prosodic facilitation and interference in the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguity

Journal of Memory and Language40, 153–194 (1999)Article ID jmla.1998.2620, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

Prosodic Facilitation and Interference in the Resolutionof Temporary Syntactic Closure Ambiguity

Margaret M. Kjelgaard

E. K. Shriver Center and University of Massachusetts-Boston

and

Shari R. Speer

University of Kansas

Subjects listened to sentences with early closure (e.g.,When Roger leaves the house is dark) or lateclosure syntax (e.g.,When Roger leaves the house it’s dark) and one of three prosodies: cooperating(coinciding prosodic and syntactic boundary), baseline (phonetically neutralized prosodic boundary),and conflicting (prosodic boundary at a misleading syntactic location). Prosodic manipulations wereverified by phonetic measurements and listener judgments. Four experiments demonstrated facilita-tion in speeded phonosyntactic grammaticality judgment, end-of-sentence comprehension, and cross-modal naming tasks: Sentences with cooperating prosody were processed more quickly than thosewith baseline prosody. Three experiments showed interference: Sentences with conflicting prosodywere processed more slowly than those with baseline prosody. All experiments demonstrated aprocessing advantage for late closure structures in the conflicting and baseline conditions, but nodifferences between syntactic types in the cooperating condition. Cross-modal naming results showedearly syntactic effects due to both high-level and intermediate-level prosodic boundaries. We arguethat the initial syntactic structure assigned to an utterance can be determined by its prosodicphonological representation.© 1999 Academic Press

Key Words:prosody; parsing; syntax; ambiguity; ToBI.

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In early psycholinguistic studies, researchwere at pains to show that listeners use syntphrase structure rather than acoustic prosphrasing to determine the constituency of a sken sentence as it is understood (Fodo

This research was supported in part by NIMH GrantsMH51768-01 and NIMH T32 MH19729 to NortheastUniversity and NIMH Grant R29 MH51768-02 to the Uversity of Kansas. Portions of the results reported herereported to the CUNY Sentence Processing conferen1993. The authors of this paper have contributed equathis work. The order of authorship was determined byfact that experiments 3 and 4 were conducted in pafulfillment of the first author’s doctoral dissertation. Othanks to Gary Dell, Susan Garnsey, Nancy Soja, JoMiller, Kate Dobroth, Rene Schmauder, Amy SchaMaria Slowiaczek, Wayne Murray, Keith Rayner, andanonymous reviewer for helpful comments on earliersions of this paper.

Address correspondence to Margaret M. Kjelgaard,ter for Research on Developmental Disorders, EuKennedy Shriver Center, 200 Trapelo Road, Waltham,
02452-6319. E-mail: [email protected].
153

sicic-

Bever, 1965; Garrett, Bever, & Fodor, 1966;see Wingfield & Klein, 1971). In contrast, cotemporary models of sentence processingbegun to include a role for prosodic strture—a role beyond that of emphasizing a pticular word or adding an affective connotatiFor the purposes of this paper, prosody refestress, rhythm, and intonation in spoken stences. Prosodic structure is formally descriin autosegmental phonological theory andmeasurable acoustic–phonetic correlates,cluding variation in fundamental frequenspectral information, amplitude, and the reladuration of sound and silence.

For many spoken sentences, prosodic sture is the only information available to resoambiguity at other levels of linguistic analy(e.g., compare the spoken forms of the stences “What’s that ahead in the road?” and“What’s that, a HEAD in the ROAD?”; exam-

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154 KJELGAARD AND SPEER

ples attributed to K. Church). In studies oftener judgments, prosodic information haspeatedly been shown to determine the fimeaning assigned to many syntactic and semtic ambiguities (e.g., Lehiste, 1973; Stree1978; Price, Ostendorf, Shattuck-HufnagleFong, 1991; Wales & Toner, 1979; but sAlbritton, McKoon, & Ratcliff, 1996). For sentences with temporary syntactic ambiguprosody that is consistent with the correct stactic parse has produced on-line procesadvantages compared to prosody that is insistent (Slowiaczek, 1981; Speer, KjelgaardDobroth, 1996; Marslen-Wilson, Tyler, WarreGrenier, & Lee, 1992; Warren, Grabe, & Nola1995; but see Murray & Watt, 1995; WattMurray, 1996; Murray, Watt, & Kenned1998). Researchers have suggested that unprosodic structure act as processing unithuman sentence comprehension (Slowiac1981; Carroll & Slowiaczek, 1987), that prsodic information contributes to the final strturing of an initial syntactically determineparse (Marcus & Hindle, 1990; Pynte & Prie1996), and that prosodic and nonprosodictors may enter a cue-trading relation inprocess by which syntactic and semantic ayses are constructed (Beach, 1991; StirlinWales, 1996). Some computational modelsnatural language parsing also use pros(“chunks,” intonational boundaries, or intontional phrasing) to inform parsing decisio(Abney, 1990; Marcus & Hindle, 1990; Steeman, 1990, 1991).

We have argued that an abstract prosrepresentation maintains spoken sentenceimmediate memory during comprehensionthat this phonological information is availabto inform the syntactic parsing process (SpShih, & Slowiaczek, 1989; Speer, CrowderThomas, 1993; Kjelgaard, 1995; Speer et1996). Consistent with this view, Scha(1997) has claimed that the listener construcfull prosodic representation, which in tuprovides the initial domains for syntacstructuring and semantic analyses. This typperspective assumes the listener’s mental resentation of prosody during sentence com
hension is of the sort formally described in
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autosegmental and metrical theory (e.g., Ha1985; Liberman & Prince, 1977; Nespor & Vgel, 1986; Selkirk, 1984, 1986) and in intontion theories in this framework (e.g., Lad1980; Liberman & Pierrehumbert, 1984; Pierhumbert, 1980; Beckman & Pierrehumb1986).

Briefly, autosegmental and metrical theorepresent the rhythm and timing of a sentenca pattern of weak and strong beats (unstreand stressed syllables in English), hierarchicarranged according to a tree or grid structurform constituents, e.g., feet, prosodic wophonological phrases, and intonation phraAutosegmental theories of intonation represthe tune of a sentence as a temporal serietonal events. Some tones are directly assocwith stressed syllables (these arepitch accentand may be composed of one or two tones.inventory for English includes high (H) and lo(L) tones and their combinations, H*, LL1H*, L* 1H, and H1!H*). Other tones araligned at the right edge of a phrase (thesethe boundary tone,L% or H%, a single tonassociated with the intonational phrase, andphrase accent,L2 or H2, a single tone assciated with the phonological phrase and realover the material between the following bouary tone and the final pitch accent in the phraThe theory we use here specifies the corresdence between tones and phrasing for two leof prosodic phrase, so that thephonologicaphrase(PPh)1 is delimited by a phrase acceand theintonational phrase(IPh) is delimitedby a boundary tone. Every utterance has atone IPh, each IPh has at least one PPh, andPPh has at least one pitch accent.

During sentence comprehension, informaabout the metrical and intonational structurean utterance is recovered by the listener as

1 In phonological theory, there remains some quesabout the particular nature and number of phrasal lebetween the prosodic word and the intonational phHowever, the majority of theories posit at least one phrlevel between these two, called either “intermediate ph(iph)” (see Beckman, 1996) or, as we have it here, “phlogical phrase (PPh)” (see Selkirk, 1986; 1995). Althothere are theoretical distinctions between these two te
we do not mean to distinguish between them here.

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155PROSODIC FACILITATION AND INTERFERENCE

of the phonological input from the speaker.our view, the prosodic representation is recnized at the very earliest stages of processwith rhythmic and tonal constituency becomavailable in parallel with the segmental phological information that is being organizedword recognition (see Gordon, 1988, for a silar view of the recovery of coarse and fingrained phonetic information during speechognition). Although the prosodic representatis abstract and hierarchical like other linguisstructures, there are several reasons to bethat it could be available before them. Prosoconstituents are syllable-based and delimitetones, so that prosodic structure can be idefied without the fine-grained analysis necesto distinguish among phonetic segments. Idtification of prosodic structure does not relyprior lexical access, as syntactic, thematic,semantic analyses do, so that prosodic strucrequires fewer levels of abstraction to be copleted before a memory representation caformed. Formal analyses of prosodic strucindicate that it is less complex than otherguistic structures: most theories of prosophonology restrict recursion, and most spethat prosodic constituents are “strictly layereso that constituents at each level of the hiechy are exhaustively parsed into constituenthe immediately superordinate level (e.g., Npor & Vogel, 1986; Selkirk, 1984, 1995; but sLadd, 1986). These qualities imply a relativlimited number of attachment sites for incomprosodic constituents and thus fewer localtachment ambiguities than occur in syntastructure.

Prosodic constituents correspond to consents at other levels of linguistic analysis, soin principle, information from the prosodic reresentation together with correspondence r(e.g., for the mapping between prosodic phing and syntax) could substantially reduceambiguity of the incoming language signHowever, as many researchers have notedSelkirk, 1984; Pierrehumbert, 1980; Price et1991; Warren et al., 1995), the correspondebetween prosody and other linguistic structuis complex. Thus a sentence with particu
syntactic structure may be pronounced gram
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matically with a variety of prosodies, just aparticular prosodic structure may be usedpronounce grammatically a variety of syntaforms. A similar complexity concerns the maping from the phonetic string to the prosorepresentation, where a single pronunciamay be ambiguous between two prosodic sttures and a single prosodic structure may hmore than one phonetic implementation (Stuck-Hufnagel & Turk, 1996; Beckman, 19962

This complexity has two implications that aparticularly relevant here: (1) A well-formeprosodic rendition of a syntactically ambiguosentence may or may not disambiguate it(2) an ambiguous phonetic sequence canvide a single pronunciation for two prosostructures, each with a well-formed correspdence to a different syntactic structure. Thtwo implications are used to develop the expimental conditions and materials below.

On the one hand, the complexity of the crespondence between prosodic structuresyntactic structure has disadvantages forcholinguistic experimentation. While somecent studies have shown prosodic disambition of syntactic ambiguity (e.g., MarsleWilson et al., 1992; Price et al., 1991), othusing similar procedures and syntactic matehave produced only partial replication ofeffects (e.g., Albritton et al., 1996; WattMurray, 1996). One likely reason for this laof consistency is a difference in the prosostructures used—the grammatical prosodyone study may be disambiguating, while aferent, but still grammatical, prosody in anotstudy is not. On the other hand, the compcorrespondence between prosody and ostructures can also work to our advantage: Ifcarefully specify the phonology and phoneof our experimental materials (as we do thsyntax), we can make use of the ambiguitiebegin to develop a principled account of wh

2 This state of affairs, where there is no single compoat one level of linguistic analysis that corresponds uniqto a single component at another level of linguistic analhas been called the “lack of invariance” problem, is typof the speech signal, and is a long-standing topic of reseon speech perception (e.g., Liberman, Cooper, Shankw
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and where particular prosodic entities influethe syntactic parsing process.

The following experiments use sentenwith temporary ambiguities to examine thefects of prosodic structure on syntactic procing. We used early/late closure sentence plike When Roger leaves the house is/it’s d

he syntactic structure of the sentenceshown in Fig. 1 and is temporarily ambiguouhe attachment of the noun phrasethe housewhich can serve either as the subject ofsecond clausethe house is dark(an early cloure analysis, Fig. 1, top) or as the direct obf the verbleaves(a late closure analysis, F, bottom). Syntactic information that canolve the ambiguity occurs immediately afteith the wordis or it’s. Studies of reading hav

epeatedly found a processing disadvantagarly closure sentences like these when the

FIG. 1. Syntactic and intonational phrase strucconditions.

ompared to their late closure counterparts. Th“

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elatively longer processing times for early cure sentences have been attributed to an iisanalysis of the sentence as a late clo

tructure, followed by restructuring (Frazierayner, 1982; Frazier & Clifton, 1996; FerreHenderson, 1989) or to lexically associa

requency information favoring the verb’s traitive analysis (MacDonald, Perlmutter, & Senberg, 1995; Tanenhaus & Carlson, 1989The strong view that prosodic structure

vailable to inform syntactic parsing decisiomplies three specific claims: (1) When podic and syntactic constituent boundariesncide, syntactic processing should be facated, (2) when prosodic boundaries occuisleading points in syntactic structure, syn

ic processing should show interference effend (3) processing difficulties associated wis-preferred syntactic analyses (the synta

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Previous studies have examined prosodicfects on temporary syntactic closure ambiguSlowiaczek (Slowiaczek, 1981; CarrollSlowiaczek, 1987) compared end-of-sentecomprehension times for cooperating and crspliced conflicting prosody versions of thtypes of early and late closure sentences.found faster processing times for sentencescooperating prosodic and syntactic boundathan for those with conflicting prosody and stax, and an overall early closure processingadvantage, but did not statistically compearly and late syntactic structures withincooperating prosody condition. Warren, Graand Nolan (1995) examined the effects ofoperating and conflicting prosodic boundain the context of stress-shift and lexical synttic category ambiguity. They used a cromodal naming task and presented sentesuch as:Whenever parliament discusses H

ong problems )L2 )H% versusWhenever pariament discusses Hong Kong )L2 )H% prob-lems,followed by a visual naming word resoing the syntactic ambiguity toward eaclosure, such asARISE.They too found fasteprocessing times for conditions with coincidprosodic and syntactic boundaries than for thwith conflicting boundaries. While these resuare clearly consistent with our view, they doindependently address each of the speclaims above. The demonstration of faster pcessing for felicitous than for disrupted prosocould indicate either that cooperating prosspeeds syntactic ambiguity resolution orconflicting prosody interferes, but it doesdistinguish between these explanations. Indition, this comparison leaves open the pobility that longer processing times in conflictiprosody conditions are due simply to an unural degradation of the language input. In adtion, the previous work does not provide a dircomparison of early and late closure structuwith coinciding prosodic boundaries. Suchcomparison is necessary if we are to claimprosodic structure can do away with the “garpath” effects found in reading.

In order to test predictions of facilitation and

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interference, we developed three prosodic cditions: cooperating, baseline, and conflictiThe phrasal phonology for the experimenconditions is shown in Fig. 1. In the cooperatprosody conditions, the final H* pitch accentthe first phrase fell on the clause-final word,an IPh boundary with a low phrase accent (L2)and low boundary tone (L%) occurred atsyntactic constituent boundary (in the figufollowing leavesfor early closure andhouseforlate closure). In the conflicting prosody contions, the final H* pitch accent, L2 phraseaccent, and L% boundary tone occurredmisleading location in relation to the syntacstructure—the one consistent with the alternparse (followinghouse for early closure anleavesfor late closure). The baseline prosoconditions contained a L1H* pitch accent onthe subject noun and a low phrase accent (2)at the appropriate syntactic boundary (followleavesfor early closure andhousefor late clo-sure).3 Because L2 “spreads” backward to th

ost recent pitch accent, and becauseFø re-mains at its current level until the next toevent, theFø contours for these two prosodare quite similar. If the sentences are spowith minimal lengthening of the phrase-finword, the phonological distinction betweentwo baseline sentences can be phoneticallytralized, so that their tunes and rhythmssubstantially the same.

In order for the baseline condition to servean appropriate comparison condition, its psodic structure should be one that is grammcal according to listener judgments, but givesprosodic information relevant to the locationthe temporarily ambiguous syntactic boundTherefore, we set three criteria for our basepronunciation: (1) it should be a single ambuous phonetic string that is phonologicallypropriate to either the late closure or the eclosure version of a sentence, (2) it shouldequally acceptable to listeners when usedpronounce either syntactic structure, and (3

3 This pronunciation is one that would be approprwhen the subject is narrowly focused or contrastistressed and might be used when the speaker’s meanthat the house is more likely to be locked whenRogerleaves
it than when someone else does.

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should be highly acceptable—as acceptablthe cooperating prosody—for each syntastructure. We assessed these criteria by preing and conducting phonetic analyses, detabelow.

To test for effects of facilitation and inhibtion, we used three experimental paradigspeeded phonosyntactic grammaticality jument, end-of-sentence comprehension,cross-modal naming. The first two measuresrelatively “off-line” tasks and are used to exaine the effects of prosodic structure in the pence of disambiguating syntactic informatthat is typically available during normal setence processing. If we find prosodic effeeven when disambiguating syntactic informtion is available nearby, such evidence wweaken the argument that prosodic effectsminimal when other linguistic factors are avaable (Murray & Watt, 1996; Albritton et a1996; Sevald & Trueswell, 1997). In additiothese tasks allow us to present intact sposentences, undisrupted by truncation and uterrupted by a concurrent task, and to compspeeded responses in tasks that do and dinclude a metalinguistic component. The cromodal naming task provides complementaryvantages to the first two. While it reliestruncated sentence stimuli and a somewhanatural language processing task that requintegration of spoken language and text, it aprovides a more “on-line” measure and allous to examine processing at the point of syntic disambiguation.

