Distinguishing serial and parallel parsing

• Published in: Journal of psycholinguistic research Vol. 29; no. 2; pp. 231 - 240
• Main Authors: Gibson, E, Pearlmutter, N J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Plenum Press 01.03.2000; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Cognition - physiology; Evidence; Humans; Language; Language Processing; Parallel Distributed Processing Models; Parsing; Reaction Time; Reading Comprehension; Resistance (Psychology); Semantics; Sentences; Serial Learning; Short Term Memory; Speech Perception - physiology; Stimuli; Syntactic Processing; Verbs
• ISSN: 0090-6905; 1573-6555
• DOI: 10.1023/A:1005153330168

This paper discusses ways of determining whether the human parser is serial maintaining at most, one structural interpretation at each parse state, or whether it is parallel, maintaining more than one structural interpretation in at least some circumstances. We make four points. The first two counterclaims made by Lewis (2000): (1) that the availability of alternative structures should not vary as a function of the disambiguating material in some ranked parallel models; and (2) that parallel models predict a slow down during the ambiguous region for more syntactically ambiguous structures. Our other points concern potential methods for seeking experimental evidence relevant to the serial/parallel question. We discuss effects of the plausibility of a secondary structure in the ambiguous region (Pearlmutter & Mendelsohn, 1999) and suggest examining the distribution of reaction times in the disambiguating region.