Electrophysiological Evidence for Sentence Comprehension - Wings

fashion, output of the previous being the input into the next step. The steps usually
include several phases: from phonological decoding and word recognition to syntactic
analysis, mapping onto semantics (thematic roles) and integration into wider discourse.
The computation that is performed in each step (or phase) is encapsulated, automatic and
fast. In parallel processing models all available information is processed when it is
available. All available information is processed in parallel.
Until today there is no definite experimental evidence in favor or against any model and
the discussion is still open. The psycholinguistic evidence that is sought to corroborate
the processing models is usually based on ambiguous sentences and reaction time or
reading time measurements. The main question dividing the processing model is how the
parser proceeds with building the sentence structure when there is more than one possible
reconstructed meaning of the sentence at some point in the sentence, as in:
(3) The evidence that the judge ignored the witness might have affected the
jury.
(4) The evidence that the judge ignored might have affected the jury.
When the parser reaches the verb ‘ignored’, the sentence is ambiguous: in the first
sentence the embedded clause is that the judge ignored the witness, while in the second
sentence it is the evidence that the judge ignored, not the witness. In serial processing
models it is assumed that the parser takes only one possible interpretation, goes on with it
and if the rest of the incoming sentence proves to be inconsistent with it, requires repair
or reinterpretation. In parallel models parser goes on with both possible interpretations
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