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Frazier, Lyn – Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2015
It is proposed that humans have available to them two systems for interpreting natural language. One system is familiar from formal semantics. It is a type based system that pairs a syntactic form with its interpretation using grammatical rules of composition. This system delivers both plausible and implausible meanings. The other proposed system…
Descriptors: Language Processing, Psycholinguistics, Linguistic Input, Semantics
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Frazier, Lyn; Clifton, Charles, Jr.; Stolterfoht, Britta – Cognition, 2008
Gradable adjectives denote a function that takes an object and returns a measure of the degree to which the object possesses some gradable property [Kennedy, C. (1999). Projecting the adjective: The syntax and semantics of gradability and comparison. New York: Garland]. Scales, ordered sets of degrees, have begun to be studied systematically in…
Descriptors: Sentences, Semantics, Eye Movements, Form Classes (Languages)
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Frazier, Lyn; Carminati, Maria Nella; Cook, Anne E.; Majewski, Helen; Rayner, Keith – Cognition, 2006
An eye movement study of temporarily ambiguous closure sentences confirmed that the early closure penalty in a sentence like "While John hunted the frightened deer escaped" is larger for a simple past verb ("hunted") than for a past progressive verb ("was hunting"). The results can be explained by the observation that simple past tense verbs…
Descriptors: Semantics, Syntax, Eye Movements, Structural Analysis (Linguistics)
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Arregui, Ana; Clifton, Charles, Jr.; Frazier, Lyn; Moulton, Keir – Journal of Memory and Language, 2006
Traditional syntactic accounts of verb phrase ellipsis (e.g., ''Jason laughed. Sam did [ ] too.'') categorize as ungrammatical many sentences that language users find acceptable (they ''undergenerate''); semantic accounts overgenerate. We propose that a processing theory, together with a syntactic account, does a better job of describing and…
Descriptors: Language Processing, Verbs, Phrase Structure, Semantics
Clifton, Charles, Jr.; Frazier, Lyn – 1980
This report describes part of a longer study on sentence comprehension. The long range goal is to identify distinct levels of processing in terms of the types of linguistic and extralinguistic information each level uses. The focus of this part of the study is sentences with filler-gap relations, such as, "This is the girl the teacher wanted to…
Descriptors: Language Processing, Language Research, Listening Comprehension, Psycholinguistics