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Sentence processing

Sentence processing is a subfield of psycholinguistics that investigates how humans comprehend and interpret sentences in real time by incrementally integrating lexical, syntactic, semantic, prosodic, and contextual information to derive meaning.^[1] This process unfolds rapidly as words are encountered, often involving the resolution of ambiguities at multiple levels, such as structural (e.g., garden-path sentences) or lexical (e.g., homophones), to construct a coherent representation of the intended message.^[2] Central to the field are competing theoretical models that explain how syntactic dependencies—links between elements like verbs and arguments or pronouns and antecedents—are formed during comprehension.^[3] The influential garden-path model, developed by Frazier and Fodor, proposes a serial, two-stage process where an initial parse relies on heuristics such as minimal attachment (preferring simpler structures) and late closure (attaching new material to the most recent clause), leading to reanalysis upon encountering disambiguating evidence.^[4] In contrast, constraint-based models advocate for parallel evaluation of multiple interpretations, where probabilistic constraints from semantics, discourse, and world knowledge modulate activation levels to favor the most plausible parse.^[1] More recent frameworks, including good-enough processing and noisy channel accounts, suggest that comprehenders may settle for approximate or underspecified representations rather than exhaustive analysis, especially under cognitive load or in noisy environments.^[1] Experimental methods have advanced understanding of these mechanisms, revealing the incremental and predictive nature of processing. Eye-tracking paradigms, such as the visual world paradigm, capture fixations during spoken or written language to index attention shifts and prediction effects, as in anticipatory looks to objects matching expected sentence continuations.^[2] Event-related potentials (ERPs) provide neural evidence, with components like the N400 signaling semantic integration difficulties and the P600 indicating syntactic reanalysis.^[1] Self-paced reading tasks measure word-by-word comprehension latencies, highlighting interference effects in dependency resolution, such as agreement attraction across languages.^[3] Contemporary research emphasizes individual differences, developmental trajectories, and cross-linguistic variations, showing that processing is modulated by factors like working memory capacity and language typology. For instance, cue-based retrieval theories explain how memory interference affects dependency formation similarly in diverse languages, from English subject-verb agreement to Mandarin reflexives, though modulated by cues like case marking.^[3] Recent work as of 2025 has explored how large language models mimic human sentence processing patterns, providing new insights into predictive mechanisms.^[5] Ongoing debates center on the immediacy of contextual integration and the role of prediction in facilitating efficient comprehension, with implications for second-language acquisition and computational modeling.^[2]

Introduction

Definition and scope

Sentence processing refers to the cognitive mechanisms by which humans incrementally interpret linguistic input—whether spoken or written—to construct mental representations of sentence meaning in real time.^[6] This process involves the dynamic interplay of syntactic structure-building, semantic interpretation, and pragmatic inference, drawing on lexical information, contextual cues, and predictive expectations to resolve the relations among words.^[7] Unlike isolated word recognition, sentence processing emphasizes the integration of multiple words into coherent syntactic and semantic structures, going beyond mere lexical retrieval to form propositional representations.^[2] The scope of sentence processing research primarily encompasses comprehension in both auditory and visual modalities, excluding language production, and centers on human cognitive processes while noting conceptual parallels in computational linguistics and natural language processing systems.^[6] These parallels arise from shared principles, such as predictive coding and probabilistic inference, observed in both human brains and autoregressive deep learning models during naturalistic language tasks.^[8] Foundational influences, including Noam Chomsky's generative grammar, have shaped early psycholinguistic models by providing formal frameworks for syntactic analysis in comprehension.^[9] Understanding sentence processing is crucial for insights into language acquisition, where children rapidly develop abilities to parse complex structures online; neurological disorders like aphasia, which impair syntactic integration and lead to comprehension deficits; and applications in artificial intelligence, where mimicking human-like incremental parsing enhances natural language understanding in AI systems.^[10]^[11]^[8]

