Influence of Continuous Semantic Constraints on the Resolution of Ambiguous Sentences
Gregg C. Oden, Kerstin Ekberg · The American Journal of Psychology · 1981
Subjects paraphrased 72 sentences that surreptitiously included 12 syntactically ambiguous critical sentences. The subjects then judged the likelihood of obtaining each interpretation of other ambiguous sentences that were systematically related to the previously paraphrased critical sentences. The degree to which the semantic constraints governing each interpretation of the critical sentences were satisfied, as measured by the judgment task, determined the relative sensibleness of the interpretations, and the relative sensibleness directly influenced which interpretation was obtained in the paraphrase task. The results indicate that continuous semantic constraints assist in the making of decisions at the syntactic level as well as at other levels of language.