Many studies of the human language comprehension process have focused on reading of single utterances (sentences) without context.
Extensive research has shown that language comprehension is affected by context preceding a given utterance as well as many other factors.
Educated readers though, spontaneously think about the arrow of time but inhibit that interpretation because it deviates from the original phrase and the temporal lobe acts as a switch.
If readers are surprised by the turn the sentence really takes, processing is slowed and is visible for example in reading times.
Experimental research has spawned a large number of hypotheses about the architecture and mechanisms of sentence comprehension.
Temporal analyses of brain activation within this network support syntax-first models because they reveal that building of syntactic structure precedes semantic processes and that these interact only during a later stage.
[2][3] Interactive accounts assume that all available information is processed at the same time and can immediately influence the computation of the final analysis.
In the interactive activation framework, the knowledge that guides processing is stored in the connections between units on the same and adjacent levels.
In addition, more recent studies with more sensitive eye tracking machines have shown early context effects.
Structural simplicity is cofounded with frequency, which goes against the garden path theory[5] Serial accounts assume that humans construct only one of the possible interpretations at first and try another only if the first one turns out to be wrong.
To explain why comprehenders are usually only aware of one possible analysis of what they hear, models can assume that all analyses ranked, and the highest-ranking one is entertained.
There are a number of influential models of human sentence processing that draw on different combinations of architectural choices.
Contextual and semantic factors influence processing at a later stage and can induce re-analysis of the syntactic parse.
The model has been supported with research on the early left anterior negativity, an event-related potential often elicited as a response to phrase structure violations.
Minimal attachment is a strategy of parsimony: The parser builds the simplest syntactic structure possible (that is, the one with the fewest phrasal nodes).
Constraint-based theories of language comprehension[6] emphasize how people make use of the vast amount of probabilistic information available in the linguistic signal.
Through statistical learning,[7] the frequencies and distribution of events in linguistic environments can be picked upon, which inform language comprehension.
As such, language users are said to arrive at a particular interpretation over another during the comprehension of an ambiguous sentence by rapidly integrating these probabilistic constraints.
The good enough approach to language comprehension, developed by Fernanda Ferreira and others, assumes that listeners do not always engage in full detailed processing of linguistic input.
[11] Additionally, Tanenhaus et al. (1995)[12] established the visual world paradigm, which takes advantage of eye movements to study online spoken language processing.