Historical overview

The study of sentence processing originated in the mid-20th century, drawing heavily from linguistic theory. In the 1950s and 1960s, Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures (1957) introduced transformational-generative grammar, emphasizing hierarchical syntactic structures and innate language mechanisms, which profoundly shaped early models of how humans parse sentences by proposing rules for generating and interpreting syntactic forms. This framework shifted focus from behaviorist views to mentalistic accounts, influencing psycholinguists to explore parsing as a rule-based computational process.^[12] The 1970s marked the rise of psycholinguistics as a distinct field, with experimental investigations into real-time comprehension. A pivotal development was the garden-path theory proposed by Lyn Frazier and Janet Dean Fodor in their 1978 "sausage machine" model, which posited serial syntactic processing where initial parses based on minimal attachments lead to temporary misanalyses that require reanalysis, highlighting the incremental nature of sentence interpretation. This theory emerged amid broader psycholinguistic efforts to test linguistic predictions empirically, using ambiguity as a key testing ground for competing theories since the decade's start.^[12] In the 1980s and 1990s, the field expanded beyond strictly serial models to incorporate interactive and connectionist approaches. Interactive models, such as those advanced by James L. McClelland, Mark F. St. John, and Roman Taraban in 1989, integrated multiple sources of information (syntactic, semantic, and contextual) in parallel, challenging modularity by demonstrating bidirectional influences during comprehension through parallel distributed processing simulations.^[13] Concurrently, connectionist networks gained traction for modeling emergent processing behaviors without explicit rules.^[12] From the 2000s onward, sentence processing research underwent a neurocognitive transformation with the integration of neuroimaging and computational tools. Key milestones included the first event-related potential (ERP) studies on syntactic violations by Helen J. Neville and colleagues in 1991, revealing distinct brain responses (e.g., early left anterior negativity) to syntactic anomalies, thus linking electrophysiological measures to processing stages. This was followed by a surge in eye-tracking applications post-2000, enabled by advances in technology, which provided high-resolution data on reading times and regressions to probe incremental parsing in natural contexts.^[12]

Fundamental Processes

Lexical access

Lexical access refers to the initial retrieval of stored word representations from the mental lexicon during sentence comprehension, triggered by bottom-up activation from sensory input. In spoken language, phonological input activates a set of candidate words sharing initial sounds, while in written language, orthographic input engages letter-based features to retrieve corresponding lexical entries. This process rapidly accesses semantic meanings, syntactic categories, and other properties essential for further integration, occurring within hundreds of milliseconds of word onset. Key models describe these dynamics differently across modalities. The cohort model posits that spoken word recognition begins with bottom-up activation of all words matching the initial phonological cohort, followed by progressive narrowing as more input eliminates competitors through feature matching. This serial activation emphasizes early, exhaustive access before selection. For visual word recognition, the interactive activation model proposes parallel processing across orthographic, phonological, and semantic levels, where bottom-up input from letters spreads activation bidirectionally, allowing contextual influences to modulate early stages. Both frameworks highlight how sensory-driven activation retrieves core lexical features, setting the stage for syntactic parsing. Word frequency profoundly influences access speed, with high-frequency words eliciting faster recognition than low-frequency ones, as evidenced by shorter response times in lexical decision tasks. This effect arises from stronger resting activation levels for frequent items in the lexicon, reducing retrieval time and facilitating smoother incorporation into ongoing sentence processing. Sentence context exerts immediate effects through lexical priming, where prior words activate related candidates, speeding access to predictable targets. For instance, semantically related primes facilitate recognition of upcoming words, demonstrating rapid, automatic spreading activation within the lexicon that aids predictive processing. Challenges arise with lexical ambiguities like homophones (e.g., "bank" as river edge or financial institution) and polysemous words (e.g., "paper" as material or document), where multiple representations activate simultaneously at the lexical stage. For homophones, initial phonological input triggers exhaustive access to all matches before contextual selection, while polysemy involves competition among related senses, often resolved through semantic overlap rather than complete inhibition. These ambiguities underscore the lexicon's organization, where frequency and relatedness modulate resolution efficiency.

