What a Rational Parser Would Do

This article examines cognitive process models of human sentence comprehension based on the idea of informed search. These models are rational in the sense that they strive to quickly find a good syntactic analysis. Informed search derives a new account of garden pathing that handles traditional counterexamples. It supports a symbolic explanation for local coherence as well as an algorithmic account of entropy reduction. The models are expressed in a broad framework for theories of human sentence comprehension.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: COGSCI
• Authors: John T. Hale
• Keywords: Cognitive Process Models, COGSCI 2011, Human Sentence Comprehension, Informed Search