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Concept
Sentence processing
Summary
Sentence processing takes place whenever a reader or listener processes a language utterance, either in isolation or in the context of a conversation or a text. Many studies of the human language comprehension process have focused on reading of single utterances (sentences) without context. Extensive research has shown that language comprehension is affected by context preceding a given utterance as well as many other factors.
Sentence comprehension has to deal with ambiguity in spoken and written utterances, for example lexical, structural, and semantic ambiguities. Ambiguity is ubiquitous, but people usually resolve it so effortlessly that they do not even notice it. For example, the sentence Time flies like an arrow has (at least) the interpretations Time moves as quickly as an arrow, A special kind of fly, called time fly, likes arrows and Measure the speed of flies like you would measure the speed of an arrow. Usually, readers will be aware of only the first interpretation. Educated readers though, spontaneously think about the arrow of time but inhibit that interpretation because it deviates from the original phrase and the temporal lobe acts as a switch.
Instances of ambiguity can be classified as local or global ambiguities. A sentence is globally ambiguous if it has two distinct interpretations. Examples are sentences like Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony (was it the servant or the actress who was on the balcony?) or The cop chased the criminal with a fast car (did the cop or the criminal have a fast car?). Comprehenders may have a preferential interpretation for either of these cases, but syntactically and semantically, neither of the possible interpretations can be ruled out.
Local ambiguities persist only for a short amount of time as an utterance is heard or written and are resolved during the course of the utterance so the complete utterance has only one interpretation. Examples include sentences like The critic wrote the book was enlightening, which is ambiguous when The critic wrote the book has been encountered, but was enlightening remains to be processed.
Official source
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