Syntactic parsing

Syntactic parsing involves the construction of hierarchical phrase structures from sequences of words, utilizing syntactic categories and subcategorization frames provided by lexical access to organize phrases and clauses in real-time. This process operates incrementally, building partial syntactic representations as each word is encountered, rather than waiting for the entire sentence to be available.^[14] Key parsing strategies guide the attachment of incoming words to existing structures. The late closure principle favors attaching new constituents to the most recently processed phrase, promoting right-branching analyses, while the minimal attachment principle prefers the simplest syntactic tree with the fewest nodes and attachments. These strategies, proposed in the garden-path model, minimize computational load during initial parsing but can lead to errors requiring later revision. For instance, in the ambiguous sentence "The dean admired the student of the teacher with the telescope," both minimal attachment and late closure initially favor linking "with the telescope" to "the teacher," interpreting the teacher as using or possessing the telescope, but this may require reanalysis if context indicates it modifies the student or the verb.^[14] Incremental processing is often head-driven, where heads such as verbs project their argument structures early, constraining the possible attachments for subsequent dependents and facilitating rapid structure building. In this approach, the parser uses the verb's subcategorization information to anticipate and integrate arguments as they appear, ensuring connectedness in partial parses.^[15] Garden-path phenomena illustrate the consequences of these strategies, where an initial parse based on late closure or minimal attachment proves incompatible with later input, necessitating reanalysis and increased processing effort. A classic example is "The horse raced past the barn fell," where "raced" is initially parsed as the main verb (active voice), but "fell" forces reanalysis to a reduced relative clause ("raced" as past participle), triggering a temporary misparse. Such effects have been observed in reading times and eye movements, confirming the prevalence of these attachment preferences.^[14] Cross-linguistic variations arise from head-directionality parameters, influencing parsing efficiency and strategies. In head-initial languages like English, where heads precede complements, parsing proceeds left-to-right with heads driving attachments forward. In contrast, head-final languages like Japanese require pre-head attachments, where arguments are incrementally integrated before the verb arrives, as evidenced by faster reading times for compatible structures in self-paced experiments. This adaptation maintains incrementality but modulates reliance on predictive mechanisms.^[16] Syntactic anomalies, such as phrase structure violations or unexpected attachments, elicit error signals detectable via event-related potentials. The P600 component, a positive brain wave peaking around 600 ms post-stimulus, indexes syntactic reanalysis or integration difficulties, distinguishing it from semantic processing markers. For example, ungrammatical sentences like "The man that the nurse kissed * the doctor" evoke a robust P600, reflecting anomaly detection during continuous speech or reading.^[17]

Semantic and pragmatic integration

Semantic processes in sentence processing involve the compositional construction of meaning from individual lexical items, guided by principles of function-argument application often formalized using lambda calculus. In this framework, verbs are treated as functions that take arguments to yield propositions; for instance, the verb "chase" can be represented as λx.λy.chase(y,x), where applying it to an object like "the cat" yields λy.chase(y, the cat), and further application to a subject like "the dog" results in chase(the dog, the cat). This bottom-up merging ensures that the meaning of a complex expression is derived systematically from the meanings of its parts, as outlined in formal semantic theories adapted to processing models.^[18]^[19] Pragmatic layers enrich this semantic composition by incorporating contextual inferences and speaker intentions, particularly through implicature resolution based on Gricean maxims of conversation, which include quantity (provide as much information as required), quality (be truthful), relation (be relevant), and manner (be clear). For example, the sentence "Some students passed" implicates that not all did, via the maxim of quantity, assuming cooperative communication. Additionally, reference assignment handles anaphora, such as linking "he" to a prior antecedent like "John," drawing on discourse context and recency to resolve coreference during incremental processing.^[20]^[21] Integration of semantics and pragmatics occurs in parallel with syntactic parsing in interactive models, where multiple sources of information constrain interpretation simultaneously, rather than strictly serially. Semantic mismatches, such as unexpected words in context (e.g., "He spread the warm bread with socks"), elicit the N400 event-related potential, a negative brain wave peaking around 400 ms post-stimulus, indexing the effort to integrate incongruent meanings. This component arises during both sentence and discourse processing, reflecting a unified mechanism for semantic anomaly detection.^[22] At the discourse level, coherence is built by managing given-new information flow, where given elements (previously mentioned or assumed known) are placed early in sentences for activation, and new information follows to advance the narrative, facilitating efficient comprehension. Syntactic frames from prior parsing serve as scaffolds, providing slots that guide semantic filling, such as theta roles for arguments.^[23] Predictive elements further shape integration, with top-down expectations based on context modulating processing ease, as measured in cloze probability tasks where participants complete sentence fragments, revealing how likely a word is given preceding material. High cloze words (e.g., "bread" in "He spread the warm _____") reduce integration costs, while low-probability ones increase them, supporting predictive coding accounts where the brain anticipates upcoming semantics to optimize comprehension.^[24]

