Context effects in visual word recognition: Lexical relatedness and syntactic context

In three experiments, we investigated how associative word-word priming effects in German depend on different types of syntactic context in which the related words are embedded. The associative relation always concerned a verb as prime and a noun as target. Prime word and target word were embedded in visually presented strings of words that formed either a correct sentence, a scrambled list of words, or a sentence in which the target noun and the preceding definite article disagreed in syntactic gender. In contrast to previous studies (O’Seaghdha, 1989; Simpson, Peterson, Casteel, & Burgess, 1989), associative priming effects were not only obtained in correct sentences but also in scrambled word lists. Associative priming, however, was not obtained when the definite article and the target noun disagreed in syntactic gender. The latter finding suggests that a rather local violation of syntactic coherence reduces or eliminates word-word priming effects. The results are discussed in the context of related work on the effect of gender dis-/agreement between a syntactic context and a target noun.     

Preschoolers use phrasal prosody online to constrain syntactic analysis

Two experiments were conducted to investigate whether young children are able to take into account phrasal prosody when computing the syntactic structure of a sentence. Pairs of French noun/verb homophones were selected to create locally ambiguous sentences ([la petite ferme ] [est très jolie] ‘the small farm is very nice’ vs. [la petite] [ ferme la fenêtre] ‘the little girl closes the window’ – brackets indicate prosodic boundaries). Although these sentences start with the same three words, ferme is a noun (farm) in the former but a verb (to close) in the latter case. The only difference between these sentence beginnings is the prosodic structure, that reflects the syntactic structure (with a prosodic boundary just before the critical word when it is a verb, and just after it when it is a noun). Crucially, all words following the homophone were masked, such that prosodic cues were the only disambiguating information. Children successfully exploited prosodic information to assign the appropriate syntactic category to the target word, in both an oral completion task (4.5‐year‐olds, Experiment 1) and in a preferential looking paradigm with an eye‐tracker (3.5‐year‐olds and 4.5‐year‐olds, Experiment 2). These results show that both groups of children exploit the position of a word within the prosodic structure when computing its syntactic category. In other words, even younger children of 3.5 years old exploit phrasal prosody online to constrain their syntactic analysis. This ability to exploit phrasal prosody to compute syntactic structure may help children parse sentences containing unknown words, and facilitate the acquisition of word meanings.     

Predicted errors in children's early sentence comprehension

Children use syntax to interpret sentences and learn verbs; this is syntactic bootstrapping. The structure-mapping account of early syntactic bootstrapping proposes that a partial representation of sentence structure, the set of nouns occurring with the verb, guides initial interpretation and provides an abstract format for new learning. This account predicts early successes, but also telltale errors: Toddlers should be unable to tell transitive sentences from other sentences containing two nouns. In testing this prediction, we capitalized on evidence that 21-month-olds use what they have learned about noun order in English sentences to understand new transitive verbs. In two experiments, 21-month-olds applied this noun-order knowledge to two-noun intransitive sentences, mistakenly assigning different interpretations to "The boy and the girl are gorping!" and "The girl and the boy are gorping!". This suggests that toddlers exploit partial representations of sentence structure to guide sentence interpretation; these sparse representations are useful, but error-prone.     

Effect of Representational Distance Between Meanings on Recognition of Ambiguous Spoken Words

Previous research indicates that mental representations of word meanings are distributed along both semantic and syntactic dimensions such that nouns and verbs are relatively distinct from one another. Two experiments examined the effect of representational distance between meanings on recognition of ambiguous spoken words by comparing recognition of unambiguous words, noun–verb homonyms, and noun–noun homonyms. In Experiment 1, auditory lexical decision was fastest for unambiguous words, slower for noun–verb homonyms, and slowest for noun–noun homonyms. In Experiment 2, response times for matching spoken words to pictures followed the same pattern and eye fixation time courses revealed converging, gradual time course differences between conditions. These results indicate greater competition between meanings of ambiguous words when the meanings are from the same grammatical class (noun–noun homonyms) than when they are from different grammatical classes (noun–verb homonyms).     

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.     

