The preservation of structure in language comprehension: Is reanalysis thelast resort?

During language comprehension, people sometimes have to revise their gramma tical analysis of a sentence. Experimental evidence demonstrates that such reanalysis often causes processing difficulty. We might therefore predict t hat reanalysis would he disfavored, with the processor preferring nor to re analyze when it had a choice. Three experiments on complement-clause ambigu ities investigate the conditions under which the processor chooses to reana lyze, We contrast two extreme positions, one where the processor avoids rea nalysis whenever possible, the other where reanalysis is not disfavored at all. We also consider intermediate positions, in which the preference to ma intain the current analysis is one factor that affects ambiguity resolution . The experiments demonstrate that the processor avoids reanalysis even whe n other factors would support it. (C) 2001 Academic Press.