THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE FREQUENCY AND THE PROCESSING COMPLEXITY OF LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE

Authors
GIBSON E SCHUTZE CT SALOMON A
Citation
E. Gibson et al., THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE FREQUENCY AND THE PROCESSING COMPLEXITY OF LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE, Journal of psycholinguistic research, 25(1), 1996, pp. 59-92
Citations number
40
Categorie Soggetti
Language & Linguistics","Psychology, Experimental
Journal title
Journal of psycholinguistic research → ACNP
ISSN journal
00906905
Volume
25
Issue
1
Year of publication
1996
Pages
59 - 92
Database
ISI
SICI code
0090-6905(1996)25:1<59:TRBTFA>2.0.ZU;2-G
Abstract
In this paper the relative frequencies of the possible resolutions of ambiguities involving noun phrase attachment sites are compared to the results of off-line psycholinguistic measurements of syntactic comple xity. A lack of correlation between the two is observed. It is therefo re argued that the comprehension system is distinct from what is drivi ng the frequencies in the corpora. A production heuristic separate fro m the comprehension system is proposed to account for the observed fre quencies.