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- Long-term effects of repeated exposure to Subject Island constructions:
evidence for syntactic adaptation
Authors: Chaves; Rui Pedro
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0820-6145
,
Francis, Elaine
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1964-3148
Abstract: Repeated exposure to Subject Island violations can lead to increased acceptability ratings and faster reading times (Chaves & Dery, 2014, 2019; Clausen, 2011; Francom, 2009; Hiramatsu, 2000; Lu et al. 2021; Lu et al., 2022). However, it remains unclear what the nature of this effect and the driving mechanism is. The present paper describes a longitudinal investigation to test whether the effect of repeated exposure to Subject Island constructions is short-lived or whether it can spread over three weeks’ time, as measured by offline measures (Likert acceptability ratings) and online measures (self-paced reading). Using more observations and more sensitive methodologies, our work builds and improves on the only previous longitudinal study on such islands, Snyder (2022). We uncover evidence suggestive of gradual and strategic (by-construction and by-region) adaptation to Subject Island violations, indicated by faster response times, as well as higher acceptability ratings...
PubDate: Mon, 5 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000
- Argument structure affects relative clause extraposition: corpus evidence
from Persian
Authors: Bahmanian; Nasimeh
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2561-176X
,
Bader, Markus
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9765-8970
,
Lago, Sol
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4966-1913
Abstract: The extraposition of a relative clause creates a discontinuous dependency between the relative clause and its host noun phrase, as in A man just entered the bank who claimed to have a gun. Since discontinuous dependencies are known to increase processing effort, a key question is why speakers produce them in the first place. Some factors known to affect extraposition – for example, the length of the relative clause and the main verb phrase – have received processing-based explanations, but others haven’t. We focus on two factors described by previous research: verb type and the grammatical function of the noun phrase hosting the relative clause. Specifically, extraposition from grammatical subjects is more common with unaccusative and passive verbs in English; further, extraposition is more common from grammatical objects than subjects in Dutch and German. We replicate these findings using corpus data from Persian. Further, we propose that verb type and grammatical...
PubDate: Mon, 5 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000
- Searching for Semantic Distance Effects
Authors: Winkowski; Jan
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0301-8471
,
Dotlačil, Jakub
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5337-8432
,
Nouwen, Rick
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9571-4644
Abstract: Language processing relies on memory. There exists a considerable body of literature on retrieval in sentence processing and, in particular, on cases involving recall of syntax-relevant information. There is no reason to doubt, however, that memory is involved in semantic aspects of language processing as well. In this work, we look at the case of additive presuppositions, such as those involved in interpreting the additive particle too. When one hears Mary went to the party, too, one should recall that someone other than Mary went to the party. We make the case that, as a starting hypothesis, it would be expected that the retrieval of this kind of information should share basic features of memory processes in language with the better-known cases of recall involved in syntactic parsing. In particular, we argue that, given certain assumptions and linking hypotheses, all prominent retrieval theories predict the existence of distance effects for the recall of previous information,...
PubDate: Mon, 5 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000
- The role of differential cross-linguistic influence and other constraints
in predictive L2 gender processing
Authors: Feleke; Tekabe Legesse
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5627-2043
,
Lohndal, Terje
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8514-1499
Abstract: Previous studies on the use of morphosyntactic gender cues for linguistic prediction show that non-native speakers’ use of grammatical gender information is influenced by various factors. In the present study, we examined the influence of differential cross-linguistic influence (DCLI), knowledge of L2 lexical gender, gender congruency, and L2 fluency. To this end, we investigated L1 Oromo L2 Amharic speakers as well as L1 Amharic speakers, using the Visual World Paradigm (VWP) and supplementary offline experiments. We investigated two groups of L2 Amharic speakers, i.e., L1 Eastern Oromo L2 Amharic and L1 Western Oromo L2 Amharic speakers. The Eastern Oromo dialect patterns with Amharic in terms of gender agreement unlike the Western Oromo dialect which does not have grammatical gender. Analyses of the participants’ proportion of eye fixations show that early exposure to the gendered Eastern Oromo dialect facilitates predictive L2 gender processing. L2 fluency, the speakers’...
PubDate: Wed, 17 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +000
- Scalar Inferencing, Polarity and Cognitive Load
Authors: Marty; Paul
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4459-1933
,
Romoli, Jacopo
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2165-4559
,
Sudo, Yasutada
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0248-9308
,
van Tiel, Bob
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4169-3179
,
Breheny, Richard
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7801-9914
Abstract: According to the Polarity Hypothesis, the presence or absence of a processing cost for Scalar Inferences (SIs) depends on their polarity. This hypothesis predicts, among other things, that the processing of lower-bounding SIs should not be affected by cognitive load the same way upper-bounding SIs are. To date, evidence in support of this prediction comes from the comparison between upper-bounding and lower-bounding SIs elicited by disparate scalar words. In this paper, we report on two dual-task experiments testing this prediction in a more controlled way by comparing upper-bounding and lower-bounding SIs arising from the same scalar words or scale-mates operating over the same dimension. Results show that, for these more minimal comparisons, lower-bounding SIs involve comparable cognitive demands as their upper-bounding counterparts. These findings challenge the idea that load effects are consistently modulated by SI polarity and suggest instead that these effects are relatively...
