LEXICAL NATURE OF SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITY RESOLUTION

Ambiguity resolution is a central problem in language comprehension. L exical and syntactic ambiguities are standardly assumed to involve dif ferent types of knowledge representations and be resolved by different mechanisms. An alternative account is provided in which both types of ambiguity derive from aspects of lexical representation and are resol ved by the same processing mechanisms. Reinterpreting syntactic ambigu ity resolution as a form of lexical ambiguity resolution obviates the need for special parsing principles to account for syntactic interpret ation preferences, reconciles a number of apparently conflicting resul ts concerning the roles of lexical and contextual information in sente nce processing, explains differences among ambiguities in terms of eas e of resolution, and provides a more unified account of language compr ehension than was previously available.