NORMATIVE STUDY, PHONETICANALYSES, AND PRETESTING

The sentence materials used in the first texperiments were selected from a larger grof sentences on the basis of a normative sta series of phonetic analyses, and three preThe normative study assessed the transitbias of verbs used to construct early/late closentences. The phonetic analyses includedsuring the duration of words and silencesexamining fundamental frequency (Fø) con-tours. Spoken sentence items were pretestequate pronunciation acceptability across
cooperating and baseline conditions, to guaran
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tee intelligibility, and to check that matchsentences in the baseline conditions werenounced with the same phonetic pattern.

Normative Study

The verbs used in these sentences weresen from a larger set of verbs tested in atence completion study. Twenty-nine Noreastern University undergraduate studparticipated for credit toward Introductory Pchology course requirements. They were gipresent tense, past tense or -ing forms overbs preceded by subordinate clause fragm(e.g.,When Frank performs ) and asked twrite a sentence completion for each fragmFor each verb eventually used in the mainperiments, either transitive or intransitivesponses accounted for the majority of fragmcompletions. A transitivity bias score was cstructed for each verb by subtracting the pcentage of intransitive completions frompercentage of transitive completions. Transity bias scores for each item are presented inAppendix.

Phonetic Analyses

Durational measures and fundamentalquency (Fø) analyses were completed fortemporarily ambiguous region of the sentenin order to confirm that they had been pnounced with the intended prosody. Wmatched early/late closure sentence pairslength in words and syllables and for lexiclevel stress pattern. We used the ToneBreak Indices (ToBI) system (Silverman, Beman, Pitrelli, Ostendorf, Wightman, Price, Pirehumbert, & Hirshberg, 1992; Beckman & Aers, 1994), based on the intonational framewdeveloped by Pierrehumbert (1980) and Beman and Pierrehumbert (1986, 1988) to trscribe the phonological analyses of the prosstructures in our materials. Intonation contoare transcribed on the basis of listening tosound and viewing the speech waveform anfundamental frequency plot. We used the sehigh (H) and low (L) component tones on TBI’s “tonal tier” and break indices 1–4 (whereis the strongest break) on the break indices
-(see examples in Fig. 2). Durations were mea-


FIG. 2. Acoustic waveforms with word durations (ms),Fø (Hz), and ToBI transcription for an example
early/late closure sentence pair with IPh-based cooperating and baseline prosody.

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sured using Sound Designer II software, andFø

contours with Signalyze software (Kell1994).

Sentences were 16-bit digital sound fisampled at 22.1 kHz and recorded in a souproofed room by a female speaker of AmeriEnglish trained in phonetics and phonoloThe sentences were pronounced with two tyof prosody, cooperating and baseline. For coerating structures, the first syntactic claboundary coincided with an intonational phrboundary (IPh), including a low phrase acca low boundary tone, and a level 4 break. Pnetic indicators of the prosodic boundarycluded lengthening of the clause-final syllablclause-following silence, and a pitch disconuity (or “reset”) between the end of the ficlause and the beginning of the second.baseline structures, neither potential syntaboundary was marked by an IPh. The sentewas spoken with an L1H* pitch accent on thubject of the first clause and deaccentuatiohe ambiguous region, such that the preciseation of a low phrase accent (L2) with an

associated level 1 break was phoneticallybiguous. In this region, theFø was generalllow and flat, and word durations were relativshort. Thus, early and late closure sentencethe baseline conditions had different underlyphonological representations, but very simsurface phonetic structures.4 Figure 2 showearly and late closure versions of the examsentenceWhen Roger leaves the house it’dark in the cooperating and baseline conditioThe figure includes the amplitude by time waform, with durations marked for words and

4 Sentences in the baseline conditions had minlengthening and silence at phrase boundaries [wetranscribed the breaks throughout the ambiguous regi(0/1)]. In such cases, phonetic differences between L2 andL2L% may be neutralized. Thus either transcription macorrect for these sentences in the temporarily ambigregion (see discussion in Beckman, 1996). However,does not change the indeterminacy of the boundary locfor these sentences. For four items (numbers 1,6,8,andthe Appendix), one or more of the content words intemporarily ambiguous region carried an additional paccent followed by a phrase accent. These items’ pbaseline pronunciations nevertheless met our criteria
acceptability, intelligibility, and similarity.
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lences in the syntactically ambiguous regand theFø contour with ToBI tone and breaindices transcribed. Conflicting structures wcreated by digitally cross-splicing the early alate closure cooperating sentence materialsthat a prosodic boundary occurred at a misleing location in syntactic structure. We chosesplice materials in order to preserve the inmation identifying the IPh boundaries acrcooperating and conflicting conditions. Thusseparate phonetic analysis was necessarthese sentences.

For the sentences selected for use in thelowing experiments, analyses of durationFø showed minimal phonetic differencestween early/late closure sentence pairsbaseline prosodies, but substantial differenbetween early/late closure pairs with coopeing prosodies. Phonetic measurements aremarized in Table 1. Duration measuremewere compared for the main verb, the ambous noun phrase, the silence following the vthe silence following ambiguous noun phraand the total sentence. An analysis of variashowed significant effects of prosody, synand measurement location, and all interactwere also significant (allFs . 27, all ps ,.0001). Planned comparisons were condufor early versus late closure within cooperatand baseline conditions. Early versus latesure baseline prosody sentences showed notematic differences in duration in the temrarily ambiguous region for any measureFs , 1.1), with the exception of total sentenduration, where late closure sentences wlonger than early closure sentences (F (1,15)510.8,p , .001), presumably due to the usedifferent disambiguating words in the two coditions (e.g.,are versus they’re). In contrastearly versus late closure cooperating prossentences showed significant differences inration for all measures (allFs . 20, all ps ,.0001) (see Kjelgaard, 1995, for additionaltail). The average total durations of sentencethe cooperating and conflicting conditions wlonger than those in the baseline conditio(Sentences in the conflicting conditions walso longer in total duration than those in

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conflicting 5 2961, mean duration late closuconflicting 5 3077).

Multiple Fø measurements were compafor these sentences, including (1) the absorange of fundamental frequency across theporarily ambiguous regions of all items incondition (from the verb to the disambiguatword: e.g.,leaves the house is/its), (2) the meafundamental frequency in this region,5 and (3)the meanFø minimum for the verb, the ambiuous NP, and the disambiguating word.Fø min-ima were chosen as descriptors of the low toassigned in the temporarly ambiguous regfor these sentences (see Kjelgaard, 1995

5 Mean Fø was calculated using the FFT algorithmSignalyze 3.12 software (Keller, 1994).Fø values weralculated for 10-sample windows across all periodic

TAB

Phonetic Measurements for Ma(Truncated Versions Were

Mean durations (ms) Verb Silen

Cooperating prosodyEarly closure syntax 561 4

(27.3) (25.Late closure syntax 379 2

(26.0) (8.0Baseline prosody

Early closure syntax 410 2(22.2) (6.5

Late closure syntax 390 2(24.8) (7.3

Fø Measures (Hz)

Mean MinimumFø

V NPDisam

Cooperating prosodyEarly closure syntax 160.8 172.7

(2.6) (2.6)Late closure syntax 181.5 158.4

(2.8) (2.5)Baseline prosody

Early closure syntax 166.4 168.6(3.0) (3.7)

Late closure syntax 174.4 168.4(5.2) (3.7)

Note.Standard error values are in parentheses.

ents of the temporarily ambiguous regions.

e-

snr

additional detail). For the first two measuranalysis of variance showed no significantferences between baseline early and late closentences (allFs , 1.1). Comparison of thbaseline to the cooperating conditions showlower meanFø and a relatively restrictedFø

range for the disambiguating region in the baline sentences, consistent with deaccenting.Fø range analysis also showed a lower rangelow tones in the cooperating conditions thanthe baseline conditions. This is consistent wthe use of L% for clause-final positions in coperating conditions, but L2 for baseline conditions (Silverman et al., 1992; Beckma1996).

Analysis of variance ofFø minima showed nsignificant differences between the two base-

1

ials Used in Experiments 1, 2, and 3ed in Experiment 3, See Text)

1 NP Silence 2 Sent

521 19 296(24.9) (6.9) (114.2

605 507 290(24.4) (37.7) (107.9

475 8 230(26.9) (3.6) (78.8)

482 18 234(25.8) (5.5) (80.9)

Fø Range(ambiguous region)

Fø Mean(ambiguous region

uatingd

61.5 146–308 171.63) (3.6)74.9 146–300 173.96) (3.8)

63.1 155–210 167.99) (3.8)65.3 154–222 168.19) (4.3)

LE

terUs

ce

715)7)

2)4)

bigwor

1(2.

1(2.

1(2.

1(2.

conditions for the ambiguous NP and the dis-

e

dsuruse

rly

rly,

m-n,te

dia

thsuseerech

chamitheicaan

wathatrsde

odith

edme.rere-

tingforline

col-te-thedi-en-dif-

. In

s veri it.W ion,s oft anye g-m edt dget ther“ 48e sen-t dics Nos orm mes entd clo-s on-d ac-c sixc latec ionsw thea 2%.T un-c di-t gp most4 nif-i ure

lv taxH singf linec tlyl elinc

ttle


ambiguating word (bothFs , 1), but did showa slightly lowerFø minimum for the verb in thearly closure baseline condition (F(1,17) 57.63;p , .01).6 In contrast,Fø minima showeclear differences between early and late closentences in the cooperating condition. Clafinal words had significantly lowerFø minimathan their nonfinal counterparts (for V, eaclosure lower than late,F(1,17) 5 19.88,p ,.0001; for NP, late closure lower than eaF(1,17)5 30.95,p , .0001). In addition, theFø

minima were significantly lower on the disabiguating word in the early closure conditiowhere it was clause initial, than in the laclosure condition, where it was clause-meF(1,17)5 15.45,p , .0001).

PRETESTS

Intelligibility

Because the lexical differences betweentwo sentences were small, e.g., “is” ver“it’s,” “she’ll” versus “will,” sentences werpretested to be sure that critical words wclearly intelligible. Twenty subjects heard easentence over loudspeakers and chose whitwo phrases were contained in it. For the exple sentences, they would have chosen e“door is locked” or “door it’s locked.” To bsure that Ss were not focusing on the critwords, experimental items were mixed withequal number of controls where the choicebetween other word types such as “book onchair” or “book in the chair.” Sentences thproduced more than two intelligibility erro(there were four such tokens) were rerecorand retested to meet this criterion.

Baseline Uniformity

To insure that the same baseline prosstructure was spoken for each sentence in

6 It is possible that the lowerFø min for this clause-finaerb might be taken as a cue to early closure synowever, if this were so, it would predict easier proces

or the early closure than for the late closure baseonditions. Instead, our results will show significanonger response times for early than for late closure basonditions. This indicates that if the slightly lower verbFø

did provide an indication of the early boundary, very li
cprocessing advantage accrued due to this cue.
e-

l

e

of-er

l

se

d

ce

pair, two phonetically trained listeners agrethat the two pronunciations sounded the saSentences that did not pass this test werecorded and rejudged.

Pronunciation Acceptability

To show that the baseline and cooperapronunciations were comparably acceptableeach syntactic structure and that the basepronunciations were highly acceptable, welected listeners’ judgments of the approprianess of the pronunciation of the sentences incooperating, conflicting, and baseline contions. We also wanted to eliminate any stences that could cause spurious processingficulty, such as those with recording artifactsthis task, subjects were given 3 s to read theentence from a CRT screen and to pull a lendicating whether they had comprehended

e hoped that during reading comprehensubjects would complete syntactic analysishe sentence, thus reducing or removingffects of syntactic complexity on their judents of its pronunciation. Next, they listen

o the sentence twice and were asked to juhe speaker’s pronunciation, answering eierror” or “okay.” Forty-eight subjects heardxperimental sentences and 52 additional

ences that varied in syntactic and prosotructure and acceptability of pronunciation.ubject heard more than one pronunciationore than one syntactic version of the sa

entence. Using the acceptability judgmata, we selected 18 sets of early and lateure sentences for which all three prosodic citions met our criteria. Table 2 shows theeptability ratings for the 18 sentences in theonditions. All sentences in the early andlosure baseline and cooperating conditere accepted on at least 85% of the trials;verage rate of acceptance was just over 9here were no statistical differences in proniation acceptability among these four conions (all Fs , 1.1). In contrast, conflictinrosody sentences were accepted on at0% of trials; late closure versions were sig

cantly more acceptable than their early clos

.

e

ounterparts (F (1,17)5 4.17,p , .05).

urngedesklinwa

at

vi-enasrtioedthedewa

hisendn-Weriorro

toret

nceene acerreushege

tha

am

ngerical.weof

ands is

en-ncesnt.rial,d inthein

ress-of-n to-cts’enceingely,lesspro-the

ble),ingbetrolses,the

ir of

tyrtialtro-

ody

EL


EXPERIMENT 1

Experiment 1 examined early and late clossentence pairs with cooperating, conflictiand baseline prosodic structures in a spephonosyntactic grammaticality judgment taThis task required listeners to make a metaguistic evaluation of each sentence andotherwise comparable to the speeded grammcality judgment task that others have usedexamine the effect of syntactic structure onsual sentence processing (cf. Ferreira & Hderson, 1991; Warner & Glass, 1987). The tproduced two dependent measures: propoof “error” to “okay” judgments and speedjudgment time. The logic behind our use oftask was as follows: We asked listeners tocide whether each sentence they heard“okay” or contained an “error” and to base tdecision on whether they thought that the stence was “the one the speaker had intendesay.” We did not specifically direct their attetion to either prosodic or syntactic structure.assumed that each subject would set a critefor deciding that a sentence contained an eand that both prosodic and syntactic facwould contribute to where the criterion was sFor example, a syntactically simple sentewith a well-formed correspondence betwprosody and syntax should be easy to judg“okay,” while a syntactically simple sentenwith an ungrammatical prosody–syntax cospondence or one with a long hesitation pashould be easy to judge as an “error.” Otsentence types should be more difficult to judfor example, an early closure sentence wistrongly transitive verb or a sentence withprosody–syntax correspondence that is gr

TAB

Mean Proportion of Acceptability Ratings for thBaseline, and Conflicting Co

Cooperating prosody

arly closure syntax .931 (.019)ate closure syntax .939 (.019)


matical just under certain focus conditions. In

e,d

.-sti-o

-kn

-s

-to

nr

s.e

s

-er,

a

-

such cases, we assume listeners will take loto decide whether a sentence is grammatBecause the task involves time pressure,assume that subjects will limit the amounttime they search for a grammatical analysis,when their limit is reached before an analysifound, they will make an “error” decision.

In addition to the early and late closure stences, we included 20 unambiguous sentefor a companion duration control experimeAs noted above, additional segmental mateclause-final lengthening, and silence resultelonger sentence durations, on average, incooperating and conflicting conditions thanthe baseline conditions. We wanted to addthe concern that, with the use of an endsentence judgment task, these differences ital sentence duration might influence subjeresponse times. For example, longer sentdurations might allow additional processtime, resulting in faster processing. Conversshorter sentence duration might indicatematerial to be processed, resulting in fastercessing. If either of these situations werecase (and others are of course imaginacomparison of the cooperating and conflictconditions to the baseline conditions mightcompromised. We constructed duration consentences to contain either short or long pauwith pause lengths determined by matchingduration differences to those between a pacooperating and baseline sentences.

Method

Subjects.Sixty-six Northeastern Universiundergraduates participated in return for pacredit toward a course requirement in an In

2

8 Early and Late Closure Sentences in Cooperating,itions, Used in Experiments 1–3

Baseline prosody Conflicting pros

.903 (.017) .121 (.034)

.908 (.022) .200 (.044)

LE

e 1nd

ductory Psychology course. All participants

l oted

theionunth

temthed t

he2

ow

uretinitan-laten

ig-peuaearlance

tioertiguwes

vidre-seionausholocfolingting

etheerdico

lentIn-di-

en-ialsy atherd-set

sixh ofun-the

ac-thegin-

ofin a

ation-byshI

erryid-on.w ase-ggede thetionorin-by

tedat

im-nce.ted.nsetpull,tedes

ura-for


were native speakers of English with normacorrected-to-normal vision and no reporhearing problems.