PubDate: Wed, 17 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +000
- Interpreting referential noun phrases in belief reports – the de
re/de dicto competition
Authors: Zhang; Yuhan
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0550-9581
,
Davidson, Kathryn
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8844-2246
Abstract: The de re/de dicto ambiguity centers on the referential and/or attributive properties of noun phrases within the scope of intentional operators, such as belief reports. For instance, in the belief report "Julie believes Elizabeth’s poem will win the competition," a de re reading of the embedded referential noun phrase "Elizabeth’s poem" entails that the referential association between this noun phrase and the target poem is true from the speaker's perspective but may not be recognized as such in the belief holder’s (i.e., Julie’s) mind. In contrast, a de dicto reading describes Julie’s beliefs as she understands the referential association in her mind. While both de re and de dicto readings of definite noun phrases are considered acceptable, given different supporting contexts, we show that the acceptability of de re readings is vulnerable to contextual and pragmatic manipulations. One such case involves a context in which the belief holder, Julie, holds a mistaken belief...
PubDate: Tue, 2 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000
- Covariation in processing: grammar vs. context
Authors: Lakhani; Nikhil Vipul
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9081-1514
,
Schwarz, Florian
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6426-3174
Abstract: In addition to referential uses, pronouns can have covarying interpretations, i.e., exhibit the behavior of a bound variable. The grammatical mechanism(s) behind such readings have been subject to longstanding debates: Some authors argue for a fairly flexible but unified semantic mechanism that is not tied closely to syntactic configurations. Others distinguish a core class of bona fidebinding with tight syntactic constraints from other mechanisms that give rise to ultimately parallel effects, but do so more indirectly. Psycholinguistic work has started to uncover the processing mechanisms involved in evaluating dependencies between covarying pronouns and (candidate) antecedents. Moulton and Han (2018) leverage the processing perspective to try to shed light on the theoretical question of what grammatical mechanism is at play for a given covarying pronoun. They argue that so-called Gender Mismatch Effects only arise for cases of bona fide binding, supporting the existence of...
PubDate: Tue, 2 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000
- A decade of language processing research: Which place for linguistic
diversity'
Authors: Collart; Aymeric
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8902-0758
Abstract: This paper surveys the linguistic diversity in psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research by examining the languages under investigation in major international conferences from 2012 to 2023. The results showed that these studies are highly skewed towards English in particular and Indo-European languages in general. However, the overall number of languages, as well as the number and proportion of Indo-European (other than English) and non-Indo-European languages increased over time, indicating that language processing research is becoming more and more diversified. This typological bias was also found in the inspection of specific linguistic phenomena: (a) morphosyntactic alignment, richness of case morphology, canonical word order, and (b) temporal concepts. The analyses of typological bias at the general and specific levels indicate that there are gaps in various topics, and these can be filled by including more non-Indo-European languages in the investigation process....
PubDate: Mon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +000
- A Meta-analysis of Syntactic Satiation in Extraction from Islands
Authors: Lu; Jiayi
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3314-5666
,
Frank, Michael
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7551-4378
,
Degen, Judith
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2513-0234
Abstract: Sentence acceptability judgments are often affected by a pervasive phenomenon called satiation: native speakers give increasingly higher ratings to initially degraded sentences after repeated exposure. Various studies have investigated the satiation effect experimentally, the vast majority of which focused on different types of island-violating sentences in English (sentences with illicit long-distance syntactic movements). However, mixed findings are reported regarding which types of island violations are affected by satiation and which ones are not. This article presents a meta-analysis of past experimental studies on the satiation of island effects in English, with the aim of providing accurate estimates of the rate of satiation for each type of island, testing whether different island effects show different rates of satiation, exploring potential factors that contributed to the heterogeneity in past results, and spotting possible publication bias. The meta-analysis...
