304 • CHAPTER 11 Language
- What is the word superiority effect?
- How does the frequency of words (word frequency effect) aid in accessing
words? How does Swinney’s experiment about “bugs” indicate that the mean-
ings of ambiguous words can take precedence over context, at least for a short
time? Be sure you understand lexical ambiguity and lexical priming.
Understanding Sentences
Although the last section was about words, we ended up discussing sentences as well.
This isn’t surprising because words rarely appear in isolation. They appear together in
sentences in which all of the words combine to create meaning. To understand how
words work together to create the meaning of a sentence, we fi rst need to distinguish
between two properties of sentences: semantics and syntax.
Semantics is the meanings of words and sentences; syntax specifi es the rules for com-
bining words into sentences. Changing the sentence “The cats won’t eat” into “The cats
won’t bake” is an error of semantics because the meaning doesn’t make sense; changing
the sentence to “The cats won’t eating” is an error of syntax because the grammar is not
correct. Another example of the operation of syntax is word order: The sentence “The cat
chased the bird” follows the rules of English syntax, but “Cat bird the chased” does not.
We saw in Chapter 2 that meaning (semantics) and form (syntax) are associated with
different areas of the brain. Thus, damage to some brain areas makes it diffi cult for a person
to understand what a sentence means, while damage to other areas makes it diffi cult for
a person to produce grammatically correct sentences. As we describe the process of deter-
mining the meaning of a sentence, we will see that both semantics and syntax are involved.PARSING AND A TRIP DOWN THE GARDEN PATH
As we read or listen to a sentence, we encounter a series of words, one following another.
As this happens, the meaning of a sentence unfolds, derived from both the meanings of
the words and how the words are grouped together in phrases. The grouping of words
into phrases, called parsing, is a central process for determining the meaning of a sentence.
How does this process of grouping words into phrases occur? One way that psy-
chologists study the process of understanding a sentence is by presenting sentences that
can have more than one meaning. An example of this is temporary ambiguity, in which
the initial words of a sentence can lead to more than one meaning. For exam0ple, con-
sider the following phrase:Amanda believed the senator...As the sentence continues, here are two ways it could unfold:Choice 1:... during his speech.orChoice 2:... was lying to the committee.The same initial phrase can lead to two very different meanings. Choice 1 indicates
when Amanda thought the senator was telling the truth (during his speech); Choice 2
indicates what she thought the senator was doing (he was lying). By the time each of
these sentences is completed, the meaning has become clear. However, one of the key
principles of sentence comprehension is that people often don’t wait until the end of a
sentence to decide what it means. They typically decide on meanings as the sentence is
unfolding. This means that a person may decide on one meaning and then have to revise
it once the sentence is completed.
Here is another sentence that illustrates the way we assign meanings as we go along:Cast iron sinks quickly rust.Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.