Questions: Sentence Parsing and Garden-Path Sentences

Question 1

In the sentence 'The horse raced past the barn fell,' most readers experience difficulty at the word 'fell.' According to the garden-path model, why does this specific word cause the problem?

• A. Because 'fell' is an irregular verb form that is rarely encountered in everyday language.
• B. Because 'fell' reveals that the initial parse — treating 'raced' as the main verb — is grammatically impossible, requiring the reader to discard and rebuild the entire structure.
• C. Because 'fell' introduces semantic implausibility about horses, triggering a plausibility check.
• D. Because 'fell' arrives too quickly for working memory to integrate it with earlier words.

Answer: (B)

'Fell' is the disambiguation point — the moment where the incorrect initial parse (main clause with 'raced' as the main verb) becomes untenable. A sentence cannot have two main verbs without a conjunction, so 'fell' forces reanalysis: 'the horse' is actually the subject of a reduced relative clause ('the horse that was raced past the barn'), and 'fell' is the true main verb. The difficulty is not about 'fell' itself but about the structural reanalysis it demands — undoing what the parser had already committed to and rebuilding the entire phrase structure.

Question 2

Which prediction distinguishes a serial parser (single-analysis commitment) from a parallel parser (multiple-analyses maintained simultaneously) with respect to garden-path sentences?

• A. A serial parser predicts garden-path effects; a parallel parser predicts no such processing difficulty because the correct analysis was maintained all along.
• B. Both predict the same garden-path effects, but serial parsers recover faster because they only maintained one analysis.
• C. A parallel parser predicts stronger garden-path effects because maintaining multiple analyses overloads working memory.
• D. A serial parser predicts difficulty at the start of the sentence, while a parallel parser predicts difficulty at the end.

Answer: (A)

The garden-path effect is the key empirical test between these models. If the parser maintains all grammatically possible analyses in parallel, it always has the correct analysis available when the disambiguating word arrives — no reanalysis needed, no measurable slowdown. The serial model predicts difficulty precisely because the parser committed to the wrong analysis and must now discard it. Reading-time studies and ERP data showing processing disruption exactly at the disambiguation point support the serial model with reanalysis.

Question 3

The 'minimal attachment' heuristic in sentence parsing causes garden-path errors because it systematically favors syntactically simpler analyses, which happen to be wrong for sentences with reduced relative clauses.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

Minimal attachment is the principle that the parser builds the simplest phrase structure given the words encountered so far — fewest nodes, most direct attachment. For 'the horse raced past the barn,' the simplest analysis has 'raced' as the main verb of a simple main clause, which requires fewer structural nodes than embedding 'raced' inside a relative clause modifying 'the horse.' This heuristic is statistically optimal for most sentences in natural language — but in the unusual case of a reduced relative clause, it leads the parser down the wrong path.

Question 4

Garden-path effects demonstrate a fundamental limitation of the human language-processing system: it can seldom handle sentences with reduced relative clauses.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Humans can and do understand garden-path sentences — they just require reanalysis and extra processing time. The garden-path effect reveals not a limitation but an architectural feature: the parser commits early to the most probable analysis (an efficient strategy for normal language) and recovers when that analysis fails. With re-reading or additional context, comprehenders always reach the correct interpretation. The difficulty is in the recovery cost, not an inability to process reduced relative clauses.

Question 5

Why does the 'minimal attachment' heuristic cause processing errors in highly skilled readers, even though those readers know the grammar that would allow them to consider alternative analyses?

Model answer: Minimal attachment operates automatically and below conscious awareness — it is a fast heuristic applied incrementally as each word arrives, not a deliberate strategy that skilled readers can override. Knowing the grammar doesn't help because the parser commits to the simpler structure before 'fell' appears; by the time the error is revealed, reanalysis is required regardless of the reader's competence.

Syntactic knowledge and real-time processing are separable. A skilled reader knows that reduced relative clauses are grammatical English — they could generate them freely in writing. But the online parser doesn't consult that explicit knowledge; it applies incremental heuristics that succeed on the vast majority of sentences. The rare garden-path sentence exposes the gap between competence (knowing the grammar) and performance (processing in real time under incremental commitment).