PubDate: Thu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +000
- Famous protagonists interfere with discourse topicality during pronoun
resolution
Authors: Schumacher; Petra B.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0263-8502
,
Patterson, Clare
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0790-4892
,
Repp, Magdalena
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9538-012X
Abstract: The aim of the current study is to assess the impact of the wider discourse on pronoun interpretation. We specifically look at German demonstrative pronouns (dieser) in comparison to personal pronouns (er), investigating whether dieser-demonstratives are influenced only by factors in the preceding sentence (specifically, sentence topicality) or whether they are additionally influenced by cues from the wider discourse (i.e., discourse topicality). We found that discourse topicality competes with sentence topicality for prominence, when the two cues are not aligned to one and the same referent. This had an impact on referential interpretation of both personal and demonstrative pronouns, with weakened interpretive biases when sentence and discourse topic did not converge on the same referent (Exp. 3). Our data further indicate that the introduction of a protagonist from a well-known novel blocked the emergence of the discourse topic as a prominence-lending...
PubDate: Mon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +000
- Eventuality type predicts temporal order inferences in discourse
comprehension
Authors: Marx; Elena
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2199-3625
,
Wittenberg, Eva
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3188-6145
Abstract: One kind of temporal inference in discourse operates over iconicity, such that inferred temporal order follows reported order. In two preregistered experiments (combined N = 930), we asked whether this temporal inference is predictably modulated by linguistic eventuality. Based on event-structural theories of temporal interpretation, stative descriptions, corresponding to cognitively less salient states in the world, should serve as backgrounds for eventive descriptions, locating states earlier in time. Participants read descriptions like Mary got/was married to John. She got/was pregnant and indicated which happened first. Eventuality type of both sentences and reported order were crossed. We find that states tend to be ordered before events, and longer states before shorter states. Our results support a model of discourse comprehension in which eventuality framing is crucial for (temporal) inferences.
PubDate: Mon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +000
- Dutch speakers take referent predictability into account, irrespective of
addressee presence
Authors: Vogels; Jorrig
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6698-504X
Abstract: Language comprehension involves continuously making predictions about what will be mentioned next. If speakers take these predictions into account, one would expect that they try to be extra clear (e.g., by saying “the girl with the big earrings”) when they are going to say something less predictable. Conversely, speakers do not need to be as clear when the listener already expects the thing that they are about to mention, and can therefore suffice with a pronoun such as she. Previous research testing this hypothesis has found mixed results, with some studies finding that the referent’s predictability in discourse affects pronoun use and others finding that it does not. One explanation might be that speakers are more likely to take predictability into account when there is a co-present addressee who is predicting the next referent. To test this possibility, I conducted a language production experiment in which participants produced spoken continuations of narrative fragments....
PubDate: Sun, 14 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +000
- Evidence for a constituent order boost in structural priming
Authors: Jacob; Gunnar
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0882-5667
,
Katsika, Kalliopi
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6736-4963
,
Family, Neiloufar
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0201-7119
,
Kholodova, Alina
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6457-9785
,
Allen, Shanley E.M.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5421-6750
Abstract: The study investigates the role of constituent order in structural priming. We report the results from a PO/DO priming experiment in German, in which we experimentally manipulated verb position in primes and targets. Significant structural priming effects occurred irrespective of whether verb position was the same in prime and target or not. However, additional similarity in constituent order was able to boost structural priming effects, with significantly stronger priming when the verb occurred in the same position in prime and target. We argue that existing one-stage and two-stage accounts of formulation struggle to account for the entire data pattern and propose an alternative account of formulation which can explain our results.
PubDate: Sun, 14 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +000
- Gender Competition in the Production of Nonbinary ‘They’
Authors: Arnold; Jennifer E
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7519-1305
,
Venkatesh, Ranjani
https://orcid.org/0009-0002-3795-5356
,
Vig, Zachary
https://orcid.org/0009-0006-7198-5048
Abstract: Two experiments test how college students use nonbinary they to refer to a single and specific person whose pronouns are they/them, e.g., “Alex played basketball on the neighborhood court. At one point they made a basket,” compared to matched stories about characters with binary (she/her or he/him) pronouns. Experiment 1 shows that for both types of pronouns, people use pronouns more in a one-person than a two-person context. In both experiments, people produce nonbinary they at least as frequently as binary pronouns, suggesting that any difficulty does not result in pronoun avoidance in spoken language, even though it does in written language (Arnold et al., 2022). Nevertheless, there is evidence that nonbinary they is somewhat difficult, in that people made gender errors on about 9% of trials, and they used a more acoustically prominent and disfluent-sounding pronunciation for nonbinary pronouns than binary pronouns. However, exposure to they in the...
