CUNY 2002: SPECIAL ISSUES OF THE JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH
ABSTRACTS
FIRST ISSUE
Julie C. Sedivy ▪ Pragmatic
versus form-based accounts of referential contrast: Evidence for effects of
informativity expectations
Characterizing the relationship between
form-based linguistic knowledge and representation of context has long been of
importance in the study of on-line language processing. Recent experimental
research has shown evidence of very rapid effects of referential context in
resolving local indeterminacies online. However, there has been no consensus
regarding the nature of these context effects. The current paper summarizes
recent work covering a range of phenomena for which referential contrast has
been shown to influence on-line processing, including prenominal and
postnominal modification, focus operators and intonational focus. The results
of the body of work suggest that referential context effects are not limited
to situations in which the linguistic form of the utterance directly specifies
the point of contact with context. Rather, context effects of a pragmatic,
Gricean nature appear to be possible, suggesting the relationship between
linguistic form and context in rapid on-line processing can be of a very
indirect nature.
Jennifer E. Arnold, Maria
Fagnano & Michael K. Tanenhaus ▪ Disfluencies signal thee, um, new information
Speakers are often disfluent,
for example saying "theee uh candle" instead of "the candle". Production data
show that disfluencies occur more often during references to things that are
discourse-new, rather than given. An eyetracking experiment shows that this
correlation between disfluency and discourse status affects speech
comprehension. Subjects viewed scenes containing four objects, including two
cohort competitors (e.g. camel, candle), and followed spoken instructions to
move the objects. The first instruction established one cohort as
discourse-given; the other was discourse-new. The second instruction was
either fluent or disfluent, and referred to either the given or new cohort.
Fluent instructions led to more initial fixations on the given cohort object
(replicating Dahan et al., in press). By contrast, disfluent instructions
resulted in more fixations on the new cohort. This shows that discourse-new
information can be accessible under some circumstances. More generally, it
suggests that disfluency affects core language comprehension processes.
Yuki Kamide, Christoph Scheepers
& Gerry T. M. Altmann ▪ Integration of syntactic and semantic information in
predictive processing: Cross-linguistic evidence from German and English
Two visual-world eye-tracking
experiments were conducted to investigate whether, how and when syntactic and
semantic constraints are integrated and used to predict properties of
subsequent input. Experiment 1 contrasted auditory German constructions such
as, ‘The hare-nominative eats…(the cabbage-acc).’ versus ‘The hare-accusative
eats…(the fox-nom).’, presented with a picture containing a hare, fox,
cabbage, and distractor. We found that the probabilities of the eye movements
to the cabbage and fox before the onset of NP2 were modulated by the
case-marking of NP1, indicating that the case-marking (syntactic) information
and verbs’ semantic constraints are integrated rapidly enough to predict the
most plausible NP2 in the scene. Using English versions of the same stimuli in
active/passive voice (Experiment 2), we replicated the same effect, but at a
slightly earlier position in the sentence. We discuss the discrepancies in the
two Germanic languages in terms of the ease of integrating information across,
or within, constituents.
Jared Novick, Albert Kim & John
C. Trueswell ▪ Studying the grammatical aspects of word recognition: Lexical
priming, parsing and syntactic ambiguity resolution
Two experiments are
reported examining the relationship between lexical and syntactic processing
during language comprehension, combining techniques common to the on-line
study of syntactic ambiguity resolution with priming techniques common to the
study of lexical processing. By manipulating grammatical properties of
lexical primes, we explore how lexically-based knowledge is activated and
guides combinatory sentence processing. Particularly, we find that nouns
(like verbs, see Trueswell & Kim, 1998) can activate detailed
lexically-specific syntactic information, and that these representations guide
the resolution of relevant syntactic ambiguities pertaining to verb argument
structure. These findings suggest that certain principles of knowledge
representation common to theories of lexical knowledge – such as overlapping
and distributed representations – also characterize grammatical knowledge.
Additionally, observations from an auditory comprehension study suggest
similar conclusions about the lexical nature of parsing in spoken language
comprehension. They also suggest that thematic role and syntactic preferences
are activated during word recognition and that both influence combinatory
processing.
Bob McMurray, Michael K.
Tanenhaus & Richard N. Aslin ▪ Probabilistic constraint satisfaction at the
lexical/phonetic interface: Evidence for gradient effects of within-category VOT
on lexical access
Research in speech perception has been
dominated by a search for invariant properties of the signal that correlate
with lexical and sub-lexical categories. We argue that this search for
invariance has led researchers to ignore the perceptual consequences of
systematic variation within such categories, and that sensitivity to this
variation may provide an important source of information for integrating
information over time in speech perception. Data from a study manipulating
VOT continua in words using an eye movement paradigm indicate that lexical
access shows graded sensitivity to within-category variation in VOT and that
this sensitivity has a duration sufficient to be useful for information
integration. These data support a model in which the perceptual system
integrates information from multiple sources and from the surrounding temporal
context using probabilistic cue-weighting mechanisms.
SECOND ISSUE
Patrick Sturt ▪ A new look at
the syntax-discourse interface: The use of binding principles in sentence
processing
Within Generative Grammar, binding constraints
on co-reference are usually defined in syntactic terms. However, some
researchers have pointed out examples in which syntactically defined binding
constraints do not seem to apply, proposing instead that a complete account of
linguistic co-reference needs to consider notions of discourse structure.