Meaning from syntax: Evidence from 2-year-olds

When toddlers view an event while hearing a novel verb, the verb’s syntactic context has been shown to help them identify its meaning. The current work takes this finding one step further to reveal that even in the absence of an accompanying event, syntactic information supports toddlers’ identification of verb meaning. Two-year-olds were first introduced to dialogues incorporating novel verbs either in transitive or intransitive sentences, but in the absence of any relevant referent scenes (see Yuan & Fisher, 2009). Next, toddlers viewed two candidate scenes: (a) two participants performing synchronous actions, (b) two participants performing a causative action. When asked to “find mooping”, toddlers who had heard transitive sentences chose the causative scene; those who had heard intransitive sentences did not. These results demonstrate that 2-year-olds infer important components of meaning from syntactic structure alone, using it to direct their subsequent search for a referent in a visual scene.     

中文句子中双音节兼类词句法分析历程初探

以既可用作名词,又可用作动词的汉语双音节兼类词为材料,采用移动窗口范式,考察了汉语句子中名词倾向性高和低两类兼类词句法分析的详细历程。结果发现,两类兼类词与各自的控制词之间,均未出现阅读时间上的显著差异,因此并不支持延迟模型所提出的兼类词句法角色延迟指派的观点。实验还发现,名词倾向性高的兼类词引起了更大的加工困难。此外,即便是名词倾向性低的兼类词,被试也仍为其指派名词的句法角色。花园路径模型和制约满意理论均不能单独和完整解释上述发现。文章指出,实验结果支持一种既不同于花园路径模型,又不同于制约满意理论的权变的理论。阅读中遇到兼类词时,读者能立即为其指派句法角色。这种指派过程既可以利用概率制约信息,也可以在句法分析原则指导下进行。句法分析原则是否起作用,取决于概率制约信息的制约强度     

Priming prepositional phrase attachment: Evidence from eye-tracking and event-related potentials

Three syntactic-priming experiments investigated the effect of structurally similar or dissimilar prime sentences on the processing of target sentences, using eye tracking (Experiment 1) and event-related potentials (ERPs) (Experiments 2 and 3) All three experiments tested readers' response to sentences containing a temporary syntactic ambiguity. The ambiguity occurred because a prepositional phrase modifier (PP-modifier) could attach either to a preceding verb or to a preceding noun. Previous experiments have established that (a) noun-modifying expressions are harder to process than verb-modifying expressions (when test sentences are presented in isolation); and (b) for other kinds of sentences, processing a structurally similar prime sentence can facilitate processing a target sentence. The experiments reported here were designed to determine whether a structurally similar prime could facilitate processing of noun-attached modifiers and whether such facilitation reflected syntactic-structure-building or semantic processes. These findings have implications for accounts of structural priming during online comprehension and for accounts of syntactic representation and processing in comprehension.     

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。     

Lexical decision in sentences: Effects of syntactic structure

A lexical decision paradigm was used to examine syntactic influence on word recognition in sentences. Initial fragments of sentences were presented visually (CRT display) one word at a time (at reading speeds), from left to right. The string terminated with the appearance of a lexical decision target. The grammatical structure of the incomplete sentence affected lexical decision reaction time (RT). In Experiment 1, modal verb contexts followed by main verb targets and preposition contexts followed by noun targets produced lower RTs than did the opposite pairings (i.e., modal/noun and preposition/verb). In Experiment 2, transitive verb contexts followed by noun targets and subject noun phrase contexts followed by verb targets yielded lower RTs than did the opposite pairings. Similar contrasts for adjective targets did not yield comparable effects in Experiment 2, but did when the adjective was the head of a predictable phrase (Experiment 4). In Experiment 3, noun targets yielded lower RTs than did verb targets after contexts of a transitive verb followed by a prepositional phrase. An account of these effects is offered in terms of parsing constraints on phrasal categories.     

Sensitivity to inflectional morphology in agrammatism: investigation of a highly inflected language

We present the results of a study with six Serbo-Croatian-speaking agrammatic patients on a test of inflectional morphology in which subjects judged whether spoken sentences were grammatical or ungrammatical. Sensitivity to two kinds of syntactic features was investigated in these aphasic patients: (1) subcategorization rules for transitive verbs (which must be followed by a noun in the accusative case; intransitive verbs can be followed by nouns in other noun cases); (2) sensitivity to the inflectional morphology marking noun case. The test items consisted of three-word sentences (noun-verb-noun) in which verb transitivity and appropriateness of the case inflection of the following noun were manipulated. Results of the grammaticality judgment task show that both syntactic properties are preserved in these patients.     

