Argument Status and PP-Attachment

Prepositional phrase attachment was investigated in temporarily ambiguous sentences. Both attachment site (noun phrase or verb phrase) and argument status (argument or adjunct) were manipulated to test the hypothesis that arguments are processed differently than adjuncts. Contrary to this hypothesis, some previous research suggested that arguments and adjuncts are initially processed in the same manner, following a general bias to attach prepositional phrases to the verb phrase whenever possible [Clifton, Speer, & Abney (1991) Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 251–271]. The current study supports the hypothesis for differential processing, even during the initial stages of syntactic analysis. In an eye movement experiment, readers spent less first-pass time on argument prepositional phrases (PPs) than adjunct PPs. The results support a view in which a noun’s or verb’s argument structure can facilitate the analysis of its arguments.This research was supported by NSF grants SBR-9729056 and SBR-9720473 to the first author. We gratefully thank Gerry Altmann, Rick Lewis, Brian McElree, Don Mitchell, Neal Pearlmutter, Shari Speer, and Suzanne Stevenson for useful discussions and helpful comments. We would also like to acknowledge the Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science, where the eye movement data were collected and an initial draft of the paper was written.     

The return of “visiting relatives”: Pragmatic effects in sentence processing

Two experiments were performed to investigate the role of syntactic and pragmatic cues on the disambiguation of noun phrases of the form VERB+ing NOUN+s, like visiting relatives, that can be interpreted as either singular or plural noun phrases. Both experiments used a self-paced reading task in which reading times were measured for two words, a verb and an adverb, immediately following the potentially ambiguous noun phrase. The interpretation of the noun phrase as singular or plural was biased by pragmatic cues in the first experiment and by syntactic cues in the second experiment. In both experiments, subjects were faster to read the adverb following the verb when the interpretation biased by the cues agreed in number with the verb that immediately followed the target noun phrase than when it did not agree with the verb. These results suggest that pragmatic cues, like syntactic cues, can be utilized rapidly in sentence processing.     

Singular and Plural Pronominal Reference in Spanish

In two self-paced, sentence-by-sentence reading experiments, we examined the difference in the processing of Spanish discourses containing overt and null pronouns. In both experiments, antecedents appeared in a single phrase (John met Mary) or in a conjoined phrase (John and Mary met). In Experiment 1, we compared reading times of sentences containing singular overt and null pronouns referring to the first or to the second mentioned antecedent. Overt pronouns caused a processing delay relative to null pronouns when they referred to the first antecedent in single but not in conjoined phrases. In Experiment 2, we compared reading times of sentences containing overt and null pronouns referring to singular or plural entities. Plural null pronouns were read faster than their singular counterparts in conjoined conditions. Plural overt pronouns were read more slowly than their null counterparts both in single and conjoined conditions. We explain our findings in a framework based on the notion of balance between processing cost and discourse function in line with the Informational Load Hypothesis.     

Structural priming among prepositional phrases: Evidence from eye movements

This experiment was designed to determine whether prepositional phrases are treated as a single undifferentiated type, or whether the parser may recognize different subtypes. In the experiment, participants read temporarily ambiguous prime and target sentences that had either agent or instrument prepositional phrases in the syntactically disambiguating position. Agent and instrument primes both led to significant priming effects for agent targets. Agent primes led to a nonsignificant priming effect for instrument targets, and this priming effect was smaller than the effect that instrument primes had on instrument targets. This pattern can be explained if verb argument structure information is used in structural decisions, and if agent but not instrument roles are obligatory for the class of verbs tested here. The data suggest that readers are likely to activate an implicit agent when they read prime sentences that explicitly mention an instrument, but are not likely to activate an instrument when they read prime sentences that explicitly mention an agent. If the structural representations that incorporate activated arguments persist, or are reactivated more quickly following an appropriate prime sentence, this could lead to facilitated processing of sentences that have the same structural configuration.     