Ambiguity and Resolution

Types of ambiguity

In sentence processing, ambiguity arises when linguistic input allows for multiple interpretations, challenging the comprehension system to select the appropriate meaning or structure. These ambiguities can occur at different levels of representation, including lexical, syntactic, semantic, and anaphoric, each presenting unique processing demands. Lexical ambiguities stem from words with multiple meanings, while syntactic ones involve alternative phrase structures. Semantic ambiguities concern interpretive scope, and anaphoric ambiguities involve reference resolution for pronouns or other referring expressions. Such ambiguities are prevalent in natural language, with temporary ambiguities (resolved later in the sentence) often leading to processing delays compared to global ambiguities (persistent throughout).^[25] Lexical ambiguity occurs when a single word form maps to multiple meanings, such as homonyms (unrelated meanings, e.g., "bank" referring to a financial institution or a river edge) or polysemous words (related senses, e.g., "newspaper" as a publication or its material). Upon encountering an ambiguous word, all possible meanings are initially activated regardless of prior context, as demonstrated in cross-modal priming studies where targets related to both dominant and subordinate meanings elicit facilitation immediately after the ambiguous word but not 200-500 milliseconds later. This rapid, exhaustive activation supports modular models of lexical access, where selection occurs post-access based on contextual fit. For instance, in the sentence "The treasurer had to match the funds," "match" could evoke striking a light or pairing resources, with the dominant meaning (pairing) dominating due to higher frequency. Distinctions between homonymy and polysemy influence processing, as polysemous senses share more semantic overlap and decay slower than unrelated homonym meanings.^[26]^[27] Syntactic ambiguity, also termed structural ambiguity, arises from multiple possible grammatical parses of a phrase or sentence, often exposed during parsing when initial commitments lead to revisions. A classic subtype is prepositional phrase (PP) attachment ambiguity, where a PP can modify the verb or the preceding noun phrase (NP), as in "I saw the man with the telescope," interpretable as using a telescope to see or seeing a man holding one. Another form is late closure ambiguity, where a new phrase can attach to the most recent constituent, contributing to garden path effects exemplified by "The horse raced past the barn fell," initially parsed with "raced" as the main verb but requiring reanalysis to a reduced relative clause upon encountering "fell." Phrase structure ambiguities, such as between NP and PP interpretations (e.g., "old men and women" as old (men and women) or (old men) and women), further illustrate how minimal attachment principles—favoring simpler structures—guide initial parsing. These ambiguities highlight parsing's role in incrementally building representations, with temporary syntactic ambiguities frequently causing "garden path" effects.^[28]^[25] Semantic ambiguity involves multiple plausible meanings at the level of overall sentence interpretation, often due to scope interactions among operators like quantifiers. Quantifier scope ambiguity occurs when the relative order of quantification is unclear, as in "Every kid climbed a tree," which can mean each kid climbed some tree (wide scope for "every") or there exists one tree that all kids climbed (wide scope for "a"). Processing favors surface order (e.g., universal quantifiers taking wide scope when preceding existentials), influenced by structural positions rather than purely semantic preferences. Another example is "Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it," where "it" introduces anaphoric ties but also scope issues between the universal "every" and the donkey's reference. These ambiguities require integrating logical form with context, differing from syntactic types by persisting beyond structural resolution.^[29] Anaphoric ambiguity emerges when a referring expression, such as a pronoun, has multiple potential antecedents in the discourse, complicating coreference assignment. For example, in "John hit Bill, and then he apologized," "he" could refer to John, Bill, or an unmentioned third party, with resolution guided by syntactic parallelism, recency, and prominence. Sentences with multiple clause structures exacerbate this, as in "The athlete admired the coach and he was talented," where "he" ambiguously links to either the athlete or coach. Processing involves computing prominence profiles across candidates, with ambiguities more pronounced in complex sentences featuring crossed dependencies. Unlike lexical types, anaphoric ambiguities rely on discourse-level integration, often leading to delayed resolution in reading times.^[30]^[31] Temporary ambiguities, resolvable upon further input, dominate experimental findings (e.g., PP attachments), while global ones (e.g., quantifier scopes) affect entire sentences and are rarer in corpora but critical for logical inference. Both types underscore the incremental nature of comprehension.^[25]

Resolution strategies

Resolution strategies in sentence processing rely on cognitive heuristics that prioritize efficiency during real-time disambiguation, particularly for syntactic ambiguities such as attachment preferences in relative clauses. One key heuristic is frequency-based preference, where more common structures, like subject-relative clauses (e.g., "The doctor who visited the patient was kind") over object-relative clauses (e.g., "The patient who the doctor visited was kind"), are initially favored due to their higher occurrence in language use.^[32] Another foundational heuristic is recency, embodied in the late closure principle, which attaches incoming material to the most recent open phrase or clause to minimize structural complexity (e.g., interpreting "I saw the man with the telescope" as using the telescope to see the man).^[4] Resolution often integrates multiple cues for robust disambiguation. Lexical cues, such as verb biases toward specific syntactic frames (e.g., "used" biasing toward an instrument phrase like "She used the spoon to eat the soup" rather than a modifier), guide initial parse decisions rapidly.^[33] Prosodic cues, including intonation contours and pauses, further aid resolution by signaling phrase boundaries (e.g., a pause after "the man" in "I saw the man, with the telescope" promoting low attachment).^[34] World knowledge integration supplements these by evaluating plausibility against general expectations, such as thematic roles or event schemas, to select viable interpretations.^[35] When initial parses fail, reanalysis incurs processing costs that vary by theoretical approach. In serial models, backtracking fully revises the committed structure, leading to higher disruption in garden-path sentences (e.g., "The horse raced past the barn fell").^[28] Parallel models, conversely, employ soft commitments to multiple analyses, distributing costs through probabilistic weighting rather than wholesale revision.^[32] Individual differences modulate resolution efficacy, with working memory capacity determining the ability to maintain and compare alternative parses. Higher-capacity individuals better accommodate low-frequency or conflicting structures, reducing error rates in complex ambiguities.^[36] Cross-linguistically, strategy effectiveness depends on language typology and cue reliability. In German, overt case marking on nouns and determiners reliably disambiguates subject-object order (e.g., accusative marking signals an object-first structure), overriding recency biases more effectively than in English.^[37]

