Abstract
This report describeslicensing-structure parsing (LS-parsing), a computational model of human parsing. LS-parsing corresponds to human parsing at three points: (1) the order in which the LS parser builds nodes is psychologically more accurate than the orders in which either LL or LR parsers build nodes, (2) the LS parser's preferences in resolving local ambiguities are preferable to Frazier's strategies on both empirical and theoretical grounds, and (3) the backtracking strategies the parser uses when it has made an error at an earlier choice point model the distinction betweenweak andstrong garden paths-strong garden paths being irrecoverable, weak garden paths causing psychological difficulty, but not preventing recovery of the correct structure.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abney, S. (1987). Licensing and parsing.Proceedings of NELS 17, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Aho, A.V., & Johnson, S.C. (1974). LR parsing.Computing Surveys, 6(2), 99–124.
Aho, A.V., & Johnson, S.C. (1975). Deterministic parsing of ambiguous grammars.Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, 18(8), 441–452.
Chomsky, N. (1986).Knowledge of language. New York: Praeger.
Frazier, L. (1978).On comprehending sentences: Syntactic parsing strategies. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut.
Frazier, L., & Fodor, J. (1978). The sausage machine: A new two-stage parsing model.Cognition, 6, 291–325.
Frazier, L., & Rayner, K. (1982). Making and correcting errors during sentence comprehension: Eye movements in the analysis of structurally ambiguous sentences.Cognitive Psychology, 14, 178–210.
Kimball, J. (1973). Seven principles of surface structure parsing in natural language.Cognition, 2, 15–47.
Marcus, M. (1980).A theory of syntactic recognition for natural language. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.
Pereira, F.C.N. (1985). A new characterization of attachment preferences. In D. Dowty et al. (Eds.),Natural language parsing (pp. 307–319). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Shieber, S. (1983). Sentence disambiguation by a shift-reduce parsing technique. InProceedings of the 21st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 113–118.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Abney, S.P. A computational model of human parsing. J Psycholinguist Res 18, 129–144 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01069051
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01069051