Prosodic Breaks and Attachment Decisions in Sentence Parsing

The role of prosodic breaks (PB) in the parsing of locally ambiguous NP+ V + NP + PP French sentences was examined in four word monitoring experiments. The presence of a PB after the verb was shown to hinder the VP-attachment interpretation (# The spies inform # the guards of the conspiracy #), whereas the presence of a second PB in front of the PP seemed to neutralise the effect of the first break (# The spies inform # the guards # of the conspiracy #). Moreover, the second PB apparently produced a greater effect when the verb's argument structure conflicted with the actual attachment of the PP (i.e. when the sequence of words used in the sentence required an NP-attachment in the case of a ditransitive verb like "to inform", and a VP-attachment in the case of a monotransitive verb like "to choose"). These results clearly indicate that PBs can influence sentence parsing. Possible mechanisms are discussed in the framework of Frazier's (1987) garden-path model and Perfetti's (1990) restricted interactive model.