Theoretical Frameworks

Architectural issues

Architectural issues in sentence processing center on the high-level organization of cognitive mechanisms that enable comprehension, particularly the extent to which processing is modular or interactive and serial or parallel. Modular architectures, inspired by Fodor's framework, propose that sentence processing involves domain-specific modules that operate autonomously and are informationally encapsulated, preventing influences from non-linguistic knowledge during core computations such as syntactic parsing.^[38] In this view, an independent syntax module computes structural representations without input from semantics or pragmatics, ensuring efficient, rule-based processing insulated from broader contextual factors.^[4] This Fodorian modularity emphasizes vertical organization, where lower-level perceptual modules feed into higher ones without horizontal interactions across domains.^[39] In opposition, interactive architectures advocate for bidirectional flow of information between processing levels, allowing semantic and contextual cues to influence syntactic decisions from the outset.^[40] Pioneered in models of reading and perception, this approach posits that activation spreads across levels simultaneously, enabling top-down expectations to constrain bottom-up analyses and vice versa.^[41] A related dimension involves serial versus parallel processing: serial designs, often tied to modularity, sequence operations such that syntactic structure is fully built before semantic integration occurs, minimizing computational load but potentially delaying context effects.^[4] Parallel processing, characteristic of interactive systems, activates multiple structural hypotheses concurrently, facilitating competition and integration across levels in real time.^[42] Debates over evidence have long pitted the autonomy hypothesis, which upholds syntactic independence and predicts insulation from non-syntactic influences, against interactive activation theories that highlight rapid contextual modulation of early processing stages.^[4]^[40] These positions carry distinct implications: modularity anticipates delayed semantic contributions, leading to initial parses that may require later revision, whereas interactivity supports immediate exploitation of context to streamline comprehension and reduce ambiguity. Recent critiques have challenged strict dichotomies, favoring hybrid architectures that integrate modular autonomy for core computations with predictive mechanisms allowing limited interactivity, thus accommodating evidence of both encapsulation and contextual sensitivity across processing stages.^[43]

Processing models

Sentence processing models aim to explain how humans incrementally interpret linguistic input, integrating syntactic, semantic, and contextual information to construct meaning. These models vary in their assumptions about the architecture of comprehension, such as whether processing is serial or parallel, and how ambiguities are resolved. Influential frameworks include serial models emphasizing syntactic primacy and reanalysis, parallel models incorporating multiple probabilistic constraints, and more recent approaches highlighting satisficing strategies and predictive mechanisms. Each model makes distinct predictions about processing difficulty, often tested through reading times and error rates in ambiguous sentences.^[44] The garden-path model, proposed by Frazier and Fodor (1978), posits a serial, syntax-first approach to parsing, where comprehenders initially adopt the simplest syntactic structure consistent with minimal attachment principles, such as attaching new phrases to the lowest possible node in the existing parse tree.^[45] If this leads to an incompatible interpretation upon encountering disambiguating information, reanalysis occurs, incurring processing costs manifested as longer reading times or regressions. Frazier and Rayner (1982) provided eye-tracking evidence from structurally ambiguous sentences, like "The horse raced past the barn fell," where the initial misparse of "raced" as the main verb creates a garden-path effect, predicting difficulty from the need for syntactic revision rather than semantic influences during initial parsing. The model highlights disruptions from temporary misparses but assumes rapid recovery through reanalysis.^[44] In contrast, the constraint-based model advocates parallel evaluation of multiple sources of information, including syntactic biases, lexical semantics, and discourse context, which compete probabilistically to determine the most likely interpretation. MacDonald, Pearlmutter, and Seidenberg (1994) argued that ambiguity resolution emerges from the interaction of these constraints, with lexical frequencies shaping preferences; for instance, verbs with higher frequency in reduced relative clause constructions, such as "headed," bias toward that interpretation in sentences like "The article headed by the professor was informative," due to higher probabilistic activation of subordinate structures. This framework uses connectionist-inspired mechanisms for ranking alternatives, predicting smoother processing when constraints align and difficulty only when competing interpretations are equally probable, thus avoiding the discrete reanalysis of serial models. The good-enough processing account, proposed by Ferreira et al. (2002), extends constraint-based ideas by emphasizing shallow, satisficing interpretations that prioritize rapid comprehension over exhaustive syntactic detail, allowing errors in complex structures if the overall meaning suffices.^[46] MacDonald and Christiansen (2008) linked this to experience-based statistical learning, where frequent exposure leads individuals to adopt heuristic strategies, such as inferring agent-patient roles without full reanalysis in passive sentences like "The trophy was won by the yelling fan," resulting in error-prone but efficient understanding.^[47] This model explains persistent misinterpretations in garden-path sentences and variability across listeners, attributing it to individual differences in linguistic experience rather than universal parsing principles. Recent developments incorporate predictive processing, where comprehenders actively anticipate upcoming input using Bayesian inference to update beliefs based on prior context, minimizing uncertainty. Kuperberg and Jaeger (2016) described this as probabilistic prediction across multiple representational levels, from phonemes to semantics, enabling preemptive resolution of ambiguities; for example, a verb's subcategorization frame might bias expectations for object types, facilitating integration. Complementing this, the surprisal metric quantifies processing difficulty as the negative log probability of an element given its context, formally defined as

