u en cy-b ased Accou n...

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Transcript of A Stu d y on Late Closu re in Sp an ish : Prin cip le-g rou n d ed v s. Freq u en cy-b ased Accou n...