Disambiguation Preferences in Noun Phrase Conjunction Do Not Mirror Corpus Frequency

Abstract

The results of two self-paced reading studies of a syntactic ambiguity involving conjoined noun phrases to three potential noun phrase sites were compared to the corpus frequencies of the resolutions of the same ambiguity. The reading times for the attachment to the first noun phrase were faster than for the attachment to the second noun phrase, but, to the extent that any differences were observed in the corpus frequencies, attachments to the second noun phrase were more frequent. We therefore argue that the sentence comprehension mechanism is not using corpus frequencies in arriving at its preference in this ambiguity, and hence the decision principles of sentence comprehension and sentence production must be partially distinct. It is proposed that there is a factor operative in sentence comprehension that is not operative in sentence production, and this factor favors attachment to the first noun phrase.