This paper describes a machine learning approach to the identification of temporal clauses by disambiguating the subordinating conjunctions used to introduce them. Temporal clauses are regularly marked by subordinators, many of which are ambiguous, being able to introduce clauses of different semantic roles. The paper also describes our work on generating an annotated corpus of sentences embedd...

Accessibility hierarchies (Ariel, 1990, 2001; Givón, 1992; Gundel, Hedberg, & Zacharski, 1993) assume that the form of anaphoric expressions signals the relative saliency of the antecedent. We argue that the form of relative pronouns in relative clauses has a similar function and therefore influences attachment preferences. We conducted two questionnaire experiments in which we investigated whe...

Sentences with temporarily ambiguous reduced relative clauses (e.g., The actress selected by the director believed that...) were preceded by discourse contexts biasing a main clause or a relative clause. Eye movements in the disambiguating region (by the director) revealed that, in the relative clause biasing contexts, ambiguous reduced relatives were no more difficult to process than unambiguo...

this study examined whether processing ambiguous sentences containing relative clauses (rcs) following a complex determiner phrase (dp) by persian-speaking learners of l2 english with different proficiency and working memory capacities (wmcs) is affected by semantic priming. the semantic relationship studied was one between the subject/verb of the main clause and one of the dps in the complex d...

This study examined whether processing ambiguous sentences containing relative clauses (RCs) following a complex determiner phrase (DP) by Persian-speaking learners of L2 English with different proficiency and working memory capacities (WMCs) is affected by semantic priming. The semantic relationship studied was one between the subject/verb of the main clause and one of the DPs in the complex D...

Previous behavioural studies in Spanish have found a significant preference for attaching relative clauses preceded by a complex NP (N1 of N2 RC) to the first noun phrase. In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to help identify the nature of these processes by directly comparing ERPs to temporary ambiguous sentences containing relative clauses that were finally consistent...