Materials. The 18 sextuples chosen inpretests, 20 pairs of items for the companduration experiment, and seven additionalambiguous filler sentences were used inexperiment. Across the 18 base sentence iused to create the experimental sentences,was a slight bias toward transitive as opposeintransitive completion following the verb. Tmean constructed transitivity bias score was(bias scores for individual sentences are shin the Appendix).

Cooperating and baseline prosodic structwere unspliced natural speech, and conflicprosodic structures were created by digcross-splicing. Early closure conflicting setences were composed of the beginnings ofclosure cooperating sentences, through theof the silence following the temporarily ambuous NP, and the ends of early closure cooating sentences, starting with the disambiging word, e.g., is. Similarly, late closurconflicting sentences were composed of eclosure cooperating sentence beginningsthe ends of late closure cooperating sentenstarting at the disambiguating word, e.g.,it’s.

Short and long pause versions of the duracontrol items were created by deleting or insing silence at a pause location in an unambous sentence. Sentences were recordedpauses, including phrasal boundaries and htation pauses (the latter were used to proadditional items to which subjects mightspond “error” in the overall experiment). Thesilences were then edited to create two versof each sentence, one containing a long p(mean duration 593 ms) and the other a spause (mean duration 22 ms) at the sametion. Silent durations were determined aslows: We chose 10 early closure cooperatbaseline pairs and 10 late closure cooperabaseline pairs. Short pause silent durations wset equal to clause-final silent durations inbaseline item. Long pause silent durations wset equal to short pause durations plus theference in total sentence duration between
operating and baseline conditions for that item
r

-esreo

4n

sgl

ed

r-t-

yds,

n--

ithi-e

se

rta--//

re

ef--

Individual duration control sentences and sidurations are presented in the Appendix.spection of the materials by two listeners incated no audible splicing artifacts.

The six versions of each of the 18 experimtal items were distributed among six matersets, using a condition rotation determined bLatin square design. The two versions ofduration control items were distributed accoing to a second Latin square. Each materialscontained three tokens from each of theexperimental conditions, 10 tokens from eacthe duration control conditions, and sevenambiguous filler sentences. No subject heardsame item in more than one condition. A prtice list of six items, similar to those used inmain experiment, was presented at the bening of each materials set.

Procedure.Subjects participated in groupsup to eight participants. They were seatedquiet room in individual booths equipped withCRT screen, headphones, and three reactime levers. The experiment was controlledMPL software (Neath, 1994) on a MacintoIIci computer equipped with an AudioMediacard for sound presentation and a StrawbTree ACM2IO card configured to have indivual millisecond timers for each subject statiOn each trial, subjects heard a tone and sasimultaneous visual attention signal (thequence **READY** on the screen). Followinthis, they listened to a sentence and judwhether the speaker had intended to producsentence as they heard it. Subjects’ attenwas not specifically directed to the prosodythe syntax of the sentences. They werestructed to respond as quickly as possiblepulling one of two response levers, designa“Okay” and “Error” by labels that appearedthe bottom of the CRT screen during andmediately after the presentation of the senteDecisions and judgment times were collecJudgment times were measured from the oof the sentence sound to the subjects’ leverwith individual sentence durations subtracfrom each subject’s times. Judgment timlonger than 3500 ms (excluding sentence dtion) were discarded; these times accounted
.less than 4% of the data. As a check on com-

alsdearath

icaor”. 3se

ered,istiordom

in-allsub-

ts.nts

tac-then-ain

ntble

nif-ble

P nersj havef ces,b cts(

tosen-.

W rlyc on-fl ro-v or-r asp pro-s toi en-t “er-r on-fl nd. theb pro-d sures

ortften.67,d-ms.

s for

phon rly/l cofl


prehension, 10 times at intermittent intervduring the experiment, an alert signal sounand subjects were given 45 s to write a pphrase, on a sheet of paper provided inbooth, of the sentence they had just heard.

Results

Mean speeded phonosyntactic grammatity judgment times and the percentage of “errresponses for Experiment 1 are shown in FigFor all presented results that follow, responwere analyzed with both subjects (F1) and items(F2) as random effects; all reported effects wsignificant atp , .01 unless otherwise noteand unreported interactions were not statcally significant. In all figures, error bars freaction time (RT) results indicate6 1 standarerror (SE), calculated using a method rec

FIG. 3. Percentage of error judgments and speededosyntactic grammaticality judgment times (ms) for ea

ate closure sentences with cooperating, baseline, andicting prosodies, Experiment 1.

mended by Bakeman and McArthur (1996) to

d-e

l-

.s

-

-

estimate the variability in RTs within eachdividual condition after removing the overdifferences in mean response time betweenjects.

Phonosyntactic grammaticality judgmenSubjects’ speeded grammaticality judgmeshowed sensitivity to both prosodic and syntic factors. The top portion of Fig. 3 showsproportion of “error” judgments for the six coditions. An analysis of variance found a meffect of prosody (F1(2,65)5 190.82;F2(2,17)5 58.61), a main effect of syntax significaonly with subjects as the random varia(F1(1,65) 5 9.31, F2(1,17) 5 3.23, p , .09),and an interaction of prosody and syntax sigicant only with subjects as the random varia(F1(2,130)5 7.89,F2(2,34) 5 2.90,p , .07).

lanned comparisons showed that listeudged cooperating prosody sentences toewer errors than baseline prosody sentenut this effect was significant only by subjeF1(1,65) 5 10.82;F2(1,17) 5 2.27,p 5 .14).

Conflicting prosody sentences were judgedhave more errors than baseline prosodytences (F1(1,65) 5 225.97;F2(1,17) 5 72.77)

e found no “garden path” effects of ealosure syntax in either the cooperating or cicting prosody conditions, where prosody pided information about the correct (or incect) syntactic parse. However, this effect wresent in the baseline condition, where noodic boundary information was availablenform the parse. Early and late closure sences produced comparable proportions ofor” responses within the cooperating and cicting prosody conditions (.11 versus .11 a71 versus .67, respectively). In contrast, inaseline condition, early closure sentencesuced more “error” responses than late cloentences (.31 versus .10,F1(1,65) 5 26.14;

F2(1,17)5 9.60).The duration control sentences with sh

pauses were judged as errors slightly less othan those with long pauses (.63 versusrespectively). The high rate of “error” responing for these sentences was due to a few iteWe suspect that the edited pause duration

-

n-

these items were interpreted as speaker hesita-

o

snd

. 3rro

ince

1-

a nlyw

dc tione erj ce( pet .

thainech, re,

t ffew thee eri ar( stint re-c res oe arc esi gc ean1

itivor-ncc-

bevityonla

ig-

ol-, thedelsan-si-esbi-

arlywe

nglys

on,thee.

“er-ousfer-hort249

cticro-lin-dis-ndfordif-

dedre-ies,forr &Theuson

lexed inrel-dicthe

ro-f an


tions, thus provoking a higher percentage“error” responses.

Judgment times.Subjects’ judgment timealso showed sensitivity to both prosodic asyntactic factors. The bottom portion of Figshows mean response times and standard efor combined “error” and “okay” judgmentsthe six conditions. An analysis of varianfound main effects of prosody (F1(2,65) 5

9.12;F2(2,17)5 9.63) and syntax (F1(1,65)518.23,F2(1,17)5 5.85,p , .05) and an inter

ction of prosody and syntax significant oith subjects as the random variable (F1(2,130)

5 5.05, F2(2,34) 5 2.1, p , .15). Planneomparisons showed the predicted facilitaffect, that is, cooperating sentences w

udged more quickly than baseline sentenmeans were 1178.8 and 1387.8 ms, resively; F1(1,65) 5 25.25; F2(1,17) 5 11.79)However, there was no interference effect,is, judgment times for conflicting and baselconditions did not differ significantly from eaother (means were 1427.4 and 1387.8 msspectively; bothFs , 1). Also as predictedhere was no measurable garden path eithin the cooperating conditions. Instead,arly closure cooperating condition was num

cally faster than its late closure counterpmeans were 1175.6 and 1181.9 ms), suggehat cooperating prosodic information pluded parsing difficulty for the early closuyntactic structures. In contrast to this lackffect, planned comparisons showed that elosure syntax did produce garden path procng difficulty in the baseline and conflictinonditions (early mean 1518.9, late m305.3 ms;F1(1,130) 5 28.64, F2(1,34) 5

11.88).Verb transitivity and judgment times.We

conducted a posthoc analysis of verb transity, using the transitivity scores from the nmative study, and treating the verb preferevariable as continuous (Perlmutter & MaDonald, 1992). We tested for a correlationtween response times and verb transitiscores within each of the six experimental cditions. Results showed only a very weak retionship, with transitivity difference scores s
nificantly related to judgment times only in the
f

rs

esc-

t

-

ct

-tg

flys-

-

e

-

--

conflicting late closure condition (r 5 2.5,F(1,16) 5 5.30,p , .05; all otherFs , 2, allother ps . .20.) We note that, since we clected judgments at the end of the sentencemajority of current sentence processing mowould predict a relationship between verb trsitivity and judgment times, such that trantively biased verbs would produce faster timfor late closure sentences, and intransitivelyased verbs would produce faster times for eclosure sentences. Although the set of verbsused included some tokens that were strotransitive or intransitive, the majority of itemwere not strongly biased in either directiwhich may have reduced the detectability ofinfluence of verb transitivity on response tim

Companion duration control experiment.Aone-way analysis of variance on combinedror” and “okay” responses for the unambigucontrol sentences showed no significant difences in processing time between long and spause conditions (means were 1205 and 1ms, respectively, bothFs , 1).

Discussion

Results from the speeded phonosyntagrammaticality judgment task showed that psodic structure influenced subjects’ metaguistic judgments, even in the presence ofambiguating syntactic information. We fousignificant effects of prosody and syntaxboth dependent measures. Interestingly, thisfers from previous work that used a speegrammaticality judgment task with visual psentation of temporary syntactic ambiguitwhere significant differences were foundjudgments, but not judgment times (WarneGlass, 1987; Ferreira & Henderson, 1991).lack of effect for judgment times in the previowork may have been due to ceiling effectstime to judge long and syntactically compgarden path sentences. The sentences usour experiment were short and syntacticallyatively simple, and the addition of prosostructure may have reduced the difficulty ofjudgment task.

We predicted that information from the psodic representation (here, the presence o
IPh boundary) would inform syntactic decision

tingenReingtacsenedicrects

odin

oniesnoco

rate

aserelattin

prolinthaespro

ofin

theemen-ntod

allyn-besentimne

s isdiingontingmi-

o

ro-thew-tingnotok

or”op-

ess.kero-ase-a-ed

lingndre-

thisilingctsuch

nsedi-t ofeline

theordnd-ra-

ainex-

tedandec-suc-ctscesFor

imeandthen-di-

thea

uein


making so that judgments in the cooperaprosody conditions would be facilitated whcompared to baseline prosody conditions.sults confirmed this prediction. Cooperatsentences, with coincident prosodic and syntic constituent boundaries, were procesfaster than baseline sentences, where phoinformation about the location of the prosoboundary was ambiguous. In addition, we pdicted that syntactic garden pathing effewould be absent in the cooperating proscondition, because syntactic decision makwould be informed by prosodic informatiabout the location of constituent boundarConsistent with this prediction, there weredifferences between early and late closureoperating structures in either acceptabilityings or response times, even though there wclear syntactic garden path effects in the bline and conflicting conditions. Early closusentences were judged more slowly thanclosure sentences in the baseline and conflicconditions, and early closure sentencesduced more “error” responses in the basecondition. These results support the claimsprosody informs the syntactic parsing procand that cooperating prosody facilitates thecessing of temporary syntactic ambiguity.

Our view also predicts that the presenceprosodic boundary at a misleading locationthe syntactic structure should interfere withparsing process, forcing misanalysis of the tporary ambiguity. Thus conflicting prosody stences should produce more “error” judgmeand take longer to judge than baseline prossentences. This prediction was only particonfirmed: Although conflicting prosody setences were significantly more likely tojudged as errors than baseline prosodytences, there were no significant responsedifferences between the two conditions. Opossible explanation for this pattern of effectthat judgment times in the cooperating contions may reflect a different type of processthan those in the baseline and conflicting cditions. Judgments in both of the cooperaconditions were relatively fast and predonately “okay” responses, presumably based
an initial, successful analysis of the sentence
-

-dtic

-

yg

.

--re-

eg-

ets-

a

-

sy

-e

-

-

n

This analysis was strongly influenced by psodic structure and showed no sensitivity toearly/late closure syntactic difference. Hoever, judgments in the baseline and conflicconditions, where prosodic structure didpredict the correct syntactic analysis, tolonger to complete and included more “errresponses. These judgments may reflect theeration of a syntax-sensitive reanalysis proc

Even if this is so, why didn’t reanalysis talonger in the conflicting conditions, where psodic structure was misleading, than in the bline conditions, where it was merely uninformtive? It is possible that the speedmetalinguistic judgment task enforced a ceion the time that subjects were willing to spesearching for an acceptable analysis beforejecting the conflicting prosody sentences. Ifaspect of the task was responsible for a ceeffect, we should find that interference effeappear when tasks that do not require sjudgments are used.

One concern for the comparison of respotimes in the cooperating and conflicting contions to those for baseline conditions was thatotal sentence duration, because the bassentences were, on average, shorter thanothers, which contained clause-final wlengthening and silence at the prosodic bouaries. Both the results of the companion dution experiment and the results in the mexperiment cast doubt on a duration-basedplanation. First, when duration was manipuladirectly for sentences of comparable lengthstructure, it produced no significant effects. Sond, a duration-based explanation cannotcessfully account for the pattern of effeacross conditions unless additional influen(due to syntax and prosody) are added.example, it could be argued that additional twas used to complete additional processingthat this, rather than prosodic structure, waslocus of the facilitation in the cooperating coditions. However, the same amount of adtional time was available for processing inconflicting conditions and did not producecomparable facilitation effect. One might argthat the additional timedid speed processing
.the conflicting conditions as well, with the re-

ctofun

roscoanseonces. Itha-eriha

er-tialtouslveferre-tic

onssestennsesor”oplat37tinglo

r oarlyesslyom

ofandgl roskenc

yn-henalre-al.,

hatndro-

vari-meectshedg-g ofure-ven

lin-eed

e

tenttit-ionaly-nceo-et-dedre-in

t theay

ntli-nceuirethethates

er-sionplymalas


sult that we did not find an interference effeHowever, this claim incorporates an effectprosody. In addition, a duration-based accocannot explain the syntactic differences acprosodic conditions—that is, early closureoperating sentences have long durationsshort response times, early closure baselinetences have short durations and long resptimes, and early closure conflicting sentenhave long durations and long response timesum, the companion experiment suggestsduration has little effect when it is directly mnipulated, and the results of the main expment must be explained by more factors tduration alone.

A final concern that must be raised in intpreting the judgment times is the differencontribution of “okay” and “error” responsesthe conditions being compared. This is becaresponses for the two types of trials may invocognitive processes that are qualitatively difent from one another. For example, “error”sponses could involve additional nonlinguischecking processes, resulting in longer resptimes. Since the number of “error” responcontributing to the conditions is larger for juthose conditions that produce longer judgmtimes, we looked at the pattern of respotimes for the “okay” responses alone. Thfollowed the same pattern as those for “errand “okay” judgments combined (means: coerating early closure 1088 ms, cooperatingclosure 1131 ms, baseline early closure 1ms, baseline late closure 1286 ms, conflicearly closure 1402 ms, and conflicting late csure 1316 ms). However, the small numbeobservations, particularly in the baseline eand the two conflicting conditions, interferwith item counterbalancing and must seriouqualify any conclusions that can be drawn frthese data.

It is interesting to compare the patterneffects here to other studies of prosodysyntax that have collected metalinguistic juments together with response times. Severacent studies have used a version of the crmodal naming task in which subjects are asto listen to a syntactically ambiguous sente
fragment with cooperating or conflicting pro-
.

ts-dn-sesnat

-n

e

-

es

tee

-e5

-f

d-e-s-de

sodic structure, to name a visual word that stactically disambiguates the fragment, and tto give a rating to indicate how well the visuword completes the spoken fragment. Somesearchers using this task (Marslen-Wilson et1992; Murray & Watt, 1996) have argued tdifferent patterns of effects in judgments ajudgment times reflect different aspects of pcessing measured by the two dependentables. However, other work using the satasks has shown the same pattern of effcommon to both (Warren et al., 1995). Tspeeded phonosyntactic grammaticality jument task we used brings together the ratinthe stimulus and the reaction-time measment. However, our results suggest that ewhen the timed task itself involves a metaguistic judgment, the response time pattern nnot mimic listeners’ “off-line” ratings of thstimuli.

