The effects of thematic fit and discourse context on syntactic ambiguity resolution

Three experiments were conducted to assess the impact of the thematic fit a nd discourse context on the processing of sentences that were initially syn tactically ambiguous between main verb and reduced relative constructions. Specifically, we tested a strong version of a constraint satisfaction posit ion that suggests that thematic fit and context should produce a garden pat h effect on a simple, main verb construction. Across three experiments we o bserved garden path effects for reduced relative target sentences in first- pass reading-time measures, but similar effects for main verb sentences did not occur despite the thematic fit information and discourse contexts whic h were biased toward the reduced relative reading. The pattern of results i s consistent with the predictions of the garden path theory. (C) 2001 Acade mic Press.