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In this thesis we shall investigate the kinds of information which the Human Sentence Processing Mechanism employs during the resolution of local syntactic ambiguity in written texts. The thesis is in three parts. In Part I we consider some current models of syntactic ambiguity resolution. On the one hand, we consider the structural approaches, in which the processor considers only syntactic information when choosing between alternatives. On the other, we consider the interactive approaches, in which different kinds of information are brought to bear during the resolution process. In Part II, we describe a number of experiments which contrast the predictions of these two approaches. In particular, we investigate the processing of sentences which are locally ambiguous between a simple noun phrase analysis and a complex noun phrase analysis. Frazier (1979) predicts that the simple noun phrase analysis is chosen because it utilizes fewest phrasal nodes in its associated phrase marker. Crain and Steedman (1985), however, predict that the interpretation of the noun phrase is determined by referential factors, such as whether or not a unique referent can be identified for the noun phrase. The results support Crain and Steedman's interactive hypothesis. In Part III, we consider some theoretical issues concerning the timing of the processor's decisions. Crain and Steedman's original model is modified in the light of such considerations. We explore the implications of the modification for the status of syntax and semantics within our model of sentence comprehension. In the final chapter, we attempt to explain the existence of parsing preferences in sentences which are presented in isolation, and for which no explicit contextual information has been provided. We conclude that contextual considerations, such as the distinction between what is and what is not already known to the hearer, are of fundamental importance during the resolution of local syntactic ambiguity by the Human Sentence Processing Mechanism.

This dissertation probes children's metalinguistic awareness of syntactic ambiguity (as in the sentence The man is poking the monkey with a banana, where the PP with a banana can be understood in two ways, associated with either the monkey or the poking). Several studies suggest that children do not spontaneously detect syntactic ambiguity until the second grade (e.g., Wankoff, 1983; Cairns et al., 2004). However, syntactic ambiguity detection contributes to reading comprehension skills in second and third graders (e.g., Cairns et al., 2004; Yuill, 2009). This research suggests the hypothesis that syntactic ambiguity awareness should contribute to reading development. Specifically, the theoretical model known as the Simple View of Reading posits that the main components of reading are decoding and linguistic comprehension. Syntactic ambiguity detection could contribute to linguistic comprehension because it helps a listener to overcome comprehension difficulties caused by misinterpreting an ambiguous sentence. Thus, it is important to better understand the early development of syntactic ambiguity awareness. If its connection to reading begins younger than second grade, it might be incorporated into early reading curricula and intervention strategies, which are more effective when applied earlier. This dissertation includes three manuscripts that are or will be submitted for publication. The first manuscript reports on a study that laid the foundation for the following two by testing whether 3- to 5-year-olds access both interpretations of a syntactic ambiguity using a truth value judgment task. The results showed that children do entertain both interpretations, indicating that comprehension should not be an impediment to syntactic ambiguity detection. This study is currently in revisions at First Language (Zimmer, 2016a). The second manuscript reports on a study that tested whether 4- to 7-year-olds can detect ambiguous sentences using a task that differs from those used in previous studies. My study used a picture selection task that tested for conscious awareness by having children teach a puppet why multiple pictures could match one sentence. I developed a scoring system for children's explanations that allowed for more gradient measures of early ambiguity awareness than previous research. The results showed that a small proportion of 4- to 7-year-olds are aware of syntactic ambiguity, and many others are beginning to show indications of such awareness (e.g., they select both pictures but their explanations are not yet adult-like). This manuscript is submitted to The Journal of Psycholinguistic Research (Zimmer, 2016b).The third manuscript reports on a study that tested whether 6- to 7-year-olds can learn syntactic ambiguity detection and whether the learning correlates with improvement at reading readiness measures. Participants were divided into two groups: an ambiguity group that did four weeks of games to teach syntactic ambiguity detection, and a control group that did four weeks of math games. I found that children in the ambiguity group improved more at ambiguity detection and at reading readiness tests than those in the control group. This showed that syntactic ambiguity detection is a learnable skill for children as young as 6 and suggests that its connection to reading is in place that young as well. Thus, this skill could be a valuable addition to early reading curricula and intervention strategies. This manuscript will be submitted to Applied Psycholinguistics (Zimmer, 2016c).

Systems that attempt to process texts and acquire information from texts in English need to be particularly alert to noun phrases since they carry so much information. Systems, whether comprehensional or computational, may face particular difficulties when dealing with complex noun phrases. One of the decomposition patterns for noun phrases is left or right branching, which determines the semantic relations between the constituents of the combination.This degree project seeks to describe a processing model that the comprehension system employs to process difficulties. Since the minicorpus studied in this research consists of four of the peace agreements that were produced in English for Israeli and Palestinian sides of their conflicts to sign and implement, the comprehension models that were used by a non-native speaker of English are described, and then a computational model to enhance performing this task is suggested which includes using the frequencies of the combinations of the constituents in two major contemporary corpora, the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus, to help decide how to nest the noun phrases as either left or right branching structures, to resolve the ambiguity problem. Hyphening is also suggested as a potential strategy to avoid unwanted structural ambiguity in adjective + noun + noun combinations.

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