Minimizing dependency distance in understanding of ambiguous structure
Zhao Yiy · Computer Engineering and Applications Journal · 2014
Human beings tend to choose the structure with the minimum dependency distance during ambiguous structure understanding in order to reduce the burden on working memory. This paper reanalyzes the psychological experimental results within the framework of dependency grammar. The measurement of dependency distance provides the linguistic criteria for why is the potential ambiguity structureVP + N1 + the + N2considered as the Modifier-Noun Construction(MNC)rather than Narrative-Object Structure(NOS). Minimizing dependency distance is an important mechanism during natural language understanding and an effective way to reduce the memory cost.