Sentence Comprehension

by

Yaling Hsiao, Jinman Li

• LAST MODIFIED: 20 August 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0323

Introduction

Interpreting the linguistic signal to understand the event structure of “who did what to whom,” as well as working out the speaker’s intention, is the goal of sentence comprehension. Research on sentence comprehension thus investigates the mechanism of how such understanding takes place. The field of sentence comprehension usually overlaps with that of sentence processing, focusing on the process of how the mind analyzes the linear string of words, presented visually or through speech, to form meaning. Traditionally, the process of sentence comprehension is termed “parsing”, focusing on the syntactic analysis to determine the semantic structure of the sentence. However, such a view may be limiting because processes related to sources of information other than just linguistic content are found to also affect the interpretation of sentence meaning and the speaker’s intention, such as prosody, references, discourse, and other aspects of pragmatic processing. To understand human sentence comprehension, some research approaches it from a general perspective, by investigating the role of memory, language experience, world knowledge, and prediction, while others focus their attention on specific linguistic subfields, including word type, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and discourse processing. Some research is devoted to the study of sentence comprehension in different populations, while others choose to explore the universality and variability of sentence comprehension across languages. The present article aims to provide an overview of these topics.

Reference Works

Lee and Watson 2012; MacDonald and Hsiao 2018; Traxler, et al. 2018; and van-Gompel 2013 are books or book chapters written by experts in the field, covering important issues, history, and up-to-date findings in sentence comprehension. Other works focus on specific aspects of sentence processing, such as working memory, as in Caplan 2016, and cognitive models of syntax, as in Demberg and Keller 2019. Some others focus on methods for addressing on-line processing, as in Carreiras and Clifton 2004. They offer good sources to literature that investigates different phenomena, adopting different methodologies and theoretical perspectives.

• Caplan, D. 2016. Working memory and sentence comprehension. In Neurobiology of language. Edited by G. Hickok and S. L. Small, 633–645. London: Academic Press.

  DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-407794-2.00051-1

  Discusses the memory system that supports the processes of sentence comprehension. Both the retrieval mechanisms and the capacity limitations are considered in syntactic parsing.

• Carreiras, M., and C. Clifton Jr. 2004. The on-line study of sentence comprehension: Eyetracking, ERPs and beyond. New York: Psychology Press.

  DOI: 10.4324/9780203509050

  Gathers contributions from field experts that apply advanced research methods to investigate the moment-by-moment time course of sentence processing. Covers a range of methods, such as eye-tracking, ERPs, fMRI, and the theoretical progress driven by these methods.

• Demberg, V., and F. Keller. 2019. Cognitive models of syntax and sentence processing. In Human language: From genes and brains to behavior. Edited by P. Hagoort, 293–312. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/10841.003.0027

  A review chapter on computational cognitive models of syntax and sentence processing. Provides a useful overview of grammar formalisms (e.g., context-free grammar) and parsing algorithms (e.g., top-down and bottom-up algorithms), as well as linking theories that specify the locus of comprehension difficulty (e.g., information theoretical surprisal), which together form processing models (e.g., Dependency Locality Theory, information-theoretical models).

• Lee, E. -K., and D. G. Watson. 2012. Sentence processing. In Encyclopedia of human behavior. 2d ed. Edited by V. S. Ramachandran, 387–395. Oxford: Academic Press.

  DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-375000-6.00321-9

  Reviews two important theories in sentence comprehension: the garden path model and the constraint-based models. Also discusses factors that affect the process, such as context, frequency, and prosody.

• MacDonald, M. C., and Y. Hsiao. 2018. Sentence comprehension. In The Oxford handbook of psycholinguistics. Edited by S.-A. Rueschemeyer and M. G. Gaskell, 171–196. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

  An up-to-date overview of the sentence comprehension literature, introducing contemporary processing models situated on the innate vs. experience-based spectrum, as well as the degree to which they favor an explanation toward the role of working memory and that of ambiguity resolution. Also discusses methods used to measure processing, and the importance of considering the linking hypothesis. The link between comprehension and production is also discussed.

• Traxler, M. J., L. J. Hoversten, and T. A. Brothers. 2018. Sentence processing and interpretation in monolinguals and bilinguals. In The handbook of psycholinguistics. Edited by E. Fernández and H. Smith Cairns, 320–344. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.

  Reviews contemporary and classical sentence processing theories regarding monolinguals and bilinguals, with a focus on modular accounts, interactive accounts, and the dual streams approaches. Also discusses the contribution of the event-related potentials (ERP) technique to theory building.

• van-Gompel, R. P. G., ed. 2013. Sentence processing. Current Issues in the Psychology of Language. London: Psychology Press.

  Provides a very comprehensive and in-depth overview of the field of sentence processing. Each chapter is authored by experts in a specific area. Covers multiple issues, such as the roles of syntax, experience, memory, and context. There are also chapters on special populations (e.g., children and bilinguals).