Sentence parsing in speech processing: an experimental study of processing syntactically ambiguous constructions in Russian

An experimental study on processing structurally ambiguous sentences was conducted. The case of a participial construction attached to a complex noun phrase was analyzed. The author used a self-paced read­ing technique, which makes it possible to measure reading time for each word in a sentence and error rates in the process of interpreting sentences. Error rates in locally ambiguous sentences reveal high attachment pref­erence - for sentences with low attachment error rates are higher. However, high-attached modifiers are pro­cessed more slowly than low attached ones. The speed of processing ambiguous constructions is different for different interpretations. Thus, there are two stages in processing: low attachment is preferred for online pro­cessing while high attachment is preferred for final interpretation.