1. –5–
Sentence:
Comprehension
and Memory
Kuntum Trilestari (20112506002)
Psycholinguistics
Dr. Tahrun, M.Pd.
Dr. Bambang A. Loenetto, M.A.

2. PROCESSING UNITS Sentence and Clause as Unit
In physical appearance
A written sentence Capital letter – period
A spoken sentence High pitch – lengthened sound and pause
In content
A sentence expresses one
complete thought A topic – a comment
In syntactic structure
A sentence is the top-
A subject - a predicate
level constituent

3. PROCESSING UNITS
Sentence and Clause as Unit
Whether a clause
is complete or not
Clauses are affects its
perceptual effectiviness as a
units unit
Example:
• After the cook stole the women’s bag...
• Meeting the pretty young girl...

4. PROCESSING UNITS
Phrase and Word as Unit
Sentence
Clause
Phrase
Consists of a few
content words
Word Frequency, length, a
nd importance of a
word affect how it is
processed
Example:
I know that (the/this)... desert trains young people
to be especially tough

5. Case-Role Assignment
CASE-ROLE ASSIGNMENT
AND S-V PROCESSING
• Case-role assignment in English is based
partly on the syntactic factor of word order.
NVN = SVO = AAP
(NOUN-VERB-NOUN) (SUBJECT-VERB-OBJECT) (AGENT-ACTION-PATIENT)
Words are represented as many semantic
microfeatures:
NOUN: HUMAN (human or
nonhuman), Gender (male, female, neutral)
VERB: DOER (yes or no), CAUSE (yes, no-
cause, no-change)

6. Subject – Verb Processing
CASE-ROLE ASSIGNMENT
AND S-V PROCESSING
Example:
An
interpreter
must find • The girl standing beside the
and relate lady had a blue dress.
the subject
and its • The dog teased the cat that
verb. chased the rat that ran.
• The rat that the cat that the
dog teased chased ran.

7. STRUCTURALLY RELATED
Relative Frequency of
Sentence Structures
SENTENCES
SAADs (Simple
– Affirmative –
Active –
Declarative)
Example:
Common
He read the used
book.
assert new
information with
the least
presupposition.

8. STRUCTURALLY RELATED
SENTENCES Negative Sentence
Take Its many
Syntactically Processed in
longer to more complex two stages
possible Cognitively, Semantically, Pragmatically, Syntactically
complex
process meaning
Example:
1. John gave Mary a book.
2. John did not give Mary a book

9. STRUCTURALLY RELATED
SENTENCES
Passive Sentence
The girl was kissed by
Example: The boy kissed the girl
the boy

10. FACTORS IN COMPREHENSION
PRAGMATIC & SEMANTIC
Pragmatic Factor: Plausibility
Plausible sentence:
• e.q: The mother feeds her baby milk
Implausible sentence:
• e.q: The baby feeds its mother milk
Neutral sentence:
• e.q: The baby smiles at the mother
e.q: The mother smiles at the baby
Nonreversible passive:
• 1. The patient was treated by the doctor
• 2.a. The boy was hit by the girl
• 2.b. The girl was hit by the boy

11. FACTORS IN COMPREHENSION Semantic Factors
PRAGMATIC & SEMANTIC
individual content words and Manipulated test sentence:
their relations in a sentence. 1. Well integrated. The little boy drank
the milk.
2. Poorly integrated. The aunt saw the
door and left.
3. Anomalous. My tasty owner spilled
Can be manipulated in the the captain madly.
degree to which the content
words in a clause can be Syntactic complexity:
integrated 4. Simple. The boy hit the ball.
5. Compound. The boy hit the ball and
ran.
6. Complex. After hitting his sister, the
brother cried.
Sentence  complex  words 7. Scrambled. the ate fat grass green
occur infrequently, have abstract cattle the.
meaning, ambiguous, novel or
complex

12. PRAGMATIC & SEMANTIC
FACTORS IN COMPREHENSION
A Gist
A Product of Comprehension –

13. PARSING STRATEGIES PARSING STRATEGIES

14. PARSING STRATEGIES Minimal Attachment &
Late Closure

15. PARSING STRATEGIES Filler – Gap Sentence

16. AUTONOMOUS VS INTERACTIVE
Autonomous Modular Processor
COMPREHENSION MODELS:
PROCESSING
Retrieves words from the lexicon
using only phonological information.
Produces a constituent structure for a
sentence using only syntactic
information.
Constructs a representation of the
meaning of the sentence, using
knowledge of the world.
Polysemous word:
“watch”
I bought the watch I will watch

17. COMPREHENSION MODELS:
AUTONOMOUS VS INTERACTIVE
PROCESSING
Syntactic Factors
Pragmatic-Semantic Vs

18. COMPREHENSION MODELS:
AUTONOMOUS VS INTERACTIVE
PROCESSING
Context Effect on Word Recognition

19. COMPREHENSION MODELS:
AUTONOMOUS VS INTERACTIVE
PROCESSING
Computers
Sentence Understanding by

20. CONCLUSION Conclusion
A sentence or clause serves a major processing unit.
An interpreter of a sentence must relate the two critical constituents of a
sentence (SV)
A SAAD tends to be easier to process.
In interpreting a sentence (structural garden path, syntactic processor)
prefers initial and simplest structure, which may turn out to be
unparsable and to require reanalysis.
A gist is a product of sentence comprehension (key words and its
relation)
Theorists have proposed several parsing strategies: canonical NVN =
SVO, late closure and minimal attachment.
Three modular of comprehension system: lexical, structural and
interpretive processor.
Computer can be programed to understand a limited kind of language.