A cross-linguistic study of the processing of causative sentences

The comprehension of sentences expressing instigative causation (e.g., The horse makes the camel run) was investigated in children between the ages of 2;0 and 4;4, speaking English, Italian, Serbo-Croatian and Turkish. Cross-linguistic differences in development reveal the roles of morphological (causative particle, case inflection) and syntactic devices (periphrasis, word order) in guiding children's processing of such constructions. It is suggested that local cues (inflectional suffixes, particles, specialized causative verb forms) contribute to the more rapid development of sentence processing strategies in Serbo-Croatian and Turkish. The word order systems of English and Italian, which require that the listener hold the entire sentence pattern in mind in order to determine underlying semantic relations, contribute to slower development on this task.     

Perceptual simulation in developing language comprehension

We tested an embodied account of language proposing that comprehenders create perceptual simulations of the events they hear and read about. In Experiment 1, children (ages 7–13 years) performed a picture verification task. Each picture was preceded by a prerecorded spoken sentence describing an entity whose shape or orientation matched or mismatched the depicted object. Responses were faster for matching pictures, suggesting that participants had formed perceptual-like situation models of the sentences. The advantage for matching pictures did not increase with age. Experiment 2 extended these findings to the domain of written language. Participants (ages 7–10 years) of high and low word reading ability verified pictures after reading sentences aloud. The results suggest that even when reading is effortful, children construct a perceptual simulation of the described events. We propose that perceptual simulation plays a more central role in developing language comprehension than was previously thought.     

Repetition and comprehension of spoken sentences by reading-disabled children

The language problems of reading-disabled elementary school children are not confined to written language alone. These children often exhibit problems of ordered recall of verbal materials that are equally severe whether the materials are presented in printed or in spoken form. Sentences that pose problems of pronoun reference might be expected to place a special burden on short-term memory because close grammatical relationships obtain between words that are distant from one another. With this logic in mind, third-grade children with specific reading disability and classmates matched for age and IQ were tested on five sentence types, each of which poses a problem in assigning pronoun reference. On one occasion the children were tested for comprehension of the sentences by a forced-choice picture verification task. On a later occasion they received the same sentences as a repetition test. Good and poor readers differed significantly in immediate recall of the reflexive sentences, but not in comprehension of them as assessed by picture choice. It was suggested that the pictures provided cues which lightened the memory load, a possibility that could explain why the poor readers were not demonstrably inferior in comprehension of the sentences even though they made significantly more errors than the good readers in recalling them.     

On the preservation of word order in aphasia: cross-linguistic evidence

Studies of language production in English-speaking aphasics (both fluent and nonfluent) generally lead to the conclusion that word order is preserved to a much greater degree than grammatical morphology and/or lexical retrieval. However, because word order is rigidly preserved even in normal English speech, this pattern might reflect nothing more than "the weak link in the chain." Using a constrained production paradigm, we provide evidence showing that canonical sentence order is well preserved in both fluent and nonfluent patients, in Italian and German (languages that permit much more pragmatic word-order variation) as well as English. Patients also retain the ability to order nouns around a preposition, and among Italian patients, access to a high-frequency form of pragmatic word-order variation is also retained. Syntactic difficulties seem to revolve not around loss of ordering principles, but (1) reduction in syntactic complexity, (2) overuse of canonical word order as a "safe harbor," (3) blend errors in which a form appears in legal but semantically incorrect position, and (4) abandonment of the effort to produce a complete sentence under stressful conditions. We offer a redefinition of syntactic impairment as a problem in the access of phrase structure types, resulting in a preference for higher frequency forms. Parallels between lexical retrieval and phrase structure retrieval suggest that similar mechanisms may be at work in both cases.     

On comprehension of active/passive sentences and language processing in a Polish agrammatic aphasic

This paper presents the results of a study of active/passive sentence comprehension by a Polish-speaking agrammatic aphasic. The patient showed good performance on canonically ordered active and passive structures, but performed poorly on inverted variants. The systematically normal and deviant comprehension patterns observed are accounted for by normal interpretative strategies applied to syntactic structures built around verbs with reduced inflectional morphology. The differences between our Polish data and the English data discussed in the literature are explained by the fact that Polish possesses a richer derivational verb morphology. The interpretation of inverted sentences demonstrates the importance of S-V-O word order preference. Our analysis draws upon the notion of grammatical functions to explain the data.     

