Abstract
Various problems with the constraint satisfaction model are discussed. It is argued that the empirical evidence presented in support of the model does not concern predictions of the model that diverge from those of depth-first (one analysis at a time) models. Several methodological problems are also noted. As a theory of sentence processing, the model is inadequate. It fails to account for the assignment of local structure, global structure, structure involving discontinuous dependencies, long-distance dependencies, and adjunct phrases. It makes incorrect predictions about the timing of syntactic analysis. Further, because syntactic structure is available only through activation of syntactic projections stored in the lexical entry of words, the model leaves entirely unexplained the myriad psycholinguistic findings demonstrating independence of lexical and syntactic structure (in Event Related Potential studies, code-switching, pure syntactic priming, etc). Finally, the model is not restrictive or explanatory, providing an account that largely consists ofpost hoc correlations between frequency counts or subjects ratings of sentences and processing time data for the same sentences.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams, B., Clifton, C., & Mitchell, D. (1975).Lexical guidance in sentence processing: Further support for a filtering account. Unpublished manuscript.
Bader, M., & Lasser, I. (1994). German verb-final clauses and sentence processing: Evidence for immediate attachment. In C. Clifton, L. Frazier, & K. Rayner (Eds.),Perspectives on sentence processing. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bock, K. (1989). Closed-class immanence in sentence production.Cognition, 31, 163–186.
Brown, C., Hagoort, P., & Vonk, W. (1995, March).On-line sentence processing: Parsing preferences revealed by brain responses. Paper presented at the Eighth Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, Tucson.
Carter, J. (1994).Early auditory comprehension: The case for prelexical morphology and phonology. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts.
Clifton, C., Kennison, S., Albrecht, J. E., & Frazier, L. (1995).Resolving the ambiguity of the word Her. Unpublished manuscript.
Clifton, C., Speer, S., & Abney, S. (1991). Passing arguments: Phrase structure and argument structure as determinants of initial parsing decisions.Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 251–271.
Crain, S., & Steedman, M. (1985). On not being led up the garden path: The use of context by the psychological parser. In D. Dowty, L. Karttunen, & A. Zwicky (Eds.),Natural language parsing. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Daneman, M., & Carpenter, P. A. (1980). Individual differences in working memory and reading.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,19, 450–466.
DeVincenzi, M. (1991).Syntactic parsing strategies in Italian. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
DeVincenzi, M. (1995, March).Syntactic analysis in sentence comprehension: Effects of dependency types and grammatical constraints. Paper presented at the Eighth Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, Tucson.
Dopkins, S., Morris, R. K., & Rayner, K. (1992). Lexical ambiguity and eye fixations in reading: A test of competing models of lexical ambiguity resolution.Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 461–476.
Duffy, S. A., Morris, R. K., & Rayner, K. (1988). Lexical ambiguity and fixation times in reading.Journal of Memory and Language, 27, 429–446.
Epstein, W. (1961). The influence of syntactical structure on learning.American Journal of Psychology, 74, 80–85.
Forster, K., & Olbrei, I. (1973). Semantic heuristics and syntactic analysis.Cognition, 2, 319–347.
Frazier, L. (1987a). Syntactic processing: Evidence from Dutch.Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 5, 519–60.
Frazier, L. (1987b). Sentence process: A tutorial review In M. Coltheart (Ed.),Attention and performance XII. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Frazier, L. (1990). Identifying structure under X0. In A Jongman & A. Lahiri (Eds.),Yearbook of Morphology, 3, 87–109.
Frazier, L., & Clifton, C. (1989). Successive cyclicity in the grammar and the parser.Language and Cognitive Processes 4, 93–126.
Frazier, L., & Clifton, C. (in press)Construal. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Frazier, L., & Flores d'Arcais, G. B. (1989). Filler-driven parsing: A study of gap filling in Dutch.Journal of Memory and Language, 28, 331–344.
Frazier, L., & Flores d'Arcais, G. B., & Coolen, R. (1993). Processing discontinuous words: On the interface between lexical and syntactic processing.Cognition 47, 219–249.
Friederici, A., Mecklinger, A., Steinhauer, K., & Hahne, A. (1995, March).Processing violations of syntactic structure vs. violations of syntactic preferences: Evidence from ERP studies. Paper presented at the Eighth Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, Tucson.
Garnsey, S., Pearlmutter, N., Myers, E., & MacDonald, M.C. (1995, March).The relative contribution of verb bias and plausibility to the comprehension of temporarily ambiguous sentences. Paper presented at the Eighth Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, Tucson.
Gibson, E., Schutze, C., & Salomon, A. (1995, March).The relationship between the frequency and the perceived complexity of linguistic structure. Paper presented at the Eighth Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, Paper Tucson.
Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. (1994). Brain responses to lexical ambiguity and parsing. In C. E. Clifton, L. Frazier, & K. Rayner (Eds.),Perspectives on sentence processing. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Hankamer, J. (1989). Morphological processing and the lexicon. In W. Marslen-Wilson (Ed.),Lexical representation and access. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Inoue, A., & Fodor, J. (1995). Information-paced parsing of Japanese. In R. Mazuka and N. Nagai (Eds.),Japanese sentence processing. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Joshi, A. (1985). Processing of sentences with intransentential code-switching. In D. R. Dowty, L. Karttunen, A. M. Zwicky (Eds.),Natural language parsing. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Kennison, S. (1995)The role of verb specific lexical information in syntactic ambiguity resolution. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts.
Love, T., & Swinney, D. (1995, March).On the nature of the search in coreferential processing. Paper presented at the Eighth Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, Tucson.