Differences in the Timing of Implausibility Detection for Recipient and Instrument Prepositional Phrases

We conducted two word-by-word reading experiments to investigate the timing of implausibility detection for recipient and instrument prepositional phrases (PPs). These PPs differ in thematic role, relative frequency, and possibly in argument status. The results showed a difference in the timing of garden path effects such that the detection of implausible dative recipients (which are clearly arguments) was delayed relative to the detection of implausible instruments (which may not be arguments). They also demonstrated that commitments to syntactic structure were made at the preposition for both dative and instrument PPs. While these results refute delay models of parsing (e.g., Britt, 1994) and syntax-first accounts of PP-attachment (e.g., Frazier, 1978; Frazier & Clifton, 1996), they support constraint-based lexicalist models that enable verb bias and plausibility information to compete (Garnsey, Pearlmutter, Myers, & Lotocky, 1997).     

Interpreting elliptical verb phrases

Elliptical verb phrases are anaphoric expressions whose correct interpretation depends on the exact form of the preceding text as well as its meaning. However, people are not very good at remembering surface details of what they read or hear, so how do they understand such expressions? One alternative to a linguistically based interpretation of elliptical verb phrases is to assign them meanings that are plausible, given general knowledge about the situation being described. In an experiment, subjects read passages in which context provided a plausible interpretation for an elliptical verb phrase that either was or was not at odds with the linguistically correct interpretation. There was a tendency for subjects to assign plausible, but incorrect, meanings to elliptical verb phrases. This tendency increased with the distance between the elliptical verb phrase and its antecedent. Incorrect interpretations were assigned slowly, and the speed of assignment increased with distance from the antecedent. These results suggest that people try to interpret elliptical verb phrases correctly, but that they are not always able to do so. Furthermore, they indicate that the intuition that elliptical verb phrases are easy to interpret is misleading. If text is to be comprehensible, speakers and writers must use such expressions with care.     

The time course of plausibility effects on eye movements in reading: evidence from noun-noun compounds

Readers' eye movements were monitored as they read sentences containing noun-noun compounds that varied in frequency (e.g., elevator mechanic, mountain lion). The left constituent of the compound was either plausible or implausible as a head noun at the point at which it appeared, whereas the compound as a whole was always plausible. When the head noun analysis of the left constituent was implausible, reading times on this word were inflated, beginning with the first fixation. This finding is consistent with previous demonstrations of very rapid effects of plausibility on eye movements. Compound frequency did not modulate the plausibility effect, and all disruption was resolved by the time readers' eyes moved to the next word. These findings suggest (contra Kennison, 2005) that the parser initially analyzes a singular noun as a head instead of a modifier. In addition, the findings confirm that the very rapid effect of plausibility on eye movements is not due to strategic factors, because in the present experiment, unlike in previous demonstrations, this effect appeared in sentences that were globally plausible.     

熟练汉-英双语者的语码切换机制—— 来自短语水平的证据

以熟练汉-英双语者为被试, 考察了在短语水平上语码切换的机制及切换代价的来源。结果表明：(1)汉语与英语表示空间方所的短语的差异和表示量的短语的对应与否影响语码切换过程, 但对于两种语言的切换代价的影响不显著, 表明语码切换代价未受特定语言的语法特征影响; (2)熟练汉-英双语者在短语水平上表现出语码切换代价的不对称性：切换至熟练语言的代价比切换至非熟练语言的代价大; (3)熟练汉-英双语者的切换代价源于两种语言短语的激活和竞争, 支持非特定语言选择假说, 可以用抑制控制模型来解释。整个研究表明, 熟练双语者的语码切换代价源于语言表征系统之外。     

Real and imagined body movement primes metaphor comprehension

We demonstrate in two experiments that real and imagined body movements appropriate to metaphorical phrases facilitate people's immediate comprehension of these phrases. Participants first learned to make different body movements given specific cues. In two reading time studies, people were faster to understand a metaphorical phrase, such as push the argument, when they had previously just made an appropriate body action (e.g., a push movement) (Experiment 1), or imagined making a specific body movement (Experiment 2), than when they first made a mismatching body action (e.g., a chewing movement) or no movement. These findings support the idea that appropriate body action, or even imagined action, enhances people's embodied, metaphorical construal of abstract concepts that are referred to in metaphorical phrases.     