The results of Experiment 1 were consiswith the view that cooperating prosodic consuent boundaries facilitate syntactic decismaking and may preclude syntactic misanses. However, there was no clear interfereeffect on judgment times from conflicting prsodic information. We were concerned that malinguistic processes inherent in the speegrammaticality judgment task may haveduced its sensitivity to prosodic interferencesyntactic processing and also concerned thatwo different types of responses in the task mhave differentially contributed to judgmetimes in conditions. In Experiment 2, we repcated Experiment 1 using an end-of-sentecomprehension task, one that did not reqsubjects to reflect on the grammaticality ofsentences they were processing, and onewould allow analysis of a set of reaction timfrom a single type of response.

EXPERIMENT 2

Experiment 2 used the materials from Expiment 1 in an end-of-sentence comprehentask. In this task, listeners were asked to simlisten to the sentences as they would for norcomprehension and to indicate as quickly
possible whether each sentence had been under-

e-romasic

odynithouns

serro-

tyrtiatrontsl oted

tothase

ofanacltanc,er t

ia

ersa-RT

senmeencalsu50es. Ateran

er

orre-

messes

ram-nsi-Anof

ith

P thec erec se-l .42m

t incestheand

r-ultyand

stan-oop-t 2.


stood. Although “did not comprehend” rsponses were possible, this task differs fthat in Experiment 1 because we did notsubjects for a qualitative judgment. Our predtions were the same: cooperating prosshould facilitate syntactic processing, and stactic processing difficulties associated wnonpreferred analyses in reading studies shbe precluded in cooperating prosody conditioConflicting prosody should mislead the parinterfering with syntactic processing and pducing longer comprehension times.

Method

Subjects.Sixty-six Northeastern Universiundergraduates participated in return for pacredit toward a course requirement in an Inductory Psychology course. All participawere native speakers of English with normacorrected-to-normal vision and no reporhearing problems.

Materials. The materials were identicalthose described above with the exceptionthey were redistributed across six materialsusing two new Latin square designs.

Procedure.Subjects participated in groupsup to eight participants, using the hardwaresoftware described for Experiment 1. On etrial, subjects heard a tone and saw a simuneous visual attention signal (the seque**READY** on the screen). Following thisthey listened to a sentence and pulled a levindicate whether they had comprehendedThey were instructed to respond as quicklypossible by pulling one of two response levdesignated “Understood” and “Didn’t” by lbels that appeared at the bottom of the Cscreen during and immediately after the pretation of the sentence. Comprehension tiwere measured from the onset of the sentsound to the subjects’ lever pull, with individusentence durations subtracted from eachject’s times. Response times longer than 2ms (after subtraction) were discarded; thtimes accounted for less than 2% of the dataa check on comprehension, at intermittent invals an alert signal sounded and subjectsswered a question that appeared in the cent
the screen, by choosing one of two possibl
k-y-

ld.,

l-

r

tts

dh-e

ot.s,

-se

b-0es--

of

answers presented on either side and csponding to the response levers (e.g.,WhenRoger goes out, the lights are: ON OFF).

Results

Mean end-of-sentence comprehension tiand standard errors for “Understood” responare presented in Fig. 4. As in the speeded gmaticality judgment task, results showed setivity to both prosodic and syntactic factors.analysis of variance found a main effectprosody (F1(2,65) 5 39.29;F2(2,17) 5 13.32)and main effect of syntax significant only wsubjects as the random variable (F1(1,65) 54.74, p , .05; F2(1,17) 5 1.28, p , .28).

lanned comparisons showed facilitation inooperating conditions, where sentences womprehended more quickly than in the baine conditions (means were 641.97 and 741

s, respectively;F1(1,65)5 10.64;F2(1,17)56.01). There was also an interference effecthe conflicting conditions, where sentenwere comprehended more slowly than inbaseline conditions (means were 951.80741.42 ms, respectively;F1(1,65) 5 47.62;F2(1,17)5 26.95). Additional planned compaisons showed garden path processing difficfor early closure sentences in the baseline

FIG. 4. End-of-sentence comprehension times anddard errors (ms) for early/late closure sentences with cerating, baseline, and conflicting prosodies, Experimen

econflicting conditions (early mean 887.8, late

astheco-urem

proltyialsen

Thachctn i

vityre-nsri-akeslyur

a

o mp dur and 10m

D

es ed red odb

T co-o ns.I dedg nt1 forc tob in-d salb pers stentw dici ruc-t othf po-r ro-c turet ents re isc on.

alsos dedp n-t on,t latec andc resw inga f al con-fl tsf inr er,1 a &H ane hatp aly-s

eri-

ody

EL


mean 805.39 ms;F1(1,130)5 7.31,F2(1,34)54.19,p , .05). As in Experiment 1, there wno measurable garden path effect withincooperating conditions, with early closureoperating numerically faster than its late closcounterpart (means were 638.8 and 645.1respectively), suggesting that cooperatingsodic information precluded parsing difficufor the early closure syntactic structures. Tron which subjects did not comprehend the stences accounted for 4.6% of the total trials.number and proportion of these trials in econdition are presented in Table 3. Subjefailed to comprehend the sentence most oftethe conflicting prosody conditions.

Transitivity and comprehension time.Weconducted a posthoc analysis of verb transitias we did for Experiment 1, testing for a corlation between response times and verb trativity scores in the 6 conditions. As in Expement 1, results showed only a very werelationship, with transitivity difference scorsignificantly related to judgment times in onone condition, this time the baseline late closcondition (r 5 2.47, F(1,16)5 4.50,p , .05;

ll otherFs , 2.5, all otherps . .13).Companion duration control experiment.A

ne-way analysis of variance comparing corehension times for short and long pauseation control sentences showed no significifferences (short mean 1057, long mean 1s, bothFs , 1.5).

iscussion

End-of-sentence comprehension timhowed prosodic effects even in the presencisambiguating syntactic structure. As picted, the presence of a cooperating pros

TAB

Number and Proportion of Trials in Six Cothe Sentenc

Cooperating prosody

arly closure syntax 6 (.03)ate closure syntax 9 (.04)

oundary facilitated syntactic decision makingm

s,-

-e

sn

i-

e

--t4

sof-ic

here was a processing time advantage forperating conditions over baseline conditio

mportantly, and in contrast to the speerammaticality judgment times in Experime, the predicted processing disadvantageonflicting prosody conditions comparedaseline prosody conditions was significant,icating that a misleading prosodic phraoundary interfered with recovery of the proyntactic analysis. These results are consiith the strong version of the view that proso

nformation determines syntactic phrase sture assignment. Such a view must predict bacilitation and interference, so that at a temary syntactic ambiguity, prosody leads the pessor toward a syntactic constituent struchat is consistent with prosodic constitutructure, regardless of whether that structuonsistent with upcoming syntactic informatiEnd-of-sentence comprehension times

howed that cooperating prosody preclurocessing difficulty for the early closure sy

actic structures: In the cooperating conditihere were no differences between early andlosure sentences, although in the baselineonflicting conditions, early closure structuere processed more slowly than late, showsyntactic garden path effect. The finding o

ate closure advantage in the baseline andicting conditions is consistent with effecound for temporarily ambiguous sentenceseading paradigms (e.g., Frazier & Rayn982; Carlson & Tanenhaus, 1989; Ferreirenderson, 1991), while the lack of suchffect in the cooperating condition indicates trosody is used to prevent syntactic misanes (or perhaps to reanalyze them quickly).We repeated the companion duration exp

3

itions on Which Subjects Did Not ComprehendExperiment 2

Baseline prosody Conflicting pros

7 (.04) 17 (.09)4 (.02) 10 (.05)

LE

nde in

: ent with the end-of-sentence comprehension

asth

osesedbethehey,thethinapll.

omo

81l.,ssrooschs iongara

ardicreci-

oultwolinegaronspthery

andesingntthero-

erlinareen

pro-ctic, re-then-ifi-en-erenes.ter-

dif-imescticstedded

ivedi-in

hichowongan-

per-in-theail-rse,imead-n-

thebutr-ne-andues-e ofon-

sisdygestci-ion,r-

wasnsi-

ors.we


task in Experiment 2. Again, our concern wthat the comparison of response times incooperating and conflicting conditions to thfor baseline conditions would be compromiby the difference in total sentence durationtween the conditions. Our findings weresame as those for Experiment 1, that is, wsentence duration was manipulated directlproduced no significant effects. In addition,pattern of results across the six conditions ofmain experiment would be difficult to explaon the basis of durational factors, withoutpeal to prosodic and syntactic factors as we

Our findings are consistent with those frprevious studies examining prosodic effectssyntactic closure ambiguity (Slowiaczek, 19Carroll & Slowiaczek, 1987; Warren et a1995). All of these studies found faster proceing times for sentences with cooperating psodic and syntactic boundaries than for thwith conflicting prosody and syntax. While suresults are predicted if the parsing procesinfluenced by prosody, they cannot give strsupport to the argument that prosodic boundinformation determines parsing decisionstemporary syntactic ambiguities. We havegued that such a view implies that prosoinformation can both facilitate and interfewith syntactic decision making and that coindent prosodic and syntactic boundaries shpreclude syntactic garden pathing. Thenovel contributions of our studies—the basecomparison and the direct test for syntacticden path effects in a cooperating prosody cdition—were constructed to address thesecific claims. Our results suggest thatprevious findings were due to both facilitatoand interfering effects of prosodic structurecan exclude the explanation that longer procing times found for sentences with misleadprosodic boundaries were due to the presetion of a disrupted stimulus rather than touse of prosodic information in the parsing pcess.

If we consider Experiments 1 and 2 togethand look only at the cooperating and baseconditions, the same pattern of effects appefor judgments, judgment times, and compreh
sion times. We interpreted the pattern of data i
e

-

nit

e

-

n;

--e

s

yt-

d

--

e-

s-

a-

,ed-

the cooperating conditions to suggest thatsodic information determines the syntastructure assigned to a sentence. Howeversults from the two experiments diverged forconflicting conditions: Listeners judged coflicting prosody sentences as “errors” signcantly more often than baseline prosody stences, and late closure conflicting items wjudged errors as often as early closure oJudgment times showed no corresponding inference effect, but did show the syntacticference. End-of-sentence comprehension tshowed both the interference and the syntaeffects. To interpret these effects, we suggethat the judgment component of the speegrammaticality judgment task left it insensitto interference effects in the conflicting contion. Consistent with this explanation, resultsthe end-of-sentence comprehension task, wdid not require a metalinguistic judgment, sha clear interference effect. This pattern, alwith the presence of the early closure disadvtage in the response time data from both eximents, is consistent with a prosodicallyformed syntactic parsing process: Inbaseline conditions, no information was avable from prosodic structure to inform the paand so syntactic differences in processing treflect the same pattern of effects found in reing studies. In contrast, in the conflicting coditions, prosodic information determinedinitial structure assigned to the sentence,immediately following morphosyntactic infomation was inconsistent with this analysis,cessitating reanalysis for both early closurelate closure sentences. One outstanding qtion, given this scenario, concerns the sourcthe unpredicted garden path effect in the cflicting conditions. That is, why did reanalytake longer for early closure conflicting prososentences? Depth-first parsing models sugone possibility: When the initial parsing desion, based on prosodic boundary locatcame into conflict with morphosyntactic infomation, the resulting reanalysis processbased on verb bias (in these materials, a trative bias) and other available contextual factAnother related explanation is that because
nmeasured at sentence end, our results must re-

or-thara

theasinrly

t bdaonuret ancnger-n tre

, (2u-sinat

ro-sesre-8)

opofndthereureurncynnpros oafeceleal.

sentheceeder-es

onle’s

bet

itiateon-essnal-sing91)at

ter-marent96)ffectec-r inare

en,ncesdicdicver-a-

m-toctico bectsl-seeissen-vi-and

oryast:

W ualt vedt erea thev o as

taskw lin-


flect reprocessing influenced not only by infmation that precedes the ambiguity, butfollows it. Thus verb bias and more genesyntactic and semantic information fromsentences’ final clauses may have been bitoward a transitive interpretation, resultinglonger reprocessing times for conflicting eaclosure sentences.

Thus our results so far demonstrate thasentence end, the presence of an IPh bounhas both facilitative and interfering effectsthe resolution of temporary syntactic closambiguity. These results allow us to rule ounumber of hypotheses that have been advaabout the relationship of prosody to parsiincluding (1) that the prosodic structure pceived for spoken sentences is dependent ounderlying syntactic structure that has beencovered for the sentence (Lieberman, 1968)that prosodic variables have little or no inflence on syntactic aspects of the auditory parprocess (Watt & Murray, 1995), and (3) thprosodic structure, while it may assist with pcessing of syntactically unpreferred analycannot produce processing difficulty for pferred syntactic analyses (Pritchett, 198However, end-of-sentence measures leavethe possibility that momentary early effectssyntax went undetected. For example, the fiing of no syntactic closure preference incooperating prosody conditions may simplyflect very fast reanalysis of the early clossentence, rather than an initial early closanalysis on the basis of prosodic constitueTherefore, on the basis of these data we cadistinguish among those models that positsodic influences from the very earliest stageprocessing (Speer et al., 1989, 1996; Sch1997) and those that locate prosodic influenat other stages of analysis (Marcus & Hind1990; Steedman, 1991; Marslen-Wlison et1992; Pynte & Prieur, 1996).

On our view, because the prosodic repretation organizes the phonological input tosyntactic parsing mechanism, it will influenthe initial syntactic analysis that is considerproducing immediate facilitation and interfence effects on the syntactic parsing proc
Other researchers have suggested that prosog
tl

ed

yry

ed,

he-)

g

,

.en

-

-

e.ot-fr,s,,

-

,

s.

has a secondary and/or delayed influenceparsing. For example, Marcus and Hind(1990) parser considers boundary tones to“unknown lexical items” (p. 495) in its inpustream and uses them as local markers to inclosure of the current constituent under cstruction. Constituents created by this procare combined during post-phrase-structure ayses that are sensitive to intermediate phraand pitch accent information. Steedman (19posits a “prosodic constituent condition” thblocks the combination of constituents demined by other aspects of a categorial gramif the mapping between these two constitustructures conflicts. Pynte and Prieur (19propose a model where prosody does not ainitial syntactic analyses, but influences a sond stage of parsing by determining the ordewhich alternative verb argument structuresconsidered. Marslen-Wilson, Tyler, WarrGrenier, and Lee (1992) suggest that senteare initially structured on the basis of prosoand morphosyntactic cues, but that prosocues are given less weight and are easily oridden by conflicting morphosyntactic informtion.

In Experiment 3, we used cross-modal naing, a more “on-line” task that allowed usmeasure processing at the point of syntadisambiguation. The task has been shown tsensitive to prosodic and syntactic effe(Marslen-Wilson & Tyler, 1977; Marslen-Wison et al., 1992; Warren et al., 1995; butWatt & Murray, 1996). In one version of thtask, subjects listened to ambiguous spokentence fragments immediately followed by asual target word that continued the sentenceresolved the syntactic ambiguity (e.g., Auditfragment:The workers considered that the loffer from the management. . . Visual target

AS). On each trial, subjects named the visarget and then rated how well the word sero continue the fragment. Naming times wssumed to reflect the ease of integratingisual target and the fragment together intentence.One concern we had about the use of thisas the potential contribution of the meta

dyuistic judgment component to naming times,

iouectam&beverthpetintoticn-tamad1

aske

asoundnsuissityali

undenideratm-ro

aereingingyntagdytin

atedleetsk,rag

nce.etal-end toand

gytedire-erslan-

tedure

2.sticce.g.,

-calre-

pro-andchPh)thatblerds

rat-edigu-ol-re-

ngitory

soualhenre-on-ig-

useg-

u pre-c


due to the concurrent rating task. Some prevstudies have shown different patterns of effin the postnaming rating data compared to ning times (Marslen-Wilson et al., 1992; WattMurray, 1996), suggesting a dissociationtween the two aspects of the task. Howeother studies using this task have shownsame pattern of effects across these two dedent variables (Warren et al., 1995), suggessome contribution from the rating processnaming time. To the extent that metalinguisreflection is not a part of ‘typical’ spoken laguage comprehension, we consider it a coninant in measures of on-line processing. Indition, we noted in comparing Experimentsand 2 that the metalinguistic judgment tseemed to attenuate prosodic interferencefects that were measurable with a similar tthat did not require this judgment. Becausegoal was to demonstrate both facilitation ainterference effects on initial parsing decisiowe modified the task to remove the metalingtic component, while maintaining the necesfor subjects to integrate across the two modties.

