Your browser does not fully support modern features. Please upgrade for a smoother experience.
Garden Path Sentence: History
Please note this is an old version of this entry, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

A garden-path sentence is a sentence whose initial words lead a reader or listener toward a syntactic interpretation that must be revised when subsequent information reveals a different grammatical structure. This phenomenon arises from the incremental nature of sentence processing, in which comprehenders construct provisional syntactic analyses as linguistic input unfolds [1][2]. Garden-path effects are associated with temporary syntactic ambiguity and the reanalysis processes required when an initially preferred structural interpretation becomes incompatible with later material [1][2].

  • Garden-path sentence
  • Syntactic ambiguity
  • Sentence processing
  • Syntactic reanalysis

References

  1. frazier, lyn. On Comprehending Sentences: Syntactic Parsing Strategies. https://www.academia.edu/56399241/On_Comprehending_Sentences_Syntactic_Parsing_Strategies
  2. Fernanda Ferreira; Charles Clifton; The independence of syntactic processing. J. Mem. Lang. 1986, 25, 348-368, 10.1016/0749-596x(86)90006-9.
More
This entry is offline, you can click here to edit this entry!
Write an Entry