Kuz, Varvara; (2025) Context-Specific Adaptation in Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution: When and How Do We Learn from Garden Path Sentences? Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis investigates the conditions which lead to improvements in garden-path processing through adaptation or learning. In temporary ambiguities, a parsing conflict between the chosen parse and later structural information requiring an alternative parse contributes to the garden-path processing difficulty. Previous work proposed that a conflict resolution mechanism, adapting over different timescales, resolves these conflicts. Trial-to-trial adaptation, observed in visual-world studies, suggests that lingering activation of domain-general conflict resolution from a non-parsing conflict (like in incongruent Stroop) facilitates resolution of a subsequent parsing conflict. Cumulative adaptation refers to progressive facilitation in garden-path processing over an experiment, potentially due to learning in the conflict resolution mechanism. Bilingual adaptation hypothesises that long-term management of two languages improves domain-general conflict resolution. To assess this overarching conflict resolution account, all three adaptation types were tested within the same dataset using self-paced reading to eliminate the visual conflict confound of the visual world paradigm. This study also used continuous measures of bilingualism and sampling a variety of L2s for a more inclusive bilingual sample. This was assessed across three garden paths: main clause/relative clause (Exp. 1-3), subject/object (Exp. 5-6), and goal/modifier (Exp. 4). The study found no evidence for domain-general trial-to-trial adaptation for any garden path, suggesting prior evidence may be an artefact of the visual world paradigm. No bilingual adaptation was found when using a continuous measure of bilingualism and avoiding language-specific effects, arguing for a more consistent definition of bilingualism. However, the study replicated cumulative adaptation for main clause/relative clause garden paths. This was generalised to subject/object garden paths, but only when the ambiguity, stemming from late closure, co-occurred with a consistent syntactic cue. This suggests that while the late closure strategy might be unmalleable, we can learn to anticipate early closure or a parsing conflict within specific contexts. Overall, this thesis provides evidence for how learning from our immediate environment interacts with sentence processing with implications for the modularity of adaptation mechanisms in garden-path processing.

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