We predict the same pattern of effects foin the first two experiments. Specifically, whprosodic and syntactic boundaries coincprocessing will be facilitated, so that coopeing prosody conditions will produce faster naing times than baseline conditions. When psodic constituent boundaries occur atmisleading point in syntactic structure, thwill be an interference effect, so that conflictprosody conditions will produce slower namtimes than baseline conditions. Finally, any stactic garden path processing disadvanshown in the baseline or conflicting prosoconditions should disappear in the cooperaconditions.

EXPERIMENT 3

Experiment 3 used the same sentence mrials as Experiments 1 and 2 in a modifiversion of the cross-modal naming task (Ty& Marslen-Wilson, 1977; Marslen-Wilsonal., 1992; Warren et al., 1995). In our tasubjects heard a syntactically ambiguous f
ment, named a visually presented disambigua
ss-

-,en-g

--

f-kr

,-

-

,-

-

-e

g

e-

r

-

ing word, and then completed the senteThus sentence completion, rather than a minguistic judgment of the relationship betwethe named word and the fragment, was useencourage integration across the auditoryvisual modalities.

Method

Subjects. Sixty undergraduate psycholostudents at Northeastern University participain exchange for credit toward a course requment. All subjects were native English speakand reported having no hearing, speech, orguage problems.

Materials. Sentence fragments were creaby digitally truncating the early and late clossentence stimuli from Experiments 1 andEach fragment contained all of the acouinformation from the onset of the sententhrough the end of the ambiguous region (eWhen Roger leaves the house. . .). The fragments, with transitivity scores, phonologitranscriptions, and the visual words, are psented in the Appendix.

The experimental design contained threesodic conditions: Cooperating, baseline,conflicting. In the cooperating conditions, eafragment contained an intonation phrase (Iboundary with an associated level 4 breakwas coincident with one of the two possisyntactic clause boundaries. Visual target woresolved the syntactic ambiguity. For coopeing prosody conditions, when the IPh followthe verb, the visual target resolved the ambity toward early closure, and when the IPh flowed the ambiguous NP, the visual targetsolved toward late closure. Conflicticonditions were created using the same audfragments with the opposite visual targets,that when the IPh followed the verb, the vistarget resolved toward late closure, and wthe IPh followed the NP, the visual targetsolved toward early closure. For baseline cditions, no IPh boundary occurred in the ambuous region. The subject of the first clacarried an L1H* pitch accent, and the ambi

ous region was deaccented, such that theise location of a low phrase accent (L2) with

t-a level 1 break was phonetically ambiguous

bled thsix

enialsyon

ndineasend

dp ion(1 -b

at era mem The re( tere ndp ce-o cht ubj tenf

p gett erea rsa-t mk m-p nedt d toi thatt theo xt.F ualw iblea nd,b tsa udi-t untilt aredo rag-m am-i thee

ctsc fore erep ase( re

ingncy,

d

B

C


within the temporarily ambiguous region. Ta4 shows an example sentence fragment ancorresponding visual target words in theconditions.

The six versions of each of the 18 experimtal items were distributed among six matersets, using a condition rotation determined bLatin square design. Each materials set ctained three tokens from each of the six cotions and 22 filler fragments. These contaisingle clauses, adjunct phrases, or noun phrFive fragments contained a late prosodic bouary (e.g.,At the zooL2H% . . .), 7 containe

rosodic boundaries at unpredictable locate.g., The youngH2L% Californian. . .), and0 contained no prosodic boundary (The softall pitch . . .).Procedure. Subjects participated one at

ime and were seated next to the experimentquiet room equipped with a monochro

onitor, headphones, and a microphone.xperiment was controlled by MPL softwaNeath, 1994) on a Macintosh IIcx compuquipped with an AudioMedia I card for souresentation and a CMU button box with voiperated relay for millisecond timing. On ea

rial, there was a warning signal, and then sects listened over the headphones to a sen

TAB

An Example Auditory Sentence Fragment with V

Condition Au

Cooperating prosodyH*

Early closure ((When Roger le

Late closure ((When Roger le

aseline prosodyL1H*

Early closure ((When Roger leL1H*


onflicting prosody

Early closure ((When Roger leH*


ragment that was immediately followed by the

e

-

a--ds.-

s

in

e

-ce

resentation on the monitor of a visual tarhat could continue the sentence. They wsked to imagine they were having a conve

ion with a good friend and that the two of thenew each other “so well that they could colete each others’ sentences.” As they liste

o the spoken fragments, subjects were tolmagine that their friend was speaking andhe word that appeared on the monitor wasne they knew their friend would say neinally, they were asked to name the visord into the microphone as quickly as possnd then complete the sentence for their frieeginning with the visual word. Visual targeppeared immediately at the offset of the a

ory fragments and remained on the screenhe subject responded. Naming times appen the monitor after each response. The fent completions and the accuracy of the n

ng response were recorded in writing byxperimenter.At the end of the experimental trials, subje

ompleted 15 additional naming trials, 3ach of the six visual target words, which wresented following a neutral carrier phrThe next word will be. . .). These times we

collected to assess lexical effects on namtimes, such as those due to word freque

4

al Targets for Cross-Modal Naming from Experiment 3

ry fragment Visual wor

s2)PPhL% )IPh ((the house isH*

s the houseL2)PPhL% )IPh it’s

s2)PPh (the house is

s the houseL2)PPh it’s

H*s the houseL2)PPhL% )IPh is

s2)PPhL% )IPh ((the house it’s

LE

isu

dito

aveL

ave

aveL

ave

ave

aveL

length, orthography, and word-initial phoneme

esbyananfo

re-rts

icathee

c lsoe thet aceu ndiv 1)T ngr

se-l nge tived stm thb di-t ctet mat

foE epl inE ncef

n-t a

taxd

c

a edm ns( ely;F ,

reline

dif-pec-r-

f s,w n int and7

p-ar-on-ed

linesub-ms,

yn-t rlyc es int ,l

i-

.ffect

rrorsoop-

ng


(e.g., Fowler, 1979). Individual reaction timwere corrected for word-based variabilitysubtracting the difference between the grmean of the neutral-context naming timesthe mean of the three tokens from each itemeach subject.

Results

Trials that produced incorrect namingsponses (including wrong words, false staand voice key failures) and/or ungrammatfragment completions were excluded fromanalyses. Trials longer than 2 s (before thorrection for word-based variability) were axcluded. Missing data accounted for 8% of

otal experimental responses and were replsing the average of the experiment-wise iidual subject and item means (Winer, 197able 5 displays the distribution of missiesponses.

The majority of errors occurred in the baine prosody conditions and in the conflictiarly closure condition. Thus, the conservaata replacement technique slightly undereated the duration of response times inaseline and early closure conflicting con

ions. Because these were conditions predio have slower reaction times, any underestiion worked against the hypotheses.

Mean naming times and standard errorsxperiment 3 are shown in Fig. 5. Results r

icated the overall pattern of those foundxperiments 1 and 2. An analysis of varia

ound a main effect of prosody (F1(2,59) 548.30;F2(2,17)5 11.75), a main effect of syax (F1(1,59)5 22.72;F2(1,17)5 11.75), andsignificant interaction of prosody and syn(F1(2,118)5 17.41;F2(2,34)5 8.28). Planne

TABLE 5

Proportion of Missing Data in Six Conditionsfor Experiment 3

Condition Cooperating Baseline Conflicti

Early closure .05 .15 .13Late closure .03 .10 .03

omparisons showed facilitation in the cooper

ddr

,l

d-.

i-e

d-

r-

ting conditions, where targets were namore quickly than in the baseline conditio

means were 656 and 753 ms, respectiv

1(1,59)5 27.6;F2(1,17)5 12.25). Howeverthis effect did not hold within the late closuconditions. That is, the cooperating and baselate closure conditions were not statisticallyferent (means were 679 and 691 ms, restively; bothFs , 1.3). There was also an inteerence effect in the conflicting conditionhere targets were named more slowly tha

he baseline conditions (means were 83453 ms, respectively;F1(1,59)5 18.7;F2(1,17)

5 9.41). It is important to note that the disrutive effect of misleading prosody was not cried by the early closure condition alone. Cflicting late closure sentences showsignificantly longer naming times than baselate closure sentences, though only in thejects’ analysis (means were 754 and 691respectively;F1(1,59)5 5.7, p , 02; F2(1,17)5 2.54,p 5 .12).

Additional planned comparisons showed sactic garden path processing difficulty for ealosure as compared to late closure sentenche baseline conditions (early mean5 817 msate mean 5 691 ms; F1(1,59) 5 22.72;F2(1,17)5 10.10) and in the conflicting condtions (early mean5 914.60 ms, late mean5754 ms;F1(1,59) 5 37.33;F2(1,17) 5 18.75)There was no measurable garden path e

FIG. 5. Cross-modal naming times and standard e(ms) for early/late closure sentences with IPh-based c
-erating, baseline, and conflicting prosodies, Experiment 3.

henuparelymarly

ityiveerr &

ionrens.antop-

elin

r

d 2bens

hentinams inua

n-ctsionoglex91,tiogeeseretheuldthepebe

ase

ro-shipth.berof

thatlesure

ref ctsw ithl tow ingt

inw am-i thef ings anyc ssi-b -p lin-g herr ef-f noi 5;b

D

tedp ctsc s 1a ing.T tom ua-t ndf tit-u ncew ateda Al-t pathe odyc henc ent,s dicr tac-


within the cooperating conditions, with tearly closure cooperating prosody conditionmerically faster than its late closure counter(means were 634 and 679 ms, respectivsuggesting that cooperating prosodic infortion precluded parsing difficulty for the eaclosure syntactic structures.

Verb transitivity and naming times.We con-ducted a posthoc analysis of verb transitivusing the transitivity scores from the normatstudy described above, and treating the vpreference variable as continuous (PerlmutteMacDonald, 1992). We tested for a correlatbetween naming times and transitivity scowithin each of the six experimental conditioResults showed a weak relationship, with trsitivity difference scores significantly relatednaming times in only two conditions, the cooerating late closure and the cooperating basconditions (r 5 2.5, F(1,16)5 5.67,p , .05,andr 5 .51,F(1,16)5 5.97,p , .05; all otheFs , 2, all other ps . .1). This finding isconsistent with those from Experiments 1 anwhere we found only a weak relationshipstween reaction time at sentence end and trativity score.

Control analyses.Because our version of tcross-modal naming task required participato complete the spoken fragment after namthe visual target, we were concerned that ning times might reflect production processeaddition to comprehension processes, thus qifying the interpretation of our results. To ivestigate this possibility, we examined subjeproductions in the fragment completion portof the task. In general completions were homenous in their syntactic and semantic compity, but more variable in length. Ferreira (191993) has shown planning effects on producinitiation times, such that speakers take lonto initiate longer and more complex utterancWe reasoned that if our naming results wcontaminated by production planning,amount of time it took to name a target shobe systematically related to the length ofsentence production that followed it. More scifically, early closure productions shouldlonger than late closure productions in the b
line and conflicting conditions. The number oft
-t),-

,

b

s

-

e

,-i-

sg-

l-

’

--

nr.

-

-

syllables and words contained in subjects’ pductions were analyzed to test the relationbetween naming time and production lengCorrelations between naming time and numof syllables and naming time and numberwords revealed no reliable relationship (rs 5.08; rw 5 .07). Planned contrasts showedsubjects produced significantly more syllabfor late closure structures than early closstructures (F1(1,59)5 5.2,p , .05;F2(1,17)55.9, p , .05) but no other differences weound. Note that the conditions where subjeere generally faster were the conditions w

onger productions; this pattern is oppositehat one would expect in the case that nam

imes reflected production initiation times.We ran an additional control experimenthich subjects performed the cross-modal n

ng task, but were not asked to completeragment. This study was inconclusive; namcores were generally fast and did not showlear prosodic or syntactic effects. One poility is that without the impetus from the comletion task, subjects failed to integrate theuistic material across the two modalities. Otesearchers have also failed to find parsingects in a cross-modal naming task withntegration component (Murray & Watt, 199ut see Mazuka, 1997).

iscussion

The results of Experiment 3 demonstrarosodic facilitation and interference effeonsistent with those found in Experimentnd 2, but at a point much earlier in processhe cross-modal naming task allowed useasure at the point of syntactic disambig

ion for the temporary ambiguity. We fouacilitation when prosodic and syntactic consent boundaries coincided and interferehen prosodic phrasal boundaries were loct misleading points in syntactic structure.

hough there were clear syntactic gardenffects in the baseline and conflicting prosonditions, there were no such effects wooperating prosodic boundaries were presuggesting that information from the prosoepresentation was available to preclude syn
ic parsing difficulty in the early closure condi-

isewtac

rects

a

rgere

t n-d oft hip syt thI edt heh ono esf -

ne.ing

cloulndth

reeiondicnothetinex

naonnc

arylo-dntsanse

on-ss-wasdi-

eta-bes a

ons7a,isNPureing

oop-re-it is

s inin-re-ndi-h anen-5).eto

ingionionsi-

temeer-

ea-ion,dif-ure

uretic

therser,

le ofre-the

on-3,

mes


tions. The overall pattern of these resultsconsistent with the strong version of the vithat prosodic information can determine syntic phrase structure assignment.

Early versus late closure syntactic structushowed distinctly different patterns of effeacross the three prosodic conditions. WhenIPh boundary followed the verb (e.g.,WhenRoger leavesH2L% the house. . .), we foundfaster naming times for the early closure ta(e.g., is) and slower times for the late closuarget (e.g.,it’s), compared to the baseline coitions, where information about the location

he prosodic boundary was unavailable. Tattern suggests that the parser closed the

actic phrase after the verb, at the location ofPh boundary. When the IPh boundary followhe noun phrase (e.g.,When Roger leaves touse H2L%), it again influenced the operatif the parser. We found slower naming tim

or the early closure target (e.g.,is) in the conflicting condition compared to the baseliHowever, we did not find faster processtimes for the late closure target (e.g.,it’s) whenwe compared cooperating to baseline latesure conditions. Because this pattern of resis so similar to that found in Experiments 1 a2, we discuss their interpretation together innext section.

DISCUSSION OF COMBINED RESULTS,EXPERIMENTS 1–3

Taken together, the results of the first thexperiments are consistent with the predictof a model where information from a prosorepresentation of the kind specified in phological theory can influence the operation ofsyntactic parsing mechanism. In the cooperaand conflicting sentence materials for theseperiments, the right edge of an intonatiophrase coincided with a potential syntactic cstituent boundary location. This correspondeconsistently produced facilitation of temporsyntactic ambiguity resolution for the early csure sentences in cooperating as comparebaseline conditions, in sentence judgmejudgment times, comprehension times,naming times. In addition, results from the
four measures showed that a cooperating pro
-

s

n

t

sn-e

-ts

e

s

-

g-l-e

to,

d

sodic boundary at a syntactic choice point csistently did away with the late closure proceing advantage, even though this advantagepresent in the baseline and conflicting contions.

There are at least three possible interprtions for this pattern of effects. First, it maythat the late closure structure functioned asyntactic default, consistent with the predictiof a depth-first view of parsing (Frazier, 198b; Frazier & Clifton, 1996). According to thinterpretation, the IPh boundary after thewas consistent with the ongoing late clossyntactic structuring process, so that namtimes for the late closure sentences in the cerating and baseline prosody conditionsflected the same parsing process. Second,possible that since the overall lexical biasethe fragments favored slightly the transitiveterpretation of the utterance, this reducedsponse times in the baseline late closure cotion. Such an explanation is consistent witconstraint-based parsing perspective (Tahaus & Carlson, 1989; MacDonald et al., 199A prediction from this view is that if thestransitional probabilities were manipulatedfavor the intransitive interpretation, processtime in the baseline late closure conditshould become longer, resulting in facilitatfor the cooperating condition. The third posbility is that the lack of facilitation in the laclosure condition was due to floor effects. Sodoubt is cast on this explanation by the numically faster cross-modal naming times msured in the cooperating early closure conditbut since these times were not statisticallyferent from those in the cooperating late closcondition, the possibility that prosodic structmight facilitate even the preferred syntacanalysis must be left open.