\text{surprisal} = -\log P(\text{parse} \mid \text{previous})

Hale (2001) introduced surprisal in a probabilistic parsing framework, predicting that low-probability continuations, like rare syntactic attachments, increase cognitive load, as evidenced by slower reading times in surprisal-correlated experiments. This metric integrates well with predictive models by linking anticipation to information-theoretic efficiency.^[48] Comparisons among these models reveal trade-offs: the garden-path approach offers a minimalist serial mechanism for syntactic primacy but underemphasizes integrative constraints, while constraint-based and good-enough models provide richer, probabilistic accounts yet may overlook rapid reanalysis in clear cases. Predictive extensions address these by incorporating anticipation, though all frameworks share limitations in accounting for individual differences, such as varying working memory capacities or language exposure, which modulate model predictions. Frazier and Fodor (1978); MacDonald et al. (1994); Ferreira et al. (2002); MacDonald and Christiansen (2008).^[45]^[46]^[47]

Research Methods

Behavioral techniques

Behavioral techniques in sentence processing involve non-invasive methods that assess comprehension through participants' explicit responses, such as reaction times or judgments, in controlled experimental settings. These approaches provide insights into the speed and accuracy of processing by measuring how individuals handle linguistic structures under varying conditions.^[49] Self-paced reading presents sentences word-by-word or in segments on a computer screen, with participants advancing at their own pace by pressing a key, allowing researchers to record reading times for each segment as an index of processing difficulty. Longer reading times at specific words or phrases indicate higher cognitive load, such as during syntactic integration or ambiguity resolution. This technique was pioneered in studies examining comprehension processes, where it revealed patterns like increased times for object-relative clauses compared to subject-relative clauses. Acceptability judgments require participants to rate sentences on scales of grammaticality, naturalness, or plausibility, probing implicit linguistic intuitions without time pressure. These ratings help identify subtle effects of structure on perceived well-formedness, such as gradient acceptability in complex embeddings. Methodological advancements have emphasized objective scaling to minimize bias, ensuring reliable measurement of processing preferences.^[50]^[50] Maze tasks force incremental processing by displaying the sentence with the next word masked and offering multiple grammatical continuations for rapid selection via keypress, capturing decision times at each step. This method highlights momentary processing commitments, such as faster selections for predictable continuations, and serves as an alternative to traditional reading paradigms by reducing visual masking artifacts. Lexical decision in context embeds a target word within a sentence, asking participants to quickly judge if it is a real word while prior context influences response speed. Facilitation from semantic or syntactic fit demonstrates integration effects, with faster decisions for contextually congruent words. This task has been instrumental in showing how sentence-level constraints modulate lexical access. These techniques offer high temporal resolution for tracking processing increments and are cost-effective for large samples, though they may introduce metalinguistic awareness that alters natural comprehension. For instance, self-paced reading and maze tasks have been applied to study ambiguity resolution, revealing reanalysis costs in garden-path sentences.^[49]

