ON THE SPOKEN DISAMBIGUATION OF SUPERFICIALLY AMBIGUOUS SENTENCES.

This article presents research concerned with superficially ambiguous sentences and the acoustic cues for their spoken disambiguation. A set of sentences containing the phrase "good flies quickly" in each of two constituent structurings (for example, "the good flies quickly past" and "the good flies quickly passed") was read by five trained readers. The recorded readings of this phrase were then excised from the full sentences and presented to two groups of listeners. One group was asked to judge the location of the "sentence break" in each reading, while the other group was asked whether good or flies was "most stressed" in each reading.