If prosodic constituency can determinesyntactic phrase structure selected by the paprosodic boundaries should also be capabmisleading the parser, causing interferencegardless of whether they are consistent withsyntactically preferred analysis. We demstrated such effects in Experiments 2 andwhere comprehension times and naming ti
-were longer for conflicting than for baseline

mce

t 1hs oce.the

tialthineca-in-ueoe

erlatlseex

er,he

eakoroc

onveosragidveavatelityas

di-th

etlyneaningnc

onetirotheor-un

ed

eticmenceere

finalcewas

ateifi-reent

ingffi-on-fol-ialP asughre-e

syn-ec-topi-srb

yn-the. If

cho-unttheex-denerewas

en,cancticss.haten-as-odygest

ss-


conditions for both early and late closure coparisons. Although we did not find interferenfor sentence judgment times in Experimenwe speculate that task-related variables, suctime constraints on the metalinguistic aspectthe response, may account for this differen

We predicted interference effects due toinfluence of prosodic structure on the inisyntactic decision-making process. Fromperspective, the location of the IPh determithe initially assigned syntactic boundary lotion, and when conflicting morphosyntacticformation was encountered, reanalysis ensAs discussed above, this description alone dnot predict the finding of significantly longprocessing times for early as compared toclosure conflicting conditions; That is, all ebeing equal, comparable reprocessing ispected in the two conflicting conditions. Earliwe suggested that end-of-sentence compresion times were influenced by the overall wtransitive bias of the verb set or by lexicalsemantic biases toward late closure thatcurred during the processing of the secclause of the experimental sentences. Howesuch explanations seem less viable for the crmodal naming results, where sentence fments ended after the postverbal NP. Asfrom a weak transitive bias that may haguided reanalysis, why would processing hbeen more difficult for the early than the lclosure conflicting conditions? One possibiis that use of the IPh boundary information wdelayed for the early closure conflicting contions, because the truncation used to createfragments resulted in less determinate phoninformation for that condition. While both earand late closure conflicting fragments contaiphrase-final lengthening, boundary tones,silence at the IPh, the late closure conflictfragments also contained additional sentematerial following the silence. This informatimay have been available to confirm phoncally the end of the material preceding the psodic constituent boundary, by indicatingbeginning of the next constituent. Such infmation would have been removed in the tr
cation of the early closure conflicting frag-
-

,asf

sd

d.s

e

-

n-

-dr,s--

e

e

eic

dd

e

--

-

ments, where IPh information was followimmediately by the visual target.

We note that an account based on phondifferences is not available to explain the sapattern of effects for either the end-of-sentejudgment or comprehension time results, whmaterials were full sentences. There is onepossibility, which would apply to both sentenand fragment materials: Perhaps reanalysismore difficult for the early closure than the lclosure conflicting conditions. More speccally, reanalysis in the conflicting early closusentences would require detaching an argumNP from within its verb phrase and reassignit to subject position in the next clause, a dicult process. However, in the late closure cflicting sentences, the prosodic boundarylowing the verb was consistent with an initanalysis of the verb as intransitive and the Nthe subject of an upcoming sentence. Althoreanalysis to a direct object reading wouldquire a similarly difficult restructuring of thclosed VP, there is another less frequenttactic analysis potentially available. If the sond clause were reanalyzed as containing acalized NP (the door, it’s locked), reanalysiwould not require restructuring of the vephrase and would result a low-likelihood stactic analysis, but one more consistent withprosodic boundaries after the verb and NPthe topicalized reanalysis was sometimessen instead of the transitive, this could accofor the faster processing times we found inlate closure conflicting conditions. Such anplanation is not available to account for garpath effects in the baseline conditions, whthe location of prosodic phrasal boundariesambiguous.

The results of Experiments 1 through 3, thprovide evidence that prosodic structureinfluence the resolution of temporary syntaambiguities very early in the parsing proceThe evidence is consistent with the view tinformation available from a prosodic represtation of the spoken input determined thesignment of syntactic structure. When proswas consistent with syntax, these results sugit precluded processing difficulty for the le
preferred syntactic analysis. When prosody con-

ffi-red

a-henatioandseiste

maic

finaby

in-rreatsin86lso

L onntictel,ocghtssPha

as

ndceemw

ateey itemars

oucth

ingtion

sug-dict, it

ntac-en

ions6;resnd-

d tobe

nd-uityingddi-gu-sticef-rti-ntalriv-eri-theno

ss-the

of

erey, ationndatedey

byand

uc-andver-rdsern.heord-ma-


flicted with syntax, it created processing diculty, for both the preferred and less-prefersyntactic analysis.

EXPERIMENT 4

We have argued that phonological informtion recognized during the sentence compresion process includes a prosodic representof the sort described in phonological theorythat the correspondence between that repretation and other levels of linguistic analysisthe locus of the effects like those demonstraabove. So far in our experiments, we havenipulated intonational phrase boundaries, whare associated with substantial phrase-lengthening and silence and delimitedboundary tones (H% or L%). However, in lguistic theories of the prosody–syntax cospondence, the level of prosodic phrasing thmost closely associated with syntactic phrais not the IPh, but the PPh (e.g., Selkirk, 191995; Nespor & Vogel, 1986). The PPh is adelimited by a tone, the phrase accent (H2 or

2). Interestingly, because each prosodic cstituent is exhaustively parsed into constitueat the next lowest level of the hierarchy (“strlayering,” see Selkirk, 1995; Nespor & Vog1986), whenever the right edge of an IPhcurs, it is immediately preceded by the riedge of a PPh. Thus, whenever we have aciated a syntactic choice point with an Iboundary and boundary tone, we have alsosociated it with a PPh boundary and phraccent.

In Experiment 4, we were interested to fiout if the prosodic facilitation and interfereneffects on syntactic parsing that have been donstrated with IPh boundaries could be showith PPh boundaries alone. We predicted ththe prosody–syntax correspondence betwPPh constituency and syntactic constituencused by the language comprehension sysPPh boundaries would determine syntactic ping decisions, producing the same patterneffects shown in the previous experiments. Seffects would strengthen the argument thatphonological input to the syntactic parsmechanism includes a prosodic representa

Experiment 4 was also motivated by two

-n

n-

d-hl

-isg,

-s

-

o-

s-e

-nifns,-fhe

.

alternative explanations that have beengested to account for the effects of prosoboundaries on syntactic disambiguation. Firshas been argued that prosodic effects on sytic ambiguity can be demonstrated only whunusual contours or extreme pitch excursare used (Albritton, McKoon, & Ratcliff, 199Murray & Watt, 1995). The prosodic structucreated for Experiment 4 contained PPh bouaries that were quite subtle when comparethose with IPh boundaries. Second, it couldargued that the silent durations at IPh bouaries were responsible for syntactic ambigresolution. From this perspective, the parsmechanism was able to make use of the ational processing time available in the ambious region, in which there was no acouinformation, to process the ambiguity morefectively. This explanation implies that an afact of the IPh boundary, rather than the merepresentation of prosodic structure, was ding the prosodic effects in the previous expments. In order to address this contention,PPh boundaries in these stimuli containedphrase-final silence.

So, in Experiment 4, we again used a cromodal naming task, this time to examineeffect of PPh boundaries on the resolutiontemporary syntactic ambiguity.

Normative Study, Phonetic Analyses, andPretest

The 18 sentences used in Experiment 4 wselected on the basis of a normative studseries of phonetic analyses, and a pronunciaacceptability pretest. A large set of early alate closure sentences (44 items) was creusing verbs from the normative study. Thwere pronounced in a sound-attenuated roomthe same speaker used for Experiments 1–3judged to reflect the intended prosodic strtures by two listeners trained in phoneticsphonology. Early and late closure sentencesions were matched for the number of woand syllables and for lexical-level stress patt

Normative study.The set of verbs used in tsentences for Experiment 4 were chosen accing to the same procedure used to for the
terials for Experiments 1–3, described in the

eaiasasAp

mogconusesen--of

thadere

t .the

c pea inc ndal rs1 o-

kedce

s n ot ons asa akwt us,e dif ent uct urv rl g

a thea nsm u-o ncesf I

Ex-

latedies,lateho-le 6.thesi-

ngencetionIPhweea-sig-,

t ant( nsw urew ns.E sen-t du-r fora el nom linec urec nifi-c ndt tentw nd-a lo-s eansw4 inc oop-e ms,re msh theV sys-

e( atioo f ts ordI inea hichh sc oP s od


discussion preceding Experiment 1. The mtransitivity score (18.37) shows a slight btoward transitive completion. Transitivity biscores for each item are presented in thependix.

Phonetic analyses.We used the ToBI syste(Silverman, et al., 1992) to transcribe phonolical analyses of the sentences. Intonationtours were transcribed in the same mannerfor the materials used for Experiments 1–3 (examples in Fig. 6). Again, durational and fudamental frequency (Fø) analyses were completed for the temporarily ambiguous regionthe sentence fragments in order to confirmthey had been pronounced with the intenprosodic structure. Durations were measuusing Sound Designer II software, andFø con-ours with Signalyze software (Keller, 1994)

The sentences were pronounced with eiooperating or baseline prosody. In the cooting conditions, the syntactic boundary coided with a phonological phrase (PPh) boury, including a high phrase accent (H2) and

evel 2 or level 3 break (see Beckman & Aye993).7 In the baseline conditions, neither p

tential syntactic boundary was clearly marwith a prosodic boundary. Baseline sentenwere spoken with a pitch accent (L1H*) on theubject of the first clause and deaccentuatiohe temporarily syntactically ambiguous regiuch that the precise location of a low phrccent (L2) and the associated level 1 breas phonetically ambiguous. TheFø contour in

his region was generally low and flat. Tharly and late closure baseline sentences

ered in their underlying phonological represations, but not in their surface phonetic strures. Figure 6 shows early and late closersions of the example sentenceWhen Rogeeaves the house is / it’s darkin the cooperatin

7 To distinguish the H2 accents from a H2L% sequencsee discussion in Beckman, 1996), we used coarticulf segments between the first and second clauses oentence and minimal lengthening of the phrase-final wn addition, the filler sentences used in the study conta

variety of sentence-medial IPh boundaries, all of wad substantial lengthening and following silence, aontrast set. To distinguish the H2 from the presence of nPh boundary, we avoided pronunciations with a serie

town-stepped H* accents that would include the H2 tone.

n

-

--d

e

tdd

rr---

,

s

f,e

f---e

nd baseline conditions. The figure includesmplitude by time waveform with duratioarked for words in the syntactically ambigus region (there were no measurable sile

or this item), and theFø contour with ToBtone and break indices transcribed.

For the 18 sentences selected for use inperiment 4, analyses of duration andFø showedminimal phonetic differences between early/closure sentence pairs with baseline prosobut significant differences between early/closure pairs with cooperating prosodies. Pnetic measurements are summarized in TabDuration measurements were compared formain verb, the ambiguous noun phrase, thelence following the verb, the silence followithe ambiguous noun phrase, and the sentfragment, from sound onset to the truncapoint. As in the phonetic analyses of thematerials for the first three experiments,found significant effects of prosody and msurement location, and all interactions werenificant (allFs . 22, allps , .0001). Howeverhe main effect of syntax was not significF(1,17)5 3.69,p , .07). Planned comparisoere conducted for early versus late closithin baseline and cooperating conditioarly versus late closure baseline prosody

ences showed no systematic differences ination in the temporarily ambiguous regionny measure (allFs , 1). At potential paus

ocations following the V and NP, there waseasurable silence in any item in the base

onditions. In contrast, early versus late closooperating prosody sentences showed sigant differences in duration for both the V ahe NP in the ambiguous region. Consisith the presence of a clause-final PPh boury, the V was longer in cooperating early cure sentences than in cooperating late (mere 534 and 383 ms, respectively;F(1,17) 537.0,p , .001), while the NP was longerooperating late closure sentences than in crating early (means were 498 and 478espectively;F(1,17) 5 7.7, p , .01). In botharly and late closure conditions, three itead very brief measurable silence following, but the presence of this silence was non

nhe.d

a

f
ematic. There was no measurable silence fol-


FIG. 6. Acoustic waveforms with word durations (ms),Fø (Hz), and ToBI transcription for an example
early/late closure sentence pair with PPh-based cooperating and baseline prosody from Experiment 4.

redu-

reden-, (2thu-

o orseende

este ors,

1 ifi-c ocat ndl

om sig-n andl -s ionss -

oneac-

ahanther-s

ifi-o

-but

ent

C.7

.3

B.6

.7

)

C

B


lowing the NP in any cooperating item. Thewere no significant differences in fragmentration across the four conditions (F , 1).

Multiple Fø measurements were compafor the ambiguous region (e.g.,leaves thhouse), including (1) the absolute range of fudamental frequency values across all itemsthe mean fundamental frequency, and (3)meanFø maxima for the verb and the ambig

us NP.Fø maxima were chosen as indicatof the presence of a high phrase accent tonthe temporarily ambiguous region in these stences (see Kjelgaard, 1995, for additionaltail). The maximumFø was chosen as the bindicator of tonal phenomena due to the usthe H2 phrase accent (Beckman & Aye

993). An analysis of variance showed signant effects of prosody and measurement lion and significant interactions of syntax a

TAB

Phonetic Measurements for Materials with P

Mean Durations (ms) Verb Silen

ooperating prosodyEarly closure syntax 533.9 .

(27.3) (.5)Late closure syntax 382.9 .

(19.0) (.4)aseline prosodyEarly closure syntax 361.8 0

(23.7) (0)Late closure syntax 361.5

(22.0) (0)

Fø Measures (Hz)

Mean MaxFø

V NP

ooperating prosodyEarly closure syntax 225.0 189

(2.3) (3.4)Late closure syntax 175.3 213

(4.4) (2.9)aseline prosodyEarly closure syntax 173.7 186

(9.8) (6.0)Late closure syntax 170.7 174

(6.4) (6.3)


ocation, and syntax, prosody, and location (al

)e

in--

f

-

Fs . 16, all ps , .0001). For the first tweasures, analysis of variance showed noificant differences between baseline early

ate closure sentences (allFs , 1.2). Comparion of the baseline to the cooperating condithowed a lower meanFø and a relatively re

strictedFø range for the disambiguating regiin the baseline sentences, consistent with dcenting. TheFø range analysis also showedhigher range in the cooperating conditions tin the baseline conditions, consistent withuse of H2 for clause-final positions in coopeating conditions, but L2 for baseline condition(Silverman et al., 1992; Beckman, 1996).

An analysis of variance showed no signcant differences inFø maxima between the twbaseline conditions for the V (F , 1). On theambiguous NP, meanFø maxima were somewhat higher in the early closure condition,

6

nological Phrase Boundaries Used in Experiment 4

1 NP Silence 2 Fragm

478.2 0 1688(18.1) (0) (62.7)

498.3 0 1576(20.6) (0) (55.8)

400.8 0 1602(16.1) (0) (45.7)

410.9 0 1594(17.5) (0) (54.1)

Fø Range(ambiguous region)

Fø Mean(ambiguous region

146–258 178.5(31.8)

141–230 170.2(33.7)

139–216 156.7(20.7)

139–212 160.3(21.1)

LE

ho

ce

8

4

0

.9

.6

.2

.1

lthis difference was not statistically reliable

annderfor

er

nunothanhlys os overacasse

ntsenth

andc-

ts oax-

penfor

assenced narlnce

nces

M

ol-o rtic-i rser ishs ing,s

fterp tallyt daln thea en-t ion(

ames nts:E wasf ine,a on-d oft s int re-s theP re-s ndw thev on-fl di-t ionw linef ro-n lowp o-n llyd po-k dingv

en-t ialss y aL on-t ndi-t g-m inE

18E hrasB

ody


(F(1,17) 5 3.5, p 5 .08). In contrast,Fø max-ima showed clear differences between earlylate closure sentences in the cooperating cotion. Clause-final words had significantly highFø maxima than their nonfinal counterparts (V, early closure higher than late,F(1,17) 558.69,p 5 .0001; for NP, late closure highthan early,F(1,17)5 12.8,p 5 .001).

Pretest for pronunciation acceptability.Toshow that the baseline and cooperating prociations were comparably acceptable for bearly and late closure syntactic structures,that the baseline pronunciations were higacceptable, we collected listeners’ judgmentthe baseline and cooperating pronunciationthe full sentences (rather than truncatedsions, which would not have included a synttic disambiguation). The judgment task wsubstantially the same as that used to ascompatibility for materials used in Experime1–3. Thirty-three subjects heard 44 experimtal sentences and 40 additional sentencesvaried in syntactic and prosodic structureacceptability of pronunciation. Using the aceptability judgment data, we selected 18 seearly and late closure sentences for whichthree prosodic conditions met our criteria. Eperimental sentences are shown in the Apdix. Table 7 shows the acceptability ratingsthe 18 sentences in the four conditions.