Processing of non-canonical word-order: A case-series on lesion-induced reorganized language and age-effects in typical development

Complex grammatical structures are mastered late in language acquisition. We studied age-effects on performance in object topicalization in 48 typically developing German-speaking participants (aged 8–30 years) and in five patients (children and adolescents) with lesion-induced atypical language representation. Production was tested by a sentence repetition task, comprehension by an acting out task. Three topicalized conditions with differing disambiguation (agreement, case, and case plus agreement) were contrasted with canonical control sentences.     

Semantic integration: Effects of imagery,enaction, and sentence repetition training on prereaders' recall for pictograph sentences

This study examines the effectiveness of an integrative imagery strategy in contrast to more concrete enaction and repetition strategies for improving kindergarten children's recall of pictograph sentences. The training groups were taught in two brief sessions to read the pictograph sequences as sentences and then to imagine the sentence's action (sentence imagery), act out the sentence using toys (sentence enaction), or repeat each sentence twice (sentence repetition). After training, the enaction group significantly outperformed the imagery and sentence repetition groups, which outperformed a repetition control group. Two weeks later, the imagery and enaction groups no longer differed significantly in recall and both groups significantly outperformed the repetition control group. The imagery group alone significantly outperformed the repetition control group on a no-toys generalization test. Implications of the results concerning strategy training of young children, the effectiveness of imagery strategies, and experimental design are discussed.     

Click location in sentences: A test of the linguistic competence of seven-year-old fluent and disfluent males

Ten fluent and ten disfluent 7-yr-old males were presented simple and complex fully grammatical, anomalous and scrambled sentences. A click (35-msec 1-kHz tone burst) had been superimposed within three positions to the right or left of the major syntactic boundary in each sentence. The subjects heard the sentence, repeated the sentence, and marked on a preprinted version of the sentence where they heard the click. It was expected that children with greater language facility would more probably locate the click veridically. By the same reasoning, less complex syntactic structures should be expected to influence click placement less than more complex utterances. The following results were obtained: (a) the disfluent group gave a greater number of correct responses than the fluent group; (b) more correct responses were observed for simple sentences than for complex sentences for both groups; and (c) fewer correct responses were observed for both simple and complex grammatical sentences than for anomalous and scrambled sentence types.     

Language comprehenders mentally represent the shapes of objects

We examined the prediction that people activate perceptual symbols during language comprehension. Subjects read sentences describing an animal or object in a certain location. The shape of the object or animal changed as a function of its location (e.g., eagle in the sky, eagle in a nest). However, this change was only implied by the sentences. After reading a sentence, subjects were presented with a line drawing of the object in question. They judged whether the object had been mentioned in the sentence (Experiment 1) or simply named the object (Experiment 2). In both cases, responses were faster when the pictured object's shape matched the shape implied by the sentence than when there was a mismatch. These results support the hypothesis that perceptual symbols are routinely activated in language comprehension.     

汉语句子理解中物体隐含颜色心理模拟的ERPs研究

当前研究采用事件相关电位(ERPs)技术,同时沿用经典的句图匹配范式,考察句子理解中物体典型颜色与非典型颜色的心理加工过程在脑电活动上的反映。实验中被试先阅读句子再判断句子后呈现的图片物体是否在句子中出现过,句子中隐含的物体颜色或是关键物体的典型颜色或是非典型颜色。实验结果发现,典型颜色句子版本下句图不匹配条件比句图匹配条件引发了更大的N400效应;而非典型颜色句子版本下两者N400差异不显著。研究结果表明,人们在汉语句子理解过程中会实时对隐含的物体颜色信息进行心理模拟。并且,句子隐含物体颜色的典型性是造成匹配易化或不匹配易化的关键因素之一。     

晚期汉-英二语者英语被动句句法加工的ERP研究*

选取二语中等熟练者和高熟练者两类中国大学生被试,共40人(27女,13男),年龄为20~29岁,平均年龄23.88岁。采用ERP技术,以直译型英语被动句和意译型英语被动句作为实验材料,通过比较无违例、―句法违例句1‖(动词过去分词形式错误)、―句法违例句2‖(动词过去分词错误用为动词原形而造成的句法违例)以及―句法违例句3‖(动词过去分词误用为动词现在分词形式)条件下的行为数据和ERP多维数据变化的基础上,探讨了二语熟练度和语言间句法结构相似性对汉-英双语者英语被动句句法加工过程的影响。结果表明：高熟练者的反应时和正确率整体上优于中等熟练者;难易度不同的句法错误信息会直接影响被动句的加工,对明显有错误的句法信息的反应速度最快,―正确的局部句法信息‖反应时最长。对明显有错误的句法信息的正确反应率最高,最根本的句法结构的错误信息最低。最根本的句法结构的错误信息引发的P600最大,无违例条件引发的P600最小;高熟练者对最根本的句法结构的错误信息引发最大的P600效应,中等熟练者的P600效应未受不同句法错误信息的影响。行为指标支持句法加工相似性效应——直译句反应快、正确率高;意译句反应慢、正确率低。并且此效应在中等熟练者身上表现更加明显。但是脑神经活动模式未表现出句法结构相似性效应,说明二语熟练度在英语被动句加工中具有更为显著的作用。     