Priming prepositional-phrase attachment during comprehension

Strong evidence suggests that prior syntactic context affects language production (e.g., J. K. Bock, 1986). The authors report 4 experiments that used an expression-picture matching task to investigate whether it also affects ambiguity resolution in comprehension. All experiments examined the interpretation of prepositional phrases that were ambiguous between high and low attachment. After reading a prime expression with a high-attached interpretation, participants tended to interpret an ambiguous prepositional phrase in a target expression as highly attached if it contained the same verb as the prime (Experiment 1), but not if it contained a different verb (Experiment 2). They also tended to adopt the high-attached interpretation after producing a prime with the high-attached interpretation that included the same verb (Experiment 3). Finally, they were faster to adopt a high-attached interpretation after reading an expression containing the same verb that was disambiguated to the high-attached versus the low-attached interpretation (Experiment 4).     

The Interpretation of Anaphoric Noun Phrases Time Course, and Effects of Overspecificity

Two experiments investigated the interpretation of anaphoric noun phrases, and in particular those thatcould only be linked to their antecedents via knowledge-based inferences. The first experiment showed that much of the inferential processing was carried out as the anaphoric noun phrase was read, although there was some indication that inferential processing continued to the end of the clause. The second experiment attempted to establish why anaphoric noun phrases that are more specific than their antecedents cause problems. It showed that the difficulty did not lie in adding the extra information carried by the anaphor to the representation of the referent. Rather, we suggest, putting extra information in the anaphoric noun phrase disrupts the process of linking that noun phrase to its antecedent.     

Limitations on the use of verb information during sentence comprehension

An eye tracking experiment was conducted in order to investigate the role of verb information in resolving structural ambiguity during sentence comprehension. Reading time was measured on sentences containing temporarily ambiguous noun phrases (e.g., “The athlete revealed the problem⊙) that were continued as tensed sentence (S) complements or noun phrase (NP) complements. Ambiguous noun phrases were preceded either by verbs occurring most frequently with NP complements (NPbiased) or verbs occurring most frequently with S complements (S-biased). Reading time was also measured on sentences containing unambiguous S complements preceded by either NP-biased or S-biased verbs. The results showed that contrary to predictions made by verb guidance theories (e.g., constraint satisfaction; MacDonald, Pearlmutter, & Seidenberg, 1994a, 1994b; Trueswell & Tanenhaus, 1994), for both NP- and S-biased verb conditions, sentences containing temporarily ambiguous noun phrase complements were read most quickly, and sentences containing temporarily ambiguous S complements were read more slowly than those containing unambiguous S complements.     

词素的结构对称效应:结构对称汉语成语认知特点的进一步研究

运用词素启动作业,进一步考察了结构对称性汉语成语的识别过程.结果发现(1)无论是用成语的前二个字还是后二个字启动,在成语识别过程中都存在明显的词素结构对称效应,即结构对称成语中的词素启动效应明显大于非对称成语中的词素启动效应.(2)成语的结构对称性、熟悉度和启动词素位置之间存在显著的三阶相互作用.简单效应的分析表明无论成语前二个字还是后二个字启动,词素的结构对称效应均只在低熟悉度成语的识别过程中显著;在前二个字启动时,非对称成语的识别还存在熟悉度效应.     

Thematic processing of adjuncts: Evidence from an eye-tracking experiment

We investigated thematic processing in sentences containing a prepositional phrase that was ambiguous between a locative and a temporal interpretation. We manipulated context (temporal or locative), target sentence (temporal or locative), and whether or not the main verb of the target and the context was repeated. Results showed that context dictated the participants' thematic expectations. Thematically, congruent target and context pairs were read faster than incongruent pairs. This effect was not modulated by verb repetition. We argue that wh-words cause readers to lodge semantically vacuous thematic roles in their discourse representation that bias a reader's interpretation of subsequent thematically ambiguous adjuncts in their discourse representation.     