PubDate: Sun, 14 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +000
- Biased inferences about gender from names
Authors: Gardner; Bethany
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5154-2040
,
Brown-Schmidt, Sarah
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5647-0875
Abstract: How do alternative forms of reference to individuals—first, last, and full names—guide inferences about the gender of the referent' Given distributional correspondences between English first names and gender, first names provide probabilistic information about an individual's gender. While English last names do not vary with gender, men are more likely to be referred to by last name alone. Across four experiments, we demonstrate that inferences about gender are shaped by a persistent bias to infer that people are male, along with probabilistic information carried by the first name. When an individual was introduced by last name alone, participants overwhelmingly used he to subsequently refer to the person, suggesting that participants inferred that the person was male. This bias was still present when the individual was introduced using a first or full name, with participants less likely to use she than the distributional characteristics of the first names would...
PubDate: Tue, 12 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +000
- Evaluating the Pseudorelative-First Hypothesis: Evidence from self-paced
reading and persistence effects
Authors: Cairncross; Alex
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1040-1022
,
Vogelzang, Margreet
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2811-5419
,
Tsimpli, Ianthi
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6015-7526
Abstract: Within the psycholinguistic literature, there has been a longstanding debate regarding whether we resolve syntactic parsing ambiguities via universal or language-specific biases. The present study investigates attachment biases in the online parsing of ‘relative clause’ (RC) attachment in Italian with respect to pseudorelative (PR) availability. Following the PR account Grillo (2012), languages are assumed to universally prefer local attachment. When languages appear to prefer non-local attachment, this is due (at least partially) to the availability of PRs. Specifically, Grillo and Costa (2014) suggest that whenever a string is ambiguous between a PR and a RC, the parser will prefer the PR parse, resulting in apparent non-local attachment. Although there is growing evidence that PR availability indeed affects offline interpretations, few studies have explored this account from an online perspective. Hence, we conducted a self-paced reading task in Italian. In that task, we directly...
PubDate: Tue, 12 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +000
- Semantic accessibility and interference in pronoun resolution
Authors: Schmitz; Tijn
,
Dotlačil, Jakub
,
Nouwen, Rick
,
Winkowski, Jan
,
Hoeks, Morwenna
Abstract: The general view in syntactic literature is that binding constraints can make antecedents syntactically inaccessible. However, several studies showed that antecedents which are ruled out by syntactic binding constraints still influence online processing of anaphora in some stages, suggesting that a cue-based retrieval mechanism plays a role during anaphora resolution. As in the syntactic literature, in semantic accounts like Discourse Representation Theory (DRT), formal constraints are formulated in terms of accessibility of the antecedent. We explore the discourse inaccessibility postulated in DRT by looking at its role in pronoun resolution of inter-sentential anaphoric relations in four off-line and two eye-tracking experiments. The results of the eye-tracking experiments suggest that accessibility has an effect on pronoun resolution from early on. The study quantifies evidence of inaccessible antecedents affecting pronoun resolution and shows that almost all evidence points...
PubDate: Tue, 12 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +000
- The regularity of polysemy patterns in the mind: Computational and
experimental data
Authors: Lombard; Alizée
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6603-1497
,
Ulicheva, Anastasia
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1792-2074
,
Korochkina, Maria
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8017-7855
,
Rastle, Kathleen
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3070-7555
Abstract: Linguists have often observed that the sense extensions in polysemous words follow patterns. Yet, these patterns have rarely been quantified, and it is unknown whether language users are sensitive to them. We developed four regularity metrics, focusing in this initial study on metaphor patterns that apply to nouns. We further tested adult English speakers’ capacity to understand new senses in an acceptability judgement task. We compared novel senses that followed a metaphor pattern against novel senses that did not respect any pattern. Our results showed that novel senses were judged as more acceptable when they were part of a polysemy pattern as opposed to when they were not. We also assessed whether acceptability judgements were influenced by the degree of regularity of the pattern that they follow. The results confirmed the psychological validity of degree of regularity as a measure: the more regular the polysemy pattern, the more acceptable the new sense following that pattern....
PubDate: Tue, 27 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +000
- Listeners' convergence towards an artificial agent in a joint phoneme
categorization task
Authors: Nguyen; Noël
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3424-5340
,
Lancia, Leonardo
https://orcid.org/0009-0005-3805-4201
,
Huttner, Lena
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4241-4741
,
Schwartz, Jean-Luc
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8969-9185
,
Diard, Julien
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0673-477X
Abstract: This study focuses on inter-individual convergence effects in the perception and categorization of speech sounds. We ask to what extent two listeners can come to establish a shared set of categorization criteria in a phoneme identification task that they accomplish together. Several hypotheses are laid out in the framework of a Bayesian model of speech perception that we have developed to account for how two listeners may each infer the parameters that govern their partner’s responses. In our experimental paradigm, participants were asked to perform a joint phoneme identification task with a partner that, unbeknownst to them, was an artificial agent, whose responses we manipulated along two dimensions, the location...
PubDate: Tue, 27 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +000
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