Eye-tracking studies

Eye-tracking studies offer a window into the real-time dynamics of sentence processing by monitoring oculomotor responses, such as fixations and saccades, during reading or auditory comprehension tasks. These measures provide online indices of cognitive effort, revealing how readers or listeners incrementally build interpretations without relying on retrospective reports. Unlike offline behavioral techniques, which capture end-of-trial responses, eye-tracking captures implicit processing fluctuations on a millisecond scale.^[51] Central metrics in these studies include first-pass fixation duration, which quantifies the time spent initially processing a word or region before moving forward, indexing early syntactic and semantic integration; regressions, backward eye movements signaling reanalysis or comprehension breakdowns; and go-past times, encompassing the total duration from first fixation to leaving a region forward, reflecting overall processing difficulty. For instance, increased first-pass durations often mark encounters with unexpected syntactic structures, while regressions highlight recovery from misanalyses.^[52] In reading paradigms, eye movements are recorded as participants silently read sentences displayed on a screen, allowing precise localization of processing costs to specific words. A key technique is the boundary paradigm, where an invisible boundary precedes a target word; upon the eyes crossing it, the display changes from a preview (e.g., a nonword or low-frequency word) to the actual target, isolating parafoveal preprocessing effects on fixation times. This method has demonstrated that readers extract orthographic and phonological information from upcoming words before direct fixation, influencing initial processing efficiency. Modern eye-trackers, sampling at 1000 Hz, enable high temporal resolution for these analyses, minimizing data loss from blinks or minor head movements. The visual world paradigm extends eye-tracking to spoken language comprehension, where participants view a visual scene containing objects compatible with sentence referents while listening to instructions. Eye movements to depicted objects trace the time course of reference resolution and thematic role assignment, showing how linguistic input guides looks incrementally. Seminal work using this paradigm revealed that visual contexts modulate syntactic ambiguity resolution from the outset, as listeners preferentially fixate contextually appropriate referents during spoken sentences like "Put the apple on the towel," avoiding implausible alternatives.^[53] Key findings from eye-tracking underscore processing challenges in ambiguous sentences, where longer fixations and elevated regression rates occur at disambiguating regions in garden-path constructions, such as "The horse raced past the barn fell," indicating initial commitment to a misparse followed by reanalysis. Predictive processing is evident in anticipatory looks driven by verb biases; for example, upon hearing "The boy will eat...," listeners fixate a depicted cake more than a toy car, reflecting rapid use of selectional restrictions to forecast upcoming arguments before they are named. These patterns hold across languages and populations, though individual differences in reading skill modulate fixation durations.^[54]^[55] Recent advances in mobile eye-tracking, including wearable devices and webcam-based systems, have facilitated investigations in naturalistic settings beyond controlled lab environments. Post-2020 studies have replicated core effects like increased fixations during syntactic ambiguity resolution in everyday reading scenarios, such as news articles or conversations, demonstrating the method's portability while maintaining sensitivity to processing dynamics. These tools complement traditional lab-based behavioral measures by enabling ecologically valid data collection on unconstrained comprehension.^[51]

Neuroimaging and electrophysiological methods

Neuroimaging and electrophysiological methods provide critical insights into the neural underpinnings of sentence processing by offering spatial and temporal resolution of brain activity during comprehension and production. These techniques reveal how linguistic elements such as syntax and semantics engage specific brain regions and unfold over milliseconds, complementing behavioral measures like eye-tracking for validation.^[56] Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) excels in spatial localization, identifying key language areas like Broca's area (in the inferior frontal gyrus) for syntactic processing and Wernicke's area (in the superior temporal gyrus) for semantic processing during sentence comprehension.^[57] Studies using blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) responses demonstrate increased activation in these regions with rising syntactic complexity, such as in object-relative clauses compared to subject-relative clauses, highlighting Broca's role in unifying syntactic and semantic constraints.^[58] Semantic processing in Broca's area is also evidenced by fMRI activations during lexical integration in sentences, extending beyond purely syntactic functions.^[59] Electroencephalography (EEG) and event-related potentials (ERPs) offer high temporal precision, capturing neural responses on the order of milliseconds during sentence processing. The N400 component, peaking around 400 ms post-stimulus, reflects semantic integration difficulties, such as when a word violates contextual expectations in a sentence (e.g., "The Dutch trains are sour and full of milk").^[60] For syntactic processing, the left anterior negativity (LAN, ~300-500 ms) indicates early phrase structure violations, while the P600 (~600 ms) signals later reanalysis or repair of syntactic anomalies, like garden-path sentences.^[61] These components map to a cortical network involving temporal and frontal regions, with the N400 linked to lexical retrieval and the P600 to compositional integration.^[62] Magnetoencephalography (MEG) combines temporal resolution with source localization, elucidating predictive mechanisms in sentence comprehension. MEG reveals hierarchical predictive coding across fronto-temporal networks, where early sensory areas anticipate semantic content and higher-order regions integrate syntactic structure incrementally from left to right.^[63] For instance, source-localized MEG activity shows pre-activation in temporal lobes for expected words, supporting top-down predictions that facilitate processing efficiency.^[64] Recent advances from 2020 to 2025 have leveraged electrocorticography (ECoG) for high spatiotemporal resolution in decoding sentence-level representations, often in clinical settings with epilepsy patients. ECoG recordings demonstrate shared cortical word representations across production and comprehension tasks within the language network, enabling decoding of semantic content from neural signals during naturalistic narrative processing.^[65] For example, multivariate pattern analysis of ECoG data has reconstructed syntactic roles and word meanings in real-time sentence production, revealing a division of labor where ventral temporal areas handle semantics and dorsal frontal areas manage syntax.^[66] Datasets like the "Podcast" ECoG collection support modeling of narrative comprehension, showing stable decoding of linguistic features over extended discourse.^[67] Bibliometric analyses indicate a steady increase in neuroimaging publications on spoken language processing in recent years, emphasizing multimodal and decoding approaches.^[68] Despite these strengths, these methods have notable limitations. fMRI's reliance on hemodynamic responses introduces a 4-6 second lag, obscuring fine-grained temporal dynamics of sentence processing.^[56] EEG and MEG suffer from poorer spatial resolution due to volume conduction and inverse problem challenges, respectively, while ECoG is constrained by ethical and practical issues of invasiveness, limiting its use to surgical populations.^[69]

