Sp. Liversedge et al., PROCESSING ARGUMENTS AND ADJUNCTS IN ISOLATION AND CONTEXT - THE CASEOF BY-PHRASE AMBIGUITIES IN PASSIVES, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition, 24(2), 1998, pp. 461-475
Two eye-tracking experiments examined processing of sentences like The
shrubs were planted by the apprentice/greenhouse that morning, where
the by phrase is locally ambiguous between an agent and a location. Ex
periment 1 found a preference to initially interpret the by phrase age
ntively in the absence of context. In Experiment 2, a context like The
head gardener decided [who should]/[where to] plant the shrubs induce
d an expectation that either an agent or a location would subsequently
be specified. After agentive contexts, locatives were harder to proce
ss than agentives. After locative contexts, both sentences were easy t
o process. The authors argue that the verb and interrogative words (wh
o, where) activate thematic roles, which can be associated with corres
ponding phrases. Phrases that express activated roles are easy to proc
ess. Phrases that might express activated roles but are subsequently s
hown not to express those roles require reanalysis.