Limits of on-line strategies of reanalysis

In this paper, the author evaluates the operative validity of several on-line parsing strategies. This evaluation will consist in testing each of these strategies´ ability to solve a particular type of GP sentence, whose onset of ambiguity presents several levels of linguistic complexity. The goal is twofold: (i) to demonstrate that serial parsers with on-line strategies are unable to escape the garden path effect during the processing of complex GP sentences of the type presented in this paper; and (ii) to show that, the more levels of ambiguity that a GP sentence has, the more indispensable off-line strategies become to the parser in processing ambiguous strings. The fallibility of the serial parsers examined here leads the author to conclude that it is improper to build models that exclude off-line strategies as tools for recovering from a misanalysis. Despite the high cost in terms of working memory and of processing time, off-fine strategies remain very effective and can be used to parse almost all types of ambiguous sentences