Garden Path Re-Analysis: Attach (Anyway) and Revision as Last Resort

Abstract

The human sentence processing device sometimes makes errors, and when it does, it can sometimes correct them. This much is generally agreed, though opinions differ with respect to how and why the errors occur. In this paper we are concerned with the process of recovery from garden paths in sentence processing. A garden path occurs when the parser makes an error in assigning structure to the input word string but is nevertheless able to continue integrating some subsequent words into the structure that it has constructed for the sentence so far (the current partial phrase marker, or CPPM). Recognition that a garden path has occurred comes from the subsequent discovery that there is a word in the input string which does not fit into the CPPM. This word is the error signal, or symptom, that reveals the existence of the earlier error of analysis. The parser’s task is to discover the nature of the problem and put it right if possible. The input may actually be ungrammatical, in which case nothing can be done. But the parser must also consider the possibility that it is the analysis that is at fault: that some aspect of the CPPM prior to the symptom is incorrect. Recovery from a garden path consists in finding an alternative analysis which fits the initial portion of the sentence and also accommodates the symptom and later words.

We thank the members of the Max-Planck-Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience in Leipzig for their comments on this work. Special thanks are due to Paul Gorrell for his insightful comments on an earlier draft, and to Yuki Kamide and Patrick Sturt for interesting discussion of the Japanese examples.