不同词长中文句子阅读知觉广度的年老化:眼动证据

采用移动窗口范式分别探测单字词句、双字词句和混合句子阅读知觉广度的年老化模式。单字词句是完全由单字词组成的句子,双字词句是完全由双字词组成的句子,混合句的所有词由1~4个汉字组成,这些词汇的平均词长为1.5个字。结果发现：（1）老年读者在各种词长句子上的阅读知觉广度范围均是从注视字至其右侧2个汉字;（2）青年读者在各种词长句子上的阅读知觉广度为注视点左侧1个汉字到右侧3个汉字空间。由此可见,年老化促使中文读者的阅读知觉广度变小,变得更加不对称;且句子构成词汇的词长并不调节中文阅读知觉广度的年老化。     

简单算术对汉语特定句型的结构启动

结构启动是指个体在产生或理解一个结构时,倾向于重复使用或仿照刚刚加工过的结构。与句法启动不同的是,结构启动除了以句子,也可以以其它抽象结构作为启动项。Scheepers et al. (2011) 首次以具有结构偏向性的抽象算式作为启动项,证实了高附着和低附着的简单算式对英语母语者产出高附着和低附着关系从句具有结构启动效应。在此基础上,本研究引用数学算式作为启动项,以汉语特定句型结构NP1+有+NP2+恨+(AP)为切入点,分别选取汉语成人和儿童受试,检验简单算式对汉语母语者产出或理解特定句型的结构启动效应。本研究发现：1）算式结构对汉语特定句型的产出具有结构启动效应。2）算式结构对汉语歧义句的解读具有结构启动效应。3）儿童和成人在产出和理解的启动实验中具有不同结构启动效应,且儿童的结构启动效应比成人的结构启动效应更强。4）算式结构和语言句式在认知上具有共享的结构表征。     

Children's identification of actors and patients in prototypical and nonprototypical sentence types

This research examined if children organize language categories around a prototype. Based on previous research with adults, the hypothesis held that the prototypical transitive sentence contains an animate actor and patient and a highly prototypical verb. The question of interest was if factors that contribute to adult judgments of sentence prototypicality (such as actor-patient animacy and verb prototypicality) affect young childrens' accuracy in correctly identifying sentence actors and patients. That is, are children more likely to make correct identifications in prototypical sentences? Sixty-four 2- and 4-year-old children were trained to to ntify sentence actors and patients in prototypical or nonprototypical sentences and then tested for generalization to sentences of other types. Two factors, verb prototypicality and animacy of sentence participants, combined to influence children's accuracy in actor/patient identification. Regardless of training condition, children produced more correct responses to sentences with animate actors than to sentences with inanimate actors. There was an interaction with verb prototypicality such that it was more typical for inanimate actors to act upon animate patients with what are otherwise low prototype verbs (e.g., low in action, low in intentionality). The results of the study are consistent with the view that similar cognitive mechanisms operate in language and in other nonlinguistic cognitive domains.     

Electrophysiological Evidence of Different Interpretative Strategies in Irony Comprehension

We explore the hypothesis that induction of holistic or analytic strategies influences comprehension and processing of highly contextualized expressions of ordinary language, such as irony. Twenty undergraduate students were asked to categorize as coherent or incoherent a group of sentences. Each sentence completed a previous story, so that they could be ironical, literal or nonsensical endings. Participants were asked to evaluate whether each sentence was coherent or incoherent. Half of them were initially instructed to consider whether the sentences made sense (holistic condition); the other half were instructed to consider whether the sentences were congruent or incongruent (analytic condition). Behavioral responses and Event Related Potentials were registered during the experiment. Both behavioral and electrophysiological results allow clearly distinguishing between the holistic and the analytic strategies. The fact that the same set of stimuli elicits different ERP waveforms, depending on the strategy with which they are analyzed, suggests that different cognitive processes and different areas of the brain are operating in each case.     

