This paper investigates how readers process number ambiguous noun phrases in subject position. A speeded-grammaticality judgment experiment and two self-paced reading experiments were conducted involving number ambiguous subjects in German verb-end clauses. Number preferences for individual nouns were estimated by means of two questionnaire…

Results of three experiments are reported that investigated the processing of locally ambiguous object-subject sentences in German. The aim was to test whether the type of grammatical information that signals garden-path has an impact on how difficult it is to arrive at the correct structural assignment. (Author/VWL)

Using the speeded-grammaticality judgment task, shows that factors that regulate garden path strength in ambiguous sentences also have an influence on processing of corresponding ungrammatical sentences in that they determine how reliably the ungrammaticality is detected. Argues that this processing correlation provides evidence for serial parsing…