There have been several proposals in the literature for the division of labor
between syntax and discourse in the definition of binding constraints.
In this paper we review these proposals in the context of recent work that
applies on-line techniques to explore the roles of syntactic and discourse
preferences in terms of the time-course with which they become active during
sentence comprehension. Some of this research suggests that (syntactic)
binding principles may be momentarily applied during processing, even in cases
where the final interpretation suggests otherwise. We end the paper by
considering the theoretical and methodological implications of this view.
Daniel Grodner, Edward Gibson,
Vered Argaman & Maria Babyonyshev ▪ Against repair-based reanalysis in
sentence comprehension
Structural reanalysis is generally assumed to be
representation-preserving, whereby the initial analysis is manipulated, or
repaired, to arrive at a new structure. This paper contends that the theoretical
and empirical basis for such approaches is weak. A conceptually simpler
alternative is that the processor reprocesses (some portion of) the input using
just those structure-building operations available in first pass parsing. This
reprocessing is a necessary component of any realistic processing model. By
contrast, the structural revisions required for second-pass repair are more
powerful than warranted by the abilities of the first-pass parser. This paper
also reviews experimental evidence for repair presented by Sturt, Pickering, &
Crocker (1999). We demonstrate that the Sturt et al. findings are consistent
with a reprocessing account, and present a self-paced reading experiment
intended to tease apart the repair and reprocessing accounts. The results
support a reprocessing interpretation of Sturt et al.’s data, rendering a
repair-based explanation superfluous.
Sun-Ah Jun ▪ Factors affecting
prosodic phrasing and attachment preferences
The attachment of a relative clause (RC) has been found to
differ across languages when its head noun is a complex NP. One attempt to
explain the attachment differences is the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis (IPH)
proposed by Fodor (1998, 2002). The goal of this paper is to show how the
default phrasing of a sentence (explicit prosody), defined phonologically,
differs across seven languages (English, Greek, Spanish, French, Farsi,
Japanese, and Korean), and how the prosodic phrasing of a sentence in each
language, both default and non-default, matches the interpretation of RC
attachment by individual speakers. Observed tendencies show that there is a
direct relationship between the prosodic phrasing and the interpretation of RC
attachment, strongly supporting the IPH. In addition, the paper discusses the
status of default phrasing and the factors affecting the default phrasing,
including rhythmic and syntactic factors and their interactions.
Yuki Hirose ▪ Recycling
prosodic boundaries
The present study investigates the role of prosodic structure
in selecting a syntactic analysis at different stages of parsing in silent
reading of Japanese relative clauses. Experiments 1 and 2 (sentence-completion
questionnaires) revealed an effect of the length of the sentence-initial
constituent on the resolution of a clause boundary ambiguity in Japanese.
Experiment 3 (fragment-reading) showed that this length manipulation is also
reflected in prosodic phrasing in speech. Its influence on ambiguity resolution
is attributed to “recycling” of prosodic boundaries established during the
first-pass parse. This explanation is based on the implicit prosody proposals of
Bader (1998) and Fodor (1998). Experiment 4 (self-paced reading) demonstrated
the immediacy of the influence on ambiguity resolution on-line. Experiment 5
(self-paced reading) found support for the additional prediction that when no
boundary is available to be recycled, processing the relative clause
construction is more difficult.
Youngon Choi & Reiko Mazuka ▪
Young children's use of prosody in sentence parsing
Korean children's ability to use prosodic phrasing in sentence
comprehension was studied using two types of ambiguity. First we examined a
word-segmentation ambiguity where placement of the phrasal boundary leads to
different interpretations of a sentence. Second we examined a syntactic
ambiguity where the same words were differently grouped into syntactic phrases
by prosodic demarcation. Children aged 3-4 years showed that they could use
prosodic information to segment utterances and to derive the meaning of
ambiguous sentences when the sentences only contained a word-segmentation
ambiguity. However, even 5-6-year old children were not able to reliably resolve
the second type of ambiguity, an ambiguity of phrasal grouping, by using
prosodic information. The results demonstrate that children's difficulties in
dealing with structural ambiguity are not due to their inability to use prosodic
information.
John Hale ▪ The information
conveyed by words in sentences
A method is presented for calculating the
amount of information conveyed to a hearer by a speaker emitting a sentence
generated by a probabilistic grammar known to both parties. The method
applies the work of Grenander (1967) to the intermediate states of a top-down
parser. This allows the uncertainty about structural ambiguity to be
calculated at each point in a sentence. Word-by-word information
conveyed is calculated for several small probabilistic grammars and it is
suggeste4d that the number of bits conveyed per word is a determinant of
reading times and other measures of cognitive load.
Guest Editor for special JPR issues: Eva
Fernández (Queens College & Graduate Center, CUNY)
Consulting JPR Editor: David A. Swinney (University of California, San
Diego)
Editorial Review Committee:
Gerry Altmann, Dianne Bradley, Janet Dean Fodor, Yuki Kamide,
Wayne Murray, Irina Sekerina, Patrick Sturt, Michael Tanenhaus, Jennifer
Venditti
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