The average rate of acceptance for the bline and cooperating early and late closuretences was 88%. Planned contrasts of peracceptability for these 18 sentences showestatistical differences between cooperating eand late closure (F , 1), no difference betweebaseline early and late closure senten

TABLE 7

Mean Proportion of Acceptability Ratings for thearly and Late Closure Sentences with Phonological Poundaries Used in Experiment 4

Condition Cooperating prosody Baseline pros

Early closure .904 (.019) .833 (.022)Late closure .874 (.034) .900 (.021)


(F(1,17) 5 2.7, p , .1), and no difference

di-

-

d

ff--

ss

-at

fll

-

e--ntoy

s

between cooperating and baseline sente(F , 1).

ethod

Subjects.Forty-eight undergraduate psychgy students at Northeastern University pa

pated in exchange for credit toward a couequirement. All subjects were native Englpeakers and reported having no hearpeech, or language problems.Materials.The 18 sentence sets, chosen a

retesting and phonetic analyses, were digiruncated for presentation in the cross-moaming task. Each fragment contained all ofcoustic information from the onset of the s

ence through end of the ambiguous rege.g.,When Roger leaves the house. . .).

The experimental design contained the six conditions as in the previous experimearly and late closure syntactic structure

actorially crossed with cooperating, baselnd conflicting prosody. In the cooperating citions, a PPh boundary coincided with one

he two possible syntactic clause boundariehe auditory fragment. Visual target wordsolved the syntactic ambiguity so that whenPh followed the verb, the visual targetolved the ambiguity toward early closure, ahen the PPh followed the ambiguous NP,isual target resolved toward late closure. Cicting conditions were created using the auory fragments from the cooperating conditith the opposite visual targets. For base

ragments, the ambiguous region was pounced so that the precise location of ahrase accent (L2) and level 1 break was phetically ambiguous within the syntacticaisambiguating region. Table 8 shows the sen sentence fragments and the corresponisual target words.The six versions of each of the 18 experim

al items were distributed among six materets, using a condition rotation determined batin square design. Each materials set c

ained three tokens from each of the six coions and 20 filler fragments. The filler fraents were a subset of those usedxperiment 3.

e

Procedure.The cross-modal naming task was

se

napetheacendi1)re-

thedi-uns itioanse

ard7.

ectsce

n-ataxder-ed

d

C

ng

rrorscoop-


used. The procedure was identical to that uin Experiment 3.

Results

Incorrect responses were excluded from aysis using the same criteria as those for Eximent 3. Missing data accounted for 9% oftotal experimental responses and were replusing the average of the experiment-wise ividual subject and item means (Winer, 197Table 9 shows the distribution of missingsponses.

The majority of errors again occurred inbaseline and conflicting early closure contions, so that the data replacement slightlyderestimated the duration of response timethese conditions. Because these were condipredicted to have slower reaction times,underestimation worked against the hypothe

TAB

An Example Auditory Sentence Fragment with V

Condition Au

Cooperating prosody

Early closure ((When Roge

Late closure ((When Roge

Baseline prosodyL1H*

Early closure ((When RogeL1H*


onflicting prosody

Early closure ((When Roge


TABLE 9

Proportion of Missing Data in Six Conditionsfor Experiment 4

Condition Cooperating Baseline Conflicti

Early closure .06 .12 .18Late closure .06 .04 .05

d

l-r-

d-.

-nnsys.

Mean corrected naming times and standerrors for Experiment 4 are shown in Fig.Results showed the same pattern of efffound in Experiment 3. An analysis of varianfound a main effect of prosody (F1(2,47) 531.49,F2(2,17)5 16.54), a main effect of sytax (F1(1,47)5 35.27,F2(1,17)5 30.39), andsignificant interaction of prosody and syn(F1(2,94) 5 14.44,F2(2,34) 5 6.82). Plannecomparisons showed facilitation in the coopating conditions, where targets were nam

8

al Targets for Cross-Modal Naming from Experiment 4

ry fragment Visual wor

*avesH2)PPh (the house is

H*aves the houseH2)PPh) it’s

avesL2)PPh (the house is

aves the houseL2)PPh it’s

H*aves the houseH2)PPh) is

*avesH2)PPh (the house it’s

FIG. 7. Cross-modal naming times and standard e(ms) for early/late closure sentences with PPh-based

LE

isu

dito

Hr le

r le

r le

r le

r leH

r le

erating, baseline, and conflicting prosodies, Experiment 4.

nsely

nore

steannns,n ian

s-notneweth

ctsely

ynt thebm

gd

lri-hinPhaxnuurepe

lysesor

vityonance

ithts-ofmin

re-th-rn ofonhatitive

ofthee.

esis

n-nts,wedtheereen-wedsyn-ingrredoussyn-ro-

clo-thats ofyn-withsionon-

acticdicur-or

the

er-nlybledltsrserimeuctPPh


more quickly than in the baseline conditio(means were 645 and 708 ms, respectivF1(1,47)5 9.0;F2(1,17)5 4.3,p , .05). As inthe previous experiments, this effect didhold within the late closure conditions, whebaseline naming times were numerically fathan cooperating times (means were 627648 ms, respectively;F , 1). There was ainterference effect in the conflicting conditiowhere targets were named more slowly thathe baseline conditions (means were 813708 ms, respectively;F1(1,47) 5 25.76;F2(1,17)5 12.2). As in Experiment 3, the diruptive effect of misleading prosody wascarried by the early closure condition aloConflicting late closure sentences were slothan baseline late closure sentences, butdifference was significant only by subje(means were 709 and 627 ms, respectiv(F1(1,47)5 7.75;F2(1,17)5 3.64,p 5 .06).

Additional planned comparisons showed sactic garden path processing difficulty inaseline conditions (early closure mean5 788s and late closure mean5 627 ms;F1(1,47)5

29.72; F2(1,17) 5 14) and in the conflictinconditions (early closure mean5 917 ms anate closure mean5 709 ms;F1(1,47)5 49.9;F2(1,17) 5 23.6). As in the previous expements, there was no evidence of garden patin the cooperating conditions, where Pboundaries eliminated the effect of syntNaming times for late closure targets weremerically longer than those for early clostargets (means were 648 and 643 ms, restively, bothFs , 1).

Verb transitivity and naming times.As inExperiment 3, we conducted a posthoc anaof verb transitivity, using the transitivity scorfrom the normative study. We tested for a crelation between naming times and transitiscores within each of the six experimental cditions. Results this time showed no significcorrelations between transitivity differenscores and naming times (allFs , 2, all ps ..20). The lack of effects here is consistent wthe findings for the previous experimenAcross the four experiments, data from endsentence measures and data from the na
measure at the point of syntactic disambigua
;

t

rd

nd

.ris

,

-

g

.-

c-

is

-

-t

.-g

tion showed a weak relationship betweensponse time and transitivity score. We hypoesize that the absence of a consistent pattecorrelation with lexical preference informatiis due to the restricted number of items tcontained a strong bias toward either transor intransitive use. Thus our particular setitems may have reduced the detectability ofinfluence of verb transitivity on response tim

Discussion

The pattern of cross-modal naming timfound with PPh constituents in Experiment 4remarkably similar to that found with IPh costituents in Experiment 3. In both experimethe use of the cross-modal naming task allous to measure processing difficulty very nearprosodic boundary and just after the point whthe syntactically disambiguating word wascountered. The results of Experiment 4 shothat cooperating PPh boundaries facilitatedtactic decision making, so that the processdisadvantage associated with a disprefesyntactic analysis was overcome by a felicitcorrespondence between PPh structure andtactic structure. Conflicting PPh boundaries pduced interference for both early and latesure syntactic structures, demonstratingprosody can mislead the parser regardleswhether it is consistent with the preferred stactic analysis. The results are consistentthe operation of a sentence comprehenmechanism that is sensitive to the correspdence between PPh constituency and syntconstituency. They suggest that prosoboundaries need not involve large pitch excsions, extensive phrase-final lengthening,substantial silent durations to be effective inresolution of temporary syntactic ambiguity.

The similarity between the results of Expiments 3 and 4 denies the possibility that othe silence available at IPh boundaries enasyntactic ambiguity resolution. That is, resudo not support an account where the pasimply took advantage of extra processing tavailable in the ambiguous region to condreanalysis. Experiment 4 showed that the
-boundary, which did not provide a substantial

igu

attac

encemy,proingweford

PPnoile

erblly,ad

tetertoo-se

cuslf isanugpethehisia-in

t thea urs onfl isp the ionty b ita cos ynt thp agm n-d

fi nge

ntsp t web ly ift ha-n o-l oure ofs ands Wec sad-v s int hats sen-t ros-o d att m-o tics ande mesw , wed forc ef-f rep dg-m , butn

odici uc-t sis-t att en-W An ingo rlyp thet cesw them am-b ro-s ndi -of-s ionst ad nte


silence, did indeed resolve the closure ambity.

Finally, Experiment 4 showed the same ptern of interaction between prosodic and syntic factors that was found in Experiment 3. Wdemonstrated both facilitation and interferefor sentences with early closure syntax: Copared to the early closure baseline prosodcooperating PPh boundary after the verbduced faster naming times, while a conflictPPh boundary after the NP produced slotimes. We found only interference effectssentences with late closure syntax: Comparethe late closure baseline, a cooperatingboundary after the ambiguous NP didproduce significantly faster naming times, wha conflicting PPh boundary after the vsignificantly interfered with processing. Finawe again found an unpredicted late closurevantage in the conflicting conditions.

In the previous discussion, we suggesseveral possible explanations for this patof results, all of which may be extendedExperiment 4. One additional possibility fcuses on the phonetic ambiguity of the baline sentences. There has been little dission on the process by which prosody itseparsed from the phonetic input (see Beckm1996). However, Schafer (1997) has sgested that phonological processes may oate to hold PPh constituents open untiloccurrence of evidence to the contrary. Twould predict that in our baseline pronunctions, the L2 accent would not be assignedhe phonological representation until aftermbiguous NP, consistent with a late closyntactic analysis. A disadvantage for cicting conditions as compared to baselineredicted here as well. For late closure, atnd of the fragment in the baseline condit

he phonology is ambiguous, and the L2 haset to be assigned. In contrast, at the verhe late closure conflicting condition, the H2ccent assignment is unambiguous and isistent with the (erroneous) early closure sactic analysis. For early closure baseline,honology is again ambiguous as the frent ends, while in the early conflicting co
ition the H2 accent is unambiguously on the&
-

--

-a-

r

toht

-

dn

--

,-r-

e-

e

n

n--e-

nal NP, inconsistent with the upcomiarly closure target.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

The combined results from the experimeresented here form a consistent picture thaelieve can be accounted for most elegant

he operation of the syntactic parsing mecism is sensitive to information from a phon

ogical prosodic representation. Across all fxperiments, results showed no evidenceyntactic garden path effects when prosodicyntactic constituent boundaries coincided.onsistently demonstrated a processing diantage for early closure syntactic structurehe baseline and conflicting conditions, but tyntactic difference disappeared when theences were presented with cooperating pdy. When processing times were measure

he syntactically disambiguating word, we denstrated facilitation for early closure syntactructures and interference for both latearly closure structures. When processing tiere measured at the end of the sentenceemonstrated a general pattern of facilitationooperating prosody conditions. Interferenceects for conflicting prosody conditions weresent in phonosyntactic grammaticality juents and in sentence comprehension timesot in speeded judgment times.Our naming results demonstrate that pros

nformation has its influence on syntactic struring very early in the parsing process, conent with previous findings of prosodic effectshe point of syntactic disambiguation (Marsl

ilson et al., 1992; Warren et al., 1995).ovel contribution of these studies is the findf both facilitation and interference at this eaoint in processing. In addition, because

emporarily ambiguous regions in our sentenere very short (three to five syllables),easurement taken at the syntactically disiguating word was very near the relevant podic boundaries. The finding of facilitation anterference effects in both naming and endentence measures conflicts with predicthat could be derived from models positingelay in the use of prosodic information (Py
Prieur, 1996; Marcus & Hindle, 1990). For

esmhtost ictethed todof

mele,ingteansotndateheth

denn

er-lsheion

cetionis ase

er-oce

thfirssiolysesdictaxlin

n.preallcaityzeed

uc-telin-

odto

r tos ofela-d itinIn

e ad-ge

r aheyareulicess

ursan-rela-then-e tong.ctic

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example, if prosodic information contributonly to the reanalysis of previous syntactic comitments (Pynte & Prieur, 1996), one migexpect that facilitation due to cooperating prody would appear at sentence end, but noon-line measures. One might also have expesome evidence of longer naming times forsyntactically dispreferred analysis comparethe preferred one in the cooperating prosconditions. A model that posits early useboundary tones, but the delayed use of interdiate levels of phrasing (Marcus & Hind1990) should predict a difference in namtimes between the IPh and PPh studies. Inswe found an identical pattern of interactiobetween syntactic and prosodic factors, bfor salient IPh and for more subtle PPh bouaries. The interference effects, demonstrby longer times in the conflicting than in tbaseline conditions, are also relevant forview that prosodic effects are easily overridby conflicting morphosyntactic informatio(Marslen-Wilson et al., 1992). We found intference not only in the naming studies, but awith the end-of-sentence measures, where twas more time for morphosyntactic informatto have a revisionary effect.

Our findings of facilitation and interferendepend on comparison to the baseline condiWe do not claim that the baseline prosody“neutral” prosody in some absolute senRather, it is neutral in the empirically detmined sense defined by our pretesting prdures and assumptions. Subjects judgingspoken baseline sentences’ acceptabilityread them and acknowledged comprehen(we assume they completed a syntactic anaduring this process). To the extent that thsyntactically informed judgments of prosowell-formedness reflect the prosody–syncorrespondence for our materials, our basecan serve as a neutral comparison conditio

The combined results of the experimentssented here dismiss many methodologicbased objections to the claim that prosodydetermine the resolution of syntactic ambiguThe cross-modal naming task can be criticibecause it is a relatively unnatural, contriv
situation for language processing that involve
-

-nd

oy

-

d,

h-d

e

ore

.

.

-etnise

e

-yn.d

reading, listening, comprehension, and prodtion. The stimuli are interrupted, incomplesentences. Although we reduced the metaguistic component of the task with our “gofriend” manipulation, subjects still neededintegrate material across modalities in ordecomplete the task. The two main advantagecross-modal naming are that it provides a rtively immediate measure of processing, aninvolves no possible cross-splicing artifactthe materials in the conflicting conditions.contrast, the end-of-sentence tasks have thvantage of being relatively natural languatasks, involving simple comprehension ojudgment of the speaker’s pronunciation. Tare performed on language materials thatpresented in a single modality, and the stimare full sentences, so that the listener has acto the disambiguating information that occjust after the syntactic ambiguity. The disadvtage in these tasks is that they measuretively late in processing and that some ofprocessing difficulty shown for conflicting codition sentence materials may be attributablartifacts associated with digital cross-spliciA comparison of the speeded phonosyntagrammaticality judgment task and the endsentence comprehension task allowed us tosess the contribution of a metalinguistic jument component that was present in one tbut not the other. A comparison of the end-sentence results and those from naming allous to demonstrate similar patterns of prosoeffects using tasks with complementstrengths and weaknesses.

The experiments presented here also begreduce the confusion apparent in the literaconcerning the type of sound-based differenceis important for the resolution of syntactic amguity. Many recent psycholinguistic studies hdemonstrated that when spoken materialsused, a wide range of syntactic effects that hbeen established in studies of reading are redor removed. Such effects have been shown fovs. S complement ambiguities (Warren, 19Marslen-Wilson et al., 1992; Beach, 1991; Stirl& Wales, 1996; Nagel, Shapiro, Tuller & Naw1996), sentences with empty categories (Na
sShapiro, & Nawy, 1994), PP attachment ambigu-

rly–eeth,el-ou

lanenavef6;).d

var” oro-

indor

contexceerslog

oar s

ath

e aheurecysioila

calureon

icss isex

ledun

colionthis

othelogur

n topula-icalim-x-that

eticon

nalIPhef-

s in

asilyofp-ess.ain

torsbe-ple,

ars-arendt au-orytextf atillofect-s, onturenddicpre-

boldouslineown


ities (Pynte & Prieur, 1996; Schafer, 1997), ealate closure ambiguities (Slowiaczek, 1981; SpKjelgaard, & Dobroth, 1996; Speer & Dobrosubmitted for publication; Warren, 1985; Kjgaard, 1995; Warren et al., 1995), and ambigucoordination structures (Grabe, Warren & Nosubmitted for publication). However, other recstudies using similar syntactic structures hfailed to show clear and consistent prosodicfects (Murray et al., 1996; Watt & Murray, 199Albritton et al., 1996; Nicol & Pickering, 1993Looking across the studies, the methods usemanipulate and describe prosodic structurewidely. Some studies have used “untrained“naive” speakers, who produce a felicitous psodic contour by speaking while holding in mone of two meanings for a syntactic ambiguityby reading the sentence in a disambiguatingtext. Other studies have used punctuatedspeakers trained as actors or radio announand/or instructions to disambiguate. Still othused speakers trained in phonetics or phonowho instantiate particular prosodic structuresspeech synthesizers set to produce a particulof durations and tones. Once the prosodiesproduced, some researchers do not describesound characteristics at all, while others givbrief impressionistic description. Many of tmore recent studies provide phonetic measments of duration and fundamental frequensome for the materials used in the comprehenstudy, but others for a separate set of simmaterials. A few studies provide phonologitranscriptions with supporting phonetic measments for the particular materials used to demstrate prosodic effects on comprehension.