Preschool children’s interpretation of object‐initial sentences: Neural correlates of their behavioral performance

The acquisition of the function of case‐marking is a key step in the development of sentence processing for German‐speaking children since case‐marking reveals the relations between sentential arguments. In this study, we investigated the development of the processing of case‐marking and argument structures in children at 3, 4;6 and 6 years of age, as well as its processing in adults. Using EEG, we measured event‐related potentials (ERPs) in response to object‐initial compared to subject‐initial German sentences including transitive verbs and case‐marked noun phrases referring to animate arguments. We also tested children’s behavioral competence in a sentence‐picture matching task. Word order and case‐marking were manipulated in German main clauses. Adults’ behavioral performance was close to perfect and their ERPs revealed a negativity for the processing of the topicalized accusative marked noun phrase (NP1) and no effect for the second NP (NP2) in the object‐initial structure. Children’s behavioral data showed a significant above‐chance outcome in the subject‐initial condition for all age groups, but not for the object‐initial condition. In contrast to adults, the ERPs of 3‐year‐olds showed a positivity at NP1, indicating difficulties in processing the non‐canonical object‐initial structures. Children at the age of 4;6 did not differ in the processing patterns of object‐initial vs. subject‐initial sentences at NP1 but showed a slight positivity at NP2. This positivity at NP2, which implies syntactic integration difficulties, is more pronounced in 6‐year‐olds but is absent in adults. At NP1, however, 6‐year‐olds show the same negativity as adults. In sum, the behavioral and electrophysiological findings demonstrate that children in each age group use different strategies, which are indicative of their developmental stage. While 3‐year‐olds merely detect differences in the two sentence structures without being able to use this information for sentence comprehension, 4;6‐year‐olds proceed to use mainly a word‐order strategy, processing NP1 in both conditions in the same manner, which leads to processing difficulties upon detecting case‐marking cues at NP2. At the age of 6, children are able to use case‐marking cues for comprehension but still show enhanced effort for correct thematic‐role assignment.     

Does morphology make the difference? Agrammatic sentence comprehension in German

This study examines the syntactic comprehension of seven German agrammatic speakers. The German language allows the study of the interaction of syntactic principles and morphological devices in the comprehension process. In addition, due to its relatively free word order, German allows the study of strictly minimal pairs of canonical and non-canonical sentences in addition to the rather controversial active-passive contrast. A central research question was whether the pattern of agrammatic comprehension predicted by the trace deletion hypothesis (TDH, Grodzinsky, 1990, 1995), relatively normal comprehension performance of canonical sentences and chance performance on non-canonical sentences, can be found in a language with richer morphology than English. The generalisability of the TDH-pattern to morphologically rich languages is not obvious, given that case morphology in particular can provide explicit cues to the detection of the agent and patient roles in a sentence. The results of this study indicate that morphology does not make a difference. Furthermore, the group results are in line with the TDH-predictions only for number marked sentences but not for case marked sentences. However, single case analysis reveals different patterns of syntactic comprehension in agrammatic patients, a spectrum that encompasses near-normal comprehension of canonical and non-canonical sentences, overall chance performance, and TDH-like profiles.     

Varieties of frequency interference in children's recognition of sentence information

The memory of fourth-grade children (9 years, 10 months of age) for information contained in target sentences presented 24 hours earlier was tested by multiple-choice recognition items each consisting of a question about a target sentence followed by three response options. The options consisted of the correct word from the sentence, a new word, and an old, incorrect word that was contained in another sentence on the study trial. The results indicated that the amount of interference produced by old information depended upon the relationship between the sentence in which the old information occurred and the target sentence—being the least when the two were unrelated; the most when the two shared the same subject noun (which also occurred in the stem of the test item for the target sentence); and intermediate when the subjects of the two sentences were synonyms. The interference produced by these manipulations was moderated by instructional strategies and the distance between the target sentence and its variation. The experiment establishes the validity of contextual frequency accrual, a construct logically necessary in extending frequency theory to recognition of information contained in sentences.     

Induction of augmented transition networks

LAS is a program that acquires augmented transition network (ATN) grammars. It requires as data sentences of the language and semantic network representatives of their meaning. In acquiring the ATN grammars, it induces the word classes of the language, the rules of formation for sentences, and the rules mapping sentences onto meaning. The induced ATN grammar can be used both for sentence generation and sentence comprehension. Critical to the performance of the program are assumptions that it makes about the relation between sentence structure and surface structure (the graph deformation condition), about when word classes may be formed and when ATN networks may be merged, and about the structure of noun phrases. These assumptions seem to be good heuristics which are largely true for natural languages although they would not be true for many nonnatural languages. Provided these assumptions are satisfied LAS seems capable of learning any context-free language.