Syntactic Processing: Garden-Path Model & Constraint-Based Model

There is no simple way to understand and empirically investigate how the human mind processes the structure of language. Various psycholinguists have constructed and executed a wide range of experiments to somehow provide an explanation to how people process and analyse syntactic structures. This has given rise to different opinions, theories and models on how humans comprehend the different combinations of sentence structures, such as the Garden-Path Model, a two-staged model, and the Constraint-Based Model, a model based on the simultaneous use of several activated constraints. This essay will evaluate the empirical evidence supporting both models, and is structured as follows: Section 2 will introduce the Garden-Path Model’s main principles, followed by a discussion of the empirical evidence from experiments that support it, and lastly an evaluation on empirical evidence that contradicts this model. Following the Garden-Path Model will be Section 3, a discussion about the Constraint-Based Model with Section 2’s structure. Finally, the essay will be concluded with a brief summary of the validity of both models as well as suggestions for further research into this subject.