Book Chapter

Sentence Processing and Interpretation in Monolinguals and Bilinguals

Brothers, Trevor A., Traxler, Matthew J., Hoversten, Liv J.

2017

Overview

Syntactic parsing in humans is carried out by mental processes that establish dependencies between words in sentences. Combinatorial processes allow humans to express and understand meanings that go beyond default meaning relationships determined by conceptual world knowledge. In other words, syntax allows us to say things that are surprising. This chapter reviews classical and modern approaches to parsing. These include modular views, under which parsing reflects stages of processing that take place independently of other mental activities, interactive accounts, which posit a closer relationship between different mental processes, and dual‐streams approaches, which suggest that interpretations can be derived simultaneously in different ways by different sub‐processors. The chapter also shows how event‐related potentials and research on bilingual speakers have led to the refinement of theories that were built on the basis of behavioral data from monolinguals.

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc
• Subject: Bayesian noisy‐channel / bilinguals / event related potentials / good‐enough parsing / modularity / parsing / sentence processing / syntax
• ISBN: 9781118829509, 1118829506