+ Garden Path Sentences

Collection of example sentences. See Frazier (1978) for garden path theory, Frazier & Clifton (1996) for more references.

see also: EssentialReading

++ Table of Contents

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Reduced Relative Clauses

• The horse raced past the barn fell. (prototype of a prefered subject-verb interpretation)
• The boat floated down the river sank. (Bever 1970)
• John knows the horse raced past the barn fell. (Pritchett 1992)
• John believes the horse raced past the barn fell.
• Cotton shirts are made of grows in afrika. (where did that one appear first).
• because Rosa praised the recipe I made ... (prefered relative clause interpretation !!! from Philipps (1996) )
• after may got off the bus she bought ... (prefered subject-verb) how can we predict that
• while I talked with the woman John was ignoring ... (from and Gibson & Broihier (1998))

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Frazier (1979)

• Without her contributions would fail to come in. (strong garden path effect)
• Without her contributions nothing would come in.
• John new the answer was correct. (weaker garden path effect)
• John new the answer immediately.

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Subject-Object Ambiguities

source: Bader Meng (1999), Frazier (1978), Fanselow Schlesewsky Cavar Kliegl (1999)

see also: Bader (1996), Hemforth, Konieczny, Strube (1993), Schriefers, Friederici, Kühn (1995)

• Relative Clauses:
  • Maria erzählt mir von der Frau, die (subj) die Eltern angerufen hat. (prefered S-O-reading)
  • Maria erzählt mir von der Frau, die (obj) die Eltern angerufen haben. (garden path)
• Wh questions:
  • Die Direktorin hat gefragt, welche Lehrerin_i t_i einige der Kollegen angerufen hat.
  • Die Direktorin hat gefragt, welche Lehrerin_i einige der Kollegen t_i angerufen haben.
• Pronoun movement:
  • Die Direktorin hat erzählt, dass sie einige der Kollegen angerufen hat.
  • Die Direktorin hat erzählt, dass sie einige der Kollegen angerufen haben.
• Scrambling:
  • Die Direktorin hat erzählt, dass die neue Lehrerin einige der Kollegen angerufen hat.
  • Die Direktorin hat erzählt, dass die neue Lehrerin einige der Kollegen angerufen haben.
• late closure effects:
  • she found out the answer to the physics problem quickly. (prefered reading)
  • she found out the answer to the physics problem was easy. (garden path)
  • while Mary was mending the socks she fell asleep.
  • while Mary was mending the socks fell of her lap.

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Subject-Complement Ambiguity

source: Frazier (1978)

• in this race to touch the wire she will win. (no problem)
• in this race to touch the wire is to die. (garden path)
• without her stupid remarks this paper would have been much better. (no problem)
• without her stupid remarks would not have been eliminated from the paper. (garden path)

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PP Attachment Ambiguities

• move the pages of|off the pile ... and over to Jim
• move the pages of|off the table
• move the block on the table to the front

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Preposition-Postposition Ambiguities

• ... dass [PP Fritz zugunsten] von Maria etwas unternommen worden ist.
• ... dass Fritz [PP zugunsten von Maria] etwas unternommen hat.

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Multiple Unresolved Ambiguities

(from Richard Lewis (2000), Jounral of Psycholinguistic Research, Vol.29, No.2)

But: no strong garden path (... says Lews)

• Mary suspected the student who saw her ...
  1. ... yesterday.
  2. ... jogging yesterday.
  3. ... dogs yesterday.
  4. ... dogs fighting yesterday.
  5. ... yesterday where cheating on the exam.
  6. ... jogging yesterday were cheating on the exam.
  7. ... dogs yesterday where cheating on the exam.
  8. ... dogs fighting yesterday were cheating on the exam.

Comments: Let A1, A2, A3 be ambiguous material and D1, D2, D3 be the disambiguation region for each. A string A1...D1...A2...D2...A3...D3 has at most two possible structures, whereas A1...A2...A3...D3...D2...D1 will have eight possible structures. Above example mixes three types of ambiguity:

• subject/object ambiguity of NP/SC verbs (like suspect)
• subject-of-small-clause/object ambiguity (lile saw)
• genitive/accusative ambiguity (at her)

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Implausibility

(from Mathew Crocker's Lectures on Psycholinguistics)

The doctor told the woman that ...

• story
• diet was unhealthy
• he was in love with her husband
• he was in love with to leave
• story was was about to leave

multiple constraints in disambiguation:

• Prosody: intonation can assist disambiguation
• Lexical category ambiguity: that = {Comp, Det, RelPro}
• Subcategorization ambiguity: told = { [ _ NP NP] [ _ NP S] [ _ NP S'] [ _ NP Inf] }
• Semantics: Referential context, plausibility
• Reference may determine argument attach over modifier attach
• Plausibility of story versus diet as indirect object

moreover:
The doctor told the woman that ...

• he loves the story
• he loves her story
• he was in love with the story
• he was in love with her story

The doctor told the man that ...

• he loves the story
• he loves her story
• he was in love with the story
• he was in love with her story

The doctor told the woman that ...

• he likes the story
• he likes her story
• he liked the story
• he liked her story

The doctor told the woman that ...

• she loves the story
• she loves her story
• she likes the story
• she likes her story

-- MichaelDaum - 26 May 2003