MacDonald, M. C. (1994). Probabilistic constraints and syntactic ambiguity resolution.Language and Cognitive Processes, 9, 157–202.
MacDonald, M. C., Pearlmutter, N. J., & Seidenberg, M. S. (1994). Syntactic ambiguity resolution as lexical ambiguity resolution. In C. E. Clifton, L. Frazier, & K. Rayner (Eds.),Perspectives on sentence processing. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
MacDonald, M. C., Pearlmutter, N. J., & Seidenberg, M. S. (1994). The lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity resolution.Psychological Review, 101, 676–703.
Marcus, G. F., Brinkmann, U., Clahsen, H., Wiese, R., Woest, A., & Pinker, S. (1993). German inflection: The exception that proves the rule. (Occasional Paper 47). Cambridge, MA: MIT Center for Cognitive Science.
Marslen-Wilson, W., & Tyler, L. (1980). On the temporal structure of spoken language comprehension.Cognition, 8, 1–72.
McKinnon, R., & Osterhout, L. (1994).Modularity in syntax reconsidered: Evidence for rapid use of constraints in sentence processing. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Merlo, P. (1994). A corpus-based analysis of verb continuation frequencies for syntactic processing.Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 23, 435–458.
Mitchell, D., Cuetos, F., & Corley, M. (1995, March).The linguistic tuning hypothesis: Further corpus and experimental evidence. Paper presented at the Eighth Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, Tucson.
Nagai, N. (1995). Constraints on topics: from a parsing perspective. In R. Mazuka & N. Nagai (Eds.),Japanese sentence processing. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Ni, W., & Crain, S. (1990). How to resolve structural ambiguities.Proceedings of the North Eastern Linguistic Society, 20, 414–427.
Obler, L., Robinson, K. Kaufman, R., & Satake, E. (1994, January).Are suffixes read like prefixes? Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Boston.
Osterhout, L. (1994). Event-related brain potentials as tools for comprehending language comprehension. In C. E. Clifton, L. Frazier, & K. Rayner (Eds.),Perspectives on sentence processing. Hillsdale: NJ: Erlbaum.
Osterhout, L., & Holcomb, P. J. (1992). Event-related potentials elicited by syntactic anomaly.Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 785–806.
Pearlmutter, N. J., & MacDonald, M. C. (1995). Individual differences and probabilistic constraints in syntactic ambiguity resolution.Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 521–542.
Rayner, K., Carlson, M., & Frazier, L. (1983). The interaction of syntax and semantics during sentence processing.Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 22, 358–374.
Rayner, K., & Duffy, S. A. (1986). Lexical complexity and fixation times in reading: Effects of word frequency, verb complexity and lexical ambiguity.Memory & Cognition, 14, 191–120.
Rayner, K., & Duffy, S. A. (1987). Eye movements and lexical ambiguity. In J. K. O'Regan & A. Levy-Schoen (Eds.),Eye movements: From physiology to cognition. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Rayner, K., & Frazier, L. (1989). Selection mechanisms in reading lexically ambiguous words.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 15, 779–790.
Schriefers, H., Friederici, A., & Kühn, K. (1995)The processing of locally ambiguous relative clauses in German.Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 499–520.
Seidenberg, M., Tanenhaus, J., Leiman, J., & Bienkowski, M. (1982). Automatic access of the meanings of ambiguous words in context: Some limitations on knowledge based processing.Cognitive Psychology, 14, 489–537.
Simpson, G. B., & Burgess, C. (1985). Activation and selection processes in the recognition of ambiguous words.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 11, 28–39.
Speer, S. (1995, March).The influence of prosodic structure on the resolution of temporary syntactic clause ambiguities. Paper presented at the Eighth Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, Tucson.
Spivey-Knowlton, M., Trueswell, J., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (1993). Context and syntactic ambiguity resolution.Canadian Journal of Psychology, 47, 276–309.
Swinney, D. (1979). Lexical access during sentence comprehension: (Re-) consideration of context effects.Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 18, 645–659.
Tabossi, P., Colombo, L., & Job, R. (1987). Accessing lexical ambiguity: Effects of context and dominance.Psychological Research, 49, 161–167.
Taraban, R., & McClelland, J. R. (1988). Constituent attachment and thematic role assignment in sentence processing: Influences of content-based expectations.Journal of Memory and Language, 27, 597–632.
Traxler, M., & Pickering, M. (1995, March).Evidence against statistical parsing. Poster presented at the Eighth Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, Tucson.
Trueswell, J. C., & Tanenhaus, M. (1994). Toward a lexicalist framework of constraint-based syntactic ambiguity resolution. In C. E. Clifton, L. Frazier, & K. Rayner (Eds.),Perspectives on sentence processing. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Trueswell, J. C., Tanenhaus, M., & Garnsey, S. (1994). Semantic influences on parsing. Use of thematic role information in syntactic ambiguity resolution.Journal of Meaning and Language, 33, 285–318.
Wright, B., & Garrett, M. F. (1984). Lexical decisions in sentences: Effects of syntactic structure.Memory & Cognition, 12, 31–45.
Zurif, E. B., Swinney, D., Prather, P., Solomon, J., & Bushell, C. (1993). An on-line analysis of syntactic processing in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia.Brain and Language, 45, 448–464.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
The present paper is an excerpt from “Sentence (Re-)Analysis” presented at the 1994 CUNY Conference. It was supported by NIH Grant HD18708 to Clifton and Frazier and DBS9121375 to Rayner and Frazier. I am very grateful to Chuck Clifton and to an anonymous reviewer for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Frazier, L. Constraint satisfaction as a theory of sentence processing. J Psycholinguist Res 24, 437–468 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02143161
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02143161