When a person encounters a new word in a sentence, they first assume that the word is part of the current phrase. This can lead to later discoveries that the phrases are broken up differently than expected (sometimes leading to garden path sentences).

Late closure

As people read a sentence, they group words into phrased based on syntactic rules. If their interpretation is wrong, they will look for new information to take into account to form coherency.

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

A textual unit that is composed of one or more words, parsed together and following some syntactical rules.

Sentence (linguistics)

- Syntax-first approach
- Interactionist approach 

Approaches to parsing

Goldstein, E. B. (2014). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience. Nelson Education.


Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience

Sentences that appear to mean one thing in the beginning, but mean something else in the end. For example "After the musician played the piano... was wheeled  off stage". Reading the first part "After the musician played the piano..." may leave you thinking that the sentence will be talking about the musician, but it ends up finishing with something about the piano.

Garden path sentences

Syntax-first approach to parsing

As people read a sentence, they group words into phrases based on both syntactic rules and semantic meaning simultaneously.

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