Argument structure preference and phrase structure effects during sentence processing

This project investigates how subjects' preferences for a specific argument structure of a verb affect the on-line processing of sentences. Three experiments are conducted. The first experiment uses a forced choice task to gather preference ratings for several verbs. The second and third experiments use these preference ratings to examine on-line performance for a subset of the subjects participating in Experiment I. We find that a subject's preference for a specific argument structure influences the first pass analysis of sentence but that this effect may be overridden by a structural effect in sentences containing syntactic ambiguities. These results are discussed in terms of lexical guidance vs. phrase structure-driven models of sentence processing. It is concluded that both lexical and phrase structure information are utilized during first pass analysis of a sentence, but that the structure of a sentence determines which of these effects is measurably observable.