– 5 –Sentence:

Comprehension and Memory

Kuntum Trilestari (20112506002)

PsycholinguisticsDr. Tahrun, M.Pd.Dr. Bambang A. Loenetto, M.A.

Sentence and Clause as Unit

In syntactic structure

A sentence is the top-level constituent A subject - a predicate

In content

A sentence expresses one complete thought A topic – a comment

In physical appearance

A written sentence

A spoken sentenceCapital letter – period

High pitch – lengthened sound and pause

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Sentence and Clause as Unit

Example:• After the cook stole the women’s bag...• Meeting the pretty young girl...

Clauses are perceptual units

Whether a clause is complete or not affects its

effectiviness as a unit

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Phrase and Word as Unit

Sentence

Clause

Phrase

Word

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Consists of a few content words Frequency, length,

and importance of a word affect how it

is processed

Example:I know that (the/this)... desert trains young people to be especially tough

Case-Role Assignment

• Case-role assignment in English is based partly on the syntactic factor of word order.

NVN = SVO = AAP(NOUN-VERB-NOUN) (SUBJECT-VERB-OBJECT) (AGENT-ACTION-PATIENT)

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Words are represented as many semantic microfeatures:

NOUN: HUMAN (human or nonhuman), Gender (male, female, neutral)

VERB: DOER (yes or no), CAUSE (yes, no-cause, no-change)

Subject – Verb Processing

An interpreter must find and relate the subject

and its verb.

Example:

• The girl standing beside the lady had a blue dress.

• The dog teased the cat that chased the rat that ran.

• The rat that the cat that the dog teased chased ran.

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Relative Frequency of Sentence Structures

SAADs (Simple – Affirmative – Active –

Declarative)

Common used

assert new information with the least

presupposition.

Example:

He read the book.

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Negative Sentence

Take longer to process

Syntactically more complex

Processed in two stages

Its many possible meaning

Cognitively, Semantically, Pragmatically, Syntactically

complex

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Example:

1. John gave Mary a book.

2. John did not give Mary a book

Passive Sentence

Affected by pragmatic

factors

Available in certain contexts

Types of verbs – action vs

stative, “marked or unmarked”

Useful for emphasizing actions and

deemphasizing agents.

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Example: The boy kissed the girl The girl was kissed by the boy

Pragmatic Factor: Plausibility

• e.q: The mother feeds her baby milk

Plausible sentence:

• e.q: The baby feeds its mother milk

Implausible sentence:

• e.q: The baby smiles at the mother• e.q: The mother smiles at the baby

Neutral sentence: PR

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• 1. The patient was treated by the doctor• 2.a. The boy was hit by the girl• 2.b. The girl was hit by the boy

Nonreversible passive:

Semantic Factors

individual content words and their relations in a sentence.

Can be manipulated in the degree to which the content

words in a clause can be integrated

Sentence complex words occur infrequently, have

abstract meaning, ambiguous, novel or complex

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Manipulated test sentence:1. Well integrated. The little boy drank

the milk.2. Poorly integrated. The aunt saw the

door and left.3. Anomalous. My tasty owner spilled

the captain madly.

Syntactic complexity:4. Simple. The boy hit the ball.5. Compound. The boy hit the ball and

ran.6. Complex. After hitting his sister, the

brother cried.7. Scrambled. the ate fat grass green

cattle the.

A Product of Comprehension – A Gist

Extract its message E.q: The housewife killed the cockcroach with insecticide.

Note: The gist of each sentence may be forgotten after it has made contribution to

building a higher-level gist, or mental representation, for a paragraph or a passage

as a whole.

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PARSING STRATEGIES

The structural analysis of a sentence –parsing– sorts out which word or phrase

is the subject, the object, the complement and the modifier, in relation to a verb

A cognitive process and takes up a portion of the limited capasity of working memory during sentence somprehension

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Goal:To analyze a sentence correctly and rapidly, without taxing working memory too heavily

Canonical-sentence strategy

Cannonical NVN = SVO and other cues for parsing

Minimal Attachment & Late Closure

Late-closu

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•Since Jay always jogs a mile and a half this seems like a short distance to him.

•Since Jay always jogs a mile and a half seems like a very short distance to him.

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SMinimal-attachme

nt strategy

•The city council argued the mayor’s position forcefully.

•The city council argued the mayor’s position was incorrect.

Filler – Gap Sentence

2 strategies in filling a gap

A first-resort strategy posits a gap following any verb (transitively) and is not immediately followed by a noun phrase.

A last-resort strategy posits a gap only when a mandatory argument is missing/ when the end of a sentence is reached

and there is till an unassigned filler

1. The businessman knew which customer the secretary called ___ at home.

2. The businessman knew which article the secretary called ___ at home.

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Autonomous Modular Processor

The lexical processor

The structural processor

The interpretive processor

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Retrieves words from the lexicon using only phonological information.

Produces a constituent structure for a sentence using only syntactic

information.

Constructs a representation of the meaning of the sentence, using

knowledge of the world.

Polysemous word: “watch”

I bought the watch I will watch

Pragmatic-Semantic Vs Syntactic Factors

Structural ambiguity can be caused by a faulty arrangement of constituents

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The spy saw the cop with binoculars

The spy saw the cop with a revolver

Example:

Context Effect on Word Recognition

A narrow context

(one domain of discourse)

A strong context

(relevant meaning)

preceding words

sentences situation,

discourse topics,

titles,

headings

as well as preceding and following paragraph, illustration, tables and

the like.

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Sentence Understanding by Computers

Expectation-based conceptual

analysisA parser Scanning words

from Left to right

Categorizing each word for its

class

Applying syntactic and lexical rules

Arriving constituent structure

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Example:

Fred ate an apple

ConclusionA sentence or clause serves a major processing unit.

An interpreter of a sentence must relate the two critical constituents of a sentence (SV)

A SAAD tends to be easier to process.

In interpreting a sentence (structural garden path, syntactic processor) prefers initial and simplest structure, which may turn out to be unparsable and to require reanalysis.A gist is a product of sentence comprehension (key words and its relation)

Theorists have proposed several parsing strategies: canonical NVN = SVO, late closure and minimal attachment.

Three modular of comprehension system: lexical, structural and interpretive processor.

Computer can be programed to understand a limited kind of language.

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