Computational modeling

Computational modeling in sentence processing employs simulation-based approaches to test and refine theoretical predictions about how humans incrementally interpret linguistic input. These models generate quantifiable predictions, such as processing difficulty metrics, that can be compared against human behavioral data to evaluate the plausibility of underlying mechanisms. By implementing rule-based or neural architectures, researchers simulate the cognitive load of syntactic and semantic integration, allowing for the exploration of factors like ambiguity resolution and prediction in controlled computational environments.^[48] Rule-based parsers, such as shift-reduce algorithms, provide a foundational method for syntactic analysis by incrementally building parse trees through operations like shifting input words onto a stack or reducing partial structures according to grammar rules. These parsers model human-like incremental processing by prioritizing efficient derivations, as seen in early disambiguation techniques that mimic native speaker preferences for certain syntactic attachments. A seminal example is Hale's 2001 surprisal model, which uses a probabilistic Earley parser to compute surprisal as the negative log probability of a word given its preceding context, \text{surprisal}(w_i) = -\log P(w_i \mid w_{1:i-1}), linking parsing effort to information-theoretic unexpectedness and predicting increased reading times for low-probability continuations.^[70]^[48] Connectionist networks extend these capabilities by learning incremental predictions from data, with recurrent neural networks (RNNs) capturing sequential dependencies to simulate how context influences word-by-word comprehension. RNNs, including long short-term memory variants, process sentences autoregressively, generating hidden states that encode syntactic and semantic expectations, thereby modeling effects like garden-path recovery through error signals in prediction. Post-2017, transformer-based models have advanced context modeling via self-attention mechanisms, enabling parallel computation of long-range dependencies and better simulation of human-like holistic sentence representation without recurrent bottlenecks. These architectures draw brief inspiration from constraint-based theories by integrating multiple probabilistic cues during forward passes.^[71]^[72]^[8] Evaluation of these models focuses on fitting simulated outputs to human data, such as regressing model-derived metrics against empirical reading times from eye-tracking studies to assess predictive accuracy. For instance, surprisal from parsers correlates strongly with fixation durations, explaining variance in processing difficulty beyond simple frequency effects. Integration cost, formalized in Gibson's 1998 Dependency Locality Theory, serves as an embedding depth metric, quantifying the cognitive burden of linking dependents across intervening material; models compute this as the number of new discourse entities or syntactic heads in the local parse tree, with higher costs predicting slower comprehension for center-embedded structures.^[73]^[74] Recent advances from 2020 to 2025 integrate psycholinguistic features like surprisal and embedding depth into natural language processing pipelines, enhancing readability prediction in NLP tasks such as text simplification. Transformer-derived surprisal, for example, outperforms traditional formulas in forecasting sentence-level reading ease when calibrated to human corpora, achieving correlations up to 0.4 with eye-movement metrics in multilingual settings.^[75]^[73] Applications of these models include simulating second language (L2) lexical access, where lexical effects modulate processing through frequency and overlap in bilingual representations. BiLex, a computational model, demonstrates how L2 age of acquisition and exposure alter lexical competition and retrieval.^[76]

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