Comprehending Noun Phrase Arguments and Adjuncts

Two experiments investigated how readers comprehend noun phrase (NP) arguments and adjuncts. Previous research suggested that argument phrases are processed more quickly than adjunct phrases (Clifton, Speer, & Abney, 1991; Kennison, 1999; Schütze & Gibson, 1999; Speer & Clifton, 1998). The present experiments investigated whether the type of verb in the sentence context could influence how NP arguments and adjuncts were processed. Reading time was measured on sentences containing NP arguments and adjuncts preceded either by verbs occurring most frequently with NP arguments (biased transitive verbs) or by verbs occurring most frequently without NP arguments (biased intransitive verbs) (e.g., Meredith read/performed every play/week.). In Experiment 1, reading time was measured using a self-paced phrase-by-phrase moving window. In Experiment 2, reading time was measured using eye tracking. The results of both experiments indicated that, following biased transitive verbs, NP arguments were processed more quickly than NP adjuncts. When NPs followed biased intransitive verbs, there was no significant difference between the processing time of NP arguments and adjuncts.     

词频、可预测性及合理性对目标词首次注视位置的影响

采用三项实验分别考察了目标词的词频、可预测性和合理性对读者眼动模式的影响。结果显示:(1)词频、可预测性和合理性对目标词语的凝视时间和总注视时间都有显著影响,但在首次注视时间上主效应不显著;(2)词频和可预测性不影响目标词的跳读率和再注视概率,而合理性对目标词的再注视概率产生显著的影响;(3)远注视点眼跳倾向于将首次注视位置着落于目标词的开端部位,而近注视点眼跳倾向于将首次注视着落于目标词的中央部位;词频、可预测性和合理性均不影响首次注视位置。     

Rate and pause characteristics of oral reading

Twenty-three male subjects each read a paragraph aloud and graphic level recordings of their readings were measured in order to determine the average sentence rate, phrase rate, and duration of phrase and sentence pauses. It was found that noninitial sentences and phrases were significantly faster in rate and that pauses between sentences were significantly longer in duration. The findings are consistent with a reduction of uncertainty hypothesis that rate increases and pause decreases as uncertainty decreases.This research was supported in part by the Research Office of the College of Liberal Arts, The Pennsylvania State University.     

Relative Clause Effects at the Matrix Verb Depend on Type of Intervening Material

Although a large literature demonstrates that object-extracted relative clauses (ORCs) are harder to process than subject-extracted relative clauses (SRCs), there is less agreement regarding where during processing this difficulty emerges, as well as how best to explain these effects. An eye-tracking study by Staub, Dillon, and Clifton (2017) demonstrated that readers experience more processing difficulty at the matrix verb for ORCs than for SRCs when the matrix verb immediately follows the relative clause (RC), but the difficulty is eliminated if a prepositional phrase (PP) intervenes. A careful examination of Staub et al.’s materials reveals that the types of PPs used in the experiment were a mixture of locative and temporal PPs. This is important in that locative PPs can modify either a noun phrase or a verb phrase (VP), whereas temporal PPs typically modify VPs, resulting in systematic differences in PP attachment across ORCs versus SRCs. In the current eye-tracking experiment, we systematically manipulated RC type and PP type in the same sentences used by Staub et al. The manipulation of PP type resulted in a crossover pattern at the matrix verb such that there was a trend for reading times to be longer for ORCs than SRCs when the PP was locative, but reading times were longer for SRCs than ORCs when the PP was temporal. These results provide important information regarding the locus of RC-processing effects and highlight the importance of carefully considering how intervening material might unintentionally alter the structure or the meaning of a sentence.     

Semantic and syntactic forces in noun phrase production

Three experiments investigated semantic and syntactic effects in the production of phrases in Dutch. Bilingual participants were presented with English nouns and were asked to produce an adjective + noun phrase in Dutch including the translation of the noun. In 2 experiments, the authors blocked items by either semantic category or grammatical gender. Participants performed the task slower when the target nouns were of the same semantic category than when they were from different categories and faster when the target nouns had the same gender than when they had different genders. In a final experiment, both manipulations were crossed. The authors replicated the results of the first 2 experiments, and no interaction was found. These findings suggest a feedforward flow of activation between lexico-semantic and lexico-syntactic information.