Explicit specification of both the phonetand the phonology of experimental materialnecessary if we are to replicate and extendperimental findings and develop a principaccount of the use of prosody in sentencederstanding. Consistent with Warren andleagues (Grabe et al., submitted for publicatWarren, 1997), we would like to encouragelatter approach. They have argued that the mappropriate characterization of prosody instudy of language processing is as a phonoical system, rather than as a set of meas
ments taken from the speech waveform. Aggre
r,

s,te-

toyr

-t,rs,

yret

reeir

-,nr

--

-

--;

st

-e-

gate phonetic measurements, while they casome extent describe a speech sound manition, may also obscure important phonologdifferences among materials in a set. The silarity in the results from the two naming eperiments presented here supports the claimphonological entities, rather than their phonimplementations, are the important influencesyntactic parsing decisions. The large L2L%pitch excursions, substantial phrase-filengthening, and silence associated with theboundaries in Experiment 1 were no morefective than the subtle lengthening and H2pitch rise associated with the PPh boundarieExperiment 4.

The results presented here can be most eexplained, we feel, by the very early useinformation from a phonological prosodic reresentation during the syntactic parsing procHowever, many interesting questions remconcerning how prosodic and syntactic facinterleave as spoken sentence informationcomes available to the processor. For examhow pervasive are prosodic effects during ping? If prosodic and segmental phonologysimultaneously available to inform lexical asyntactic processing, can information abouword’s location in prosodic constituency inflence the recovery of lexical syntactic categinformation? When preceding discourse conis available to determine the resolution otemporary ambiguity, are prosodic effects slocally influential? What are the effectsstrong transitional probabilities, such as subj–verb agreement and verb argument biasethe use of prosodic phrasal information? Furesearch will allow us to more completely aprecisely specify the impact of the prosorepresentation during spoken sentence comhension.

APPENDIX

Experimental Materials

For each item, we present tones and break indices (intypeface) as they occurred in the temporarily ambiguregion for cooperating/conflicting prosody and baseprosodies. Verb transitivity bias scores (see text) are sh
-in parentheses.

e inatinelin

s

e

e

.

s

-

-

-

.

r


Experiments 1 and 2

Experimental items.For each item, the sentences arthe order: Cooperating Prosody Early Closure, CooperLate Closure, Baseline Prosody Early Closure, BasProsody Late Closure.

1. (251.72)Because John studiedH*L 2L% 4 the material i

clearer now.Because John studied the materialH*L 2L% 4 it’s

clearer now.Because JohnL1H* studiedL21 the materialH*L 21

is clearer now.Because JohnL1H* studiedL21 the materialH*L 21

it’s clearer now.2. (17.24)

When Whitesnake playsH*L 2L% 4 the music isloud.

When Whitesnake plays the musicH*L 2L% 4 it’sloud.

When WhitesnakeL1H* playsL21 the music isloud.

When WhitesnakeL1H* plays the musicL21 it’s loud.3. (100)

When Tim is presentingH*L 2L% 4 the lectures arinteresting.

When Tim is presenting the lecturesH*L 2L% 4

they’re interesting.When TimL1H* is presentingL21 the lectures ar

interesting.When TimL1H* is presenting the lecturesL21

they’re interesting.4. (231.03)

When the original cast performsH*L 2L% 4 theplays are funny.

When the original cast performs the playsH*L 2L% 4

they’re funny.When the original castL1H* performsL21 the plays

are funny.When the original castL1H* performs the playsL21

they’re funny.5. (255.17)

When Madonna singsH*L 2L% 4 the song is a hitWhen Madonna sings the songH*L 2L% 4 it’s a hit.When MadonnaL1H* singsL21 the song is a hit.When MadonnaL1H* sings the songL21 it’s a hit.

6. (286.21)Whenever John swimsH*L 2L% 4 the channel i

choppy.Whenever John swims the channelH*L 2L% 4 it’s

choppy.Whenever JohnL1H* swimsL21 the channelH*L 21

is choppy.Whenever JohnL1H* swimsL21 the channelH*L 21

it’s choppy.7. (6.91)

When Roger leavesH*L 2L% 4 the house is dark.
When Roger leaves the houseH*L 2L% 4 it’s dark.
ge

When RogerL1H* leavesL21 the house is dark.When RogerL1H* leaves the houseL21 it’s dark.

8. (34.48)Whenever Frank performsH*L 2L% 4 the show is

fantastic.Whenever Frank performs the showH*L 2L% 4 it’s

fantastic.Whenever FrankL1H* performsL21 the show

H*L 21 is fantastic.Whenever FrankL1H* performsL21 the show

H*L 21 it’s fantastic.9. (65.52)

Because Mike phonedH*L 2L% 4 his mother is relieved.

Because Mike phoned his motherH*L 2L% 4 she’srelieved.

Because MikeL1H* phonedL21 his mother is relieved.

Because MikeL1H* phoned his motherL21 she’srelieved.

10. (44.44)When the clock strikesH*L 2L% 4 the hour is mid

night.When the clock strikes the hourH*L 2L% 4 it’s mid-

night.When the clockL1H* strikesH*L 21 the hourL21 is

midnight.When the clockL1H* strikesH*L 21 the hourL21

it’s midnight.11. (20.01)

If Joe startsH*L 2L% 4 the meeting is boring.If Joe starts the meetingH*L 2L% 4 it’s boring.If JoeL1H* startsL21 the meeting is boring.If JoeL1H* starts the meetingL21 it’s boring.

12. (89.65)If Josh buysH*L 2L% 4 the beer is cheap.If Josh buys the beerH*L 2L% 4 it’s cheap.If JoshL1H* buysL21 the beer is cheap.If JoshL1H* buys the beerL21 it’s cheap.

13. (31.03)Whenever the guard checksH*L 2L% 4 the door is

locked.Whenever the guard checks the doorH*L 2L% 4 it’s

locked.Whenever the guardL1H* checksL21 the door is

locked.Whenever the guardL1H* checks the doorL21 it’s

locked.14. (100)

If Laura is foldingH*L 2L% 4 the towels are neatIf Laura is folding the towelsH*L 2L% 4 they’re neat.If LauraL1H* is foldingL21 the towels are neat.If LauraL1H* is folding the towelsL21 they’re neat.

15. (86.21)If George is programmingH*L 2L% 4 the compute

is sure to crash.

s

e

e

e

-

d.

ares d.

at.

the

buitor

l cryugek sh

ver

ew

t.th

pple

.ntro

gleshen

d at

us.st.

twobothlate

own.

t


If George is programming the computerH*L 2L% 4

it’s sure to crash.If GeorgeL1H* is programmingL21 the computer i

sure to crash.If GeorgeL1H* is programming the computerL21

it’s sure to crash.16. (210.34)

If Charles is babysittingH*L 2L% 4 the children arhappy.

If Charles is babysitting the childrenH*L 2L% 4

they’re happy.If CharlesL1H* is babysittingL21 the children ar

happy.If CharlesL1H* is babysitting the childrenL21

they’re happy.17. (37.94)

When the maid cleansH*L 2L% 4 the rooms arimmaculate.

When the maid cleans the roomsH*L 2L% 4 they’reimmaculate.

When the maidL1H* cleansL21 the rooms are immaculate.

When the maidL1H* cleans the roomsL21 they’reimmaculate.

18. (51.72)Before Jack dealsH*L 2L% 4 the cards are shuffleBefore Jack deals the cardsH*L 2L% 4 they’re shuffled.Before JackL1H* dealsL21 the cards are shuffled.Before JackL1H* deals the cardsL21 they’re shuffled.

Duration controls.Short and long pause durations (ms)hown in parentheses at the location where they occurre

1. After Bob (0/658) ordered those tires he got a fl2. Russian caviar (2/703) is eaten cold.3. When John was finally (3/1101) persuaded by

argument he sighed.4. Later the boyscout helped the (0/379)old man onto the5. The nightguard always (22/791)watches the mon6. As soon as she finds those (41/693)flowers she’l7. When there is a (77/550)protest on campus it’s h8. When her date (84/1014)kissed her on the chee

smiled.9. The soldiers don’t desert (0/320)because they’re

loyal.10. The coffee is too (55/597) strong when mother br

it.11. Because it’s warm (8/851)Jan didn’t bring a coa12. When the professor asked (0/333)no one knew

answer.13. Oranges are more (11/699) expensive than a

this winter.14. Downhill skiers often fall and are (6/435)injured15. The congressman voted against this (0/525) co

versial bill.16. Triangles have three (0/251) lines and three an17. The Irish (27/275) setter puppy wagged its tail w

it saw us.18. The young (62/562)Californian lost his surfboar

the beach.

s....e

y

s

e

s

-

.

19. The cards the (31/562) psychic reads are omino20. The softball pitch by Beth (14/532) was really fa

Experiments 3 and 4

Tones shown in parentheses occurred in one of theconditions, and tones not in parentheses occurred inconditions. The associated visual targets for early andclosure syntax completions of the fragments are also sh

Experiment 3

Auditory fragment Visual targe

1. (251.72)Because John studied (H*L 2L% 4)

the material (H*L 2L% 4) is/it’sBecause JohnL1H* studiedL21 the

materialH*L 21

2. (17.24)When Whitesnake plays

(H*L 2L% 4) the music(H*L 2L% 4) is/it’s

When WhitesnakeL1H* plays(L 21) the music (L 21)

3. (100)When Tim is presenting

(H*L 2L% 4) the lectures(H*L 2L% 4) are/they’re

When TimL1H* is presenting (L21)the lectures (L21)

4. (231.03)When the original cast performs

(H*L 2L% 4) the plays(H*L 2L% 4) are/they’re

When the original castL1H*performs (L21) the plays (L21)

5. (255.17)When Madonna sings (H*L 2L% 4)

the song (H*L 2L% 4) is/it’sWhen MadonnaL1H* sings (L21)

the song (L21)6. (286.21)

Whenever John swims (H*L 2L% 4)the channel (H*L 2L% 4) is/it’s

Whenever JohnL1H* swimsH*L 21

the channelH*L 21

7. (6.91)When Roger leaves (H*L 2L% 4) the

house (H*L 2L% 4) is/it’sWhen RogerL1H* leaves (L21) the

house (L21)8. (34.48)

Whenever Frank performs(H*L 2L% 4) the show(H*L 2L% 4) is/it’s

Whenever FrankL1H* performsL21

the showH*L 21

t

1

1

1

1

d


Experiment 3—Continued

Auditory fragment Visual targe

9. (65.52)Because Mike phoned (H*L 2L% 4)

his mother (H*L 2L% 4) is/she’sBecause MikeL1H* phoned (L21)

his mother (L21)10. (44.44)

When the clock strikes (H*L 2L% 4)the hour (H*L 2L% 4) is/it’s

When the clockL1H* strikesH*L 21

the hourL 21

11. (20.01)If Joe starts (H*L 2L% 4) the

meeting (H*L 2L% 4) is/it’sIf JoeL1H* starts (L21) the meeting

(L21)2. (89.65)

If Josh buys (H*L 2L% 4) the beer(H*L 2L% 4) is/it’s

If JoshL1H* buys (L21) the beer(L21)

3. (31.03)Whenever the guard checks

(H*L 2L% 4) the door(H*L 2L% 4) is/it’s

Whenever the guardL1H* checks(L21) the door (L21)

4. (100)If Laura is folding (H*L 2L% 4) the

towels (H*L 2L% 4) are/they’reIf LauraL1H* is folding (L21) the

towels (L21)5. (86.21)

If George is programming(H*L 2L% 4) the computer(H*L 2L% 4) is/it’s

If George is programming (L21) thecomputer (L21)

16. (210.34)If Charles is baby-sitting

(H*L 2L% 4) the children(H*L 2L% 4) are/they’re

If CharlesL1H* is baby-sitting(L21) the children (L21)

17. (37.94)When the maid cleans (H*L 2L% 4)

the rooms (H*L 2L% 4) are/they’reWhen the maidL1H* cleans (L21)

the rooms (L21)18. (51.72)

Before Jack deals (H*L 2L% 4) thecards (H*L 2L% 4) are/they’re

Before JackL1H* deals (L21) thecards (L21)

Experiment 4

Auditory fragment Visual wor

1. (255.17)When Madonna sings (H*H 22) the

song (H*H 22) is/it’sWhen MadonnaL1H* sings (L 21)

the song (L 21)2. (286.21)

Whenever John swims (H*H 22)the channel (H*H 22) is/it’s

Whenever JohnL1H* swims (L21)the channel (L21)

3. (6.91)When Roger leaves (H*H 22) the

house (H*H 22) is/it’sWhen RogerL1H* leaves (L21)

the house (L21)4. (34.48)

Whenever Frank performs(H*H 23) the show (H*H 23) is/it’s

Whenever FrankL1H* performs(L21) the show (L21)

5. (44.44)When the clock strikes (H*H 22)

the hour (H*H 22) is/it’sWhen the clockL1H* strikes (L21)

the hour (L21)6. (100)

If Laura is folding (H*H 22) thetowels (H*H 22) is/it’s

If LauraL1H* is folding (L21) thetowels (L21)

7. (10.34)If Charles is baby-sitting (H*H 23)

the children(H*H 23) are/they’reIf CharlesL1H* is baby-sitting

(L21) the children (L21)8. (37.94)

When the maid cleans (H*H 22)the rooms (H*H 22) are/they’re

When the maidL1H* cleans (L21)the rooms (L21)

9. (51.72)Before Jack deals(H*H 23) the

cards(H*H 23) are/they’reBefore JackL1H* deals (L21) the

cards (L21)

10. (79.31)Because Wapner is judging

(H*H 22) the trial (H*H 22) is/it’sBecause WapnerL1H* is judging

(L21) the trial (L21)

d

1

1

1

1

e

i-bi-g,

tedersom

ns atfor-

Iteo

nal-

olesd.),

ndsor.

n-

nce

lex-

for-ve-

nd

ofd

F of

F iew.II.

F ion.d

inglysis-

e of-

singd

G am-ed


Experiment 4—Continued

Auditory fragment Visual wor

1. (44.83)When Suzie visits (H*H 22) her

grandpa (H*H 22) is/he’sWhen SuzieL1H* visits (L21) her

grandpa (L21)12. (55.16)

When Gino delivers (H*H 22) thepizza (H*H 22) is/it’s

When GinoL1H* delivers (L21)the pizza (L21)

13. (58.62)After Jane dusts (H*H 23) the

furniture (H*H 23) is/it’sAfter JaneL1H* dusts (L21) the

furniture (L21)4. (34.48)

Because Victor is playing (H*H 23)the music (H*H 23) is/it’s

Because VictorL1H* is playing(L21) the music (L21)

5. (210.35)When a man cheats (H*H 23) his

friends (H*H 23) are/they’reWhen a manL1H* cheats (L21)

his friends (L21)16. (0.02)

When the guerrillas fight (H*H 22)the battle (H*H 22) is/it’s

When the guerrillasL1H* fight(L21) the battle (L21)

7. (37.93)If Ian doesn’t notice (H*H 22) Beth

(H*H 22) will/she’llIf IanL1H* doesn’t notice (L21)

Beth (L21)18. (244.83)

If the baby surrenders (H*H 22) thebottle (H*H 22) is/it’s

If the babyL1H* surrenders (L21)the bottle (L21)

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Received August 25, 1997)Revision received October 15, 1998)

prosodic facilitation and interference in the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguity

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