劉慶彬 Tim 494410851 張志榮 Jimmy 494410649

1. syntax 劉慶彬 Tim 494410851 張志榮 Jimmy 494410649

2. Introduction Syntax is the system of rules and categories that underlies sentence formation in human language. In this chapter, sentences are typically made up of familiar words, but the arrangement of those words into a syntactic structure is unique to each sentence. The question that we’ll consider in this section: How these structures created during sentence processing?

3. Two sources of evidence have been very important in the exploration of the principles of modularity of sentence processing. * garden path sentences * * sentence ambiguity *

4. Garden path sentences The name refers to the saying "to be led up the garden path", meaning "to be misled". As one reads a garden path sentence, a structure is built up one word at a time. At some point, it becomes clear that the reader has been building an incorrect structure because the next word doesn't fit into that structure. At this point, the reader must re-analyze the structure and integrate the remainder of the sentence into a new structure.

5. Example The horse raced past the barn fell.

6. The reader usually starts to parse this as an ordinary active intransitive sentence, but stumbles when reaching the word "fell." At this point, the reader is forced to backtrack and look for other possible structures. It may take some rereading to realize that "raced past the barn" is in fact a reduced relative clause with a passive participle, implying that "fell" is the main verb. The correct reading is then: "The horse (that was raced past the barn) fell."

7. Sentence Ambiguity Ambiguity is context-dependent: the same linguistic item (be it a word, phrase, or sentence) may be ambiguous in one context. For a word, ambiguity typically refers to an unclear choice between different definitions as may be found in a dictionary. A sentence may be ambiguous due to different ways of parsing the same sequence of words.

8. Examples apothecary You could say "I bought herbs from the apothecary." This could mean you actually spoke to the apothecary (pharmacist) or went to the apothecary (drug store).

9. Examples “He ate the cookies on the couch,” For example, could mean that he ate those cookies which were on the couch (as opposed to those that were on the table), or it could mean that he was sitting on the couch when he ate the cookies.

10. Conclusion Our parsing ability is based in part on our grammatical knowledge of our language, it’s usually the case that is close correspondence between sentence parsing and grammatical structure. Although we know the correct analysis for the sentence, we misread them the second time just as you did the first time.