Robust effects of syntactic structure on visual word processing

A series of experiments explored the effect of the syntactic structure of a sentence fragment on the processing of a subsequent target word. In both a naming and a lexical decision task, modal verb contexts followed by main verb targets and preposition contexts followed by noun targets produced faster response times than did the opposite pairings (i.e., modal/noun and preposition/ verb). This syntactic context effect occurred across several different variations in the method of context presentation. Also, unlike some previous findings on syntactic priming, the present effects did not disappear when a naming task was employed. The magnitude of the syntactic priming effect was similar in the naming and lexical decision tasks when the response times were slow, but was larger in the lexical decision task when the response times were faster. The implications of these results for recent discussions of the relationship between task structure and the locus of observed contextual effects are discussed.     

Comprehending anaphoric metaphors

In this study we investigate the comprehension of various kinds of anaphoric metaphors in context. We describe an experiment that manipulated the metaphoricity of simple noun + verb + ending sentences by using either a metaphoric noun or a metaphoric verb or both. Our results show that metaphoric nouns affect sentence comprehension to a greater extent than do metaphoric verbs. Thus, even though there were no sentence-reading time differences between metaphoric and literal targets, metaphoric nouns were read more slowly than were literal nouns, and they also affected the reading time of the following verb. Moreover, in trials involving metaphoric-noun targets, participants read the endings of the targets faster and made more mistakes in answering posttrial questions than they did in literal-noun trials. We argue that these results suggest a comprehension deficit for anaphoric noun metaphors even when they are preceded by a context.     

Illiteracy and brain damage. 2. Manifestations of unilateral neglect in testing "auditory comprehension" with iconographic materials

This report concerns the sentence-picture matching behavior of 100 neurologically healthy and 169 brain-damaged subjects, all of whom were unilingual adult right-handers. Within this population, 144 subjects were totally unschooled illiterates and the remaining 125 had received school education and thereafter had retained writing skills and reading habits. Brain-damaged subjects were tested less than 2 months after a first left- or right-hemisphere stroke. All subjects were administered an aphasia screening battery including, among other subtests, a set of six sentence-picture matching stimuli. For each of these six stimuli, subjects heard a sentence uttered by the examiner and were then requested to match this sentence with one of four drawings presented within a single display divided into four quadrants of equal surface. Three sentences were syntactically "simple" (noun subject + verb) and three were relatively more "complex" (noun subject + verb + one or two noun complements). Evidence of unilateral neglect was found in both left- and right-brain-damaged illiterates and literates. Moreover, the right neglect of left-brain-damaged subjects was manifest mostly when target sentences were relatively "complex" whereas the left neglect of right-brain-damaged subjects was manifest irrespective of the syntactic complexity of target sentences. Our data are interpreted as indicative of an interaction between two cognitive disorders resulting from dysfunctions of asymmetrically represented cognitive mechanisms. The implications of these findings with respect to clinical and research aphasia testing are discussed.     

Semantic detail in the developing verb lexicon: An extension of Naigles and Kako (1993)

Verbs are often uttered before the events they describe. By 2 years of age, toddlers can learn from such an encounter. Hearing a novel verb in transitive sentences (e.g. The boy lorped the cat), even with no visual referent present, they later map it to a causative meaning (e.g. feed) (e.g. Yuan & Fisher, 2009 ). How much semantic detail does their verb representation include on this first, underinformative, encounter? Is the representation sparse, including only information for which they have evidence, or do toddlers make more specific guesses about the verb's meaning? In two experiments (N = 76, mean age 27 months), we address this using an event type studied by Naigles and Kako ( 1993 ); they found that when toddlers hear a novel transitive verb while simultaneously viewing a non‐causative referent—a contact event such as patting—they map the verb to the contact event. In Experiment 1 we replicated this basic result. Further, toddlers’ representations persisted over a 5‐minute delay, manifesting again during a retest. In Experiment 2, toddlers heard the verbs while watching two actors converse instead of while seeing contact events. At test, they showed no evidence of mapping the verbs to contact events, either initially or after a 5‐minute delay, despite that in prior work they mapped verbs to causative events under identical circumstances. We infer that on hearing a novel verb in a transitive frame, absent a relevant visual scene, toddlers posit a more specific representation than the evidence requires—one that incorporates causative semantics. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/aRCqSTbr6Bw     

Semantic context influences memory for verbs more than memory for nouns

Three experiments revealed that memory for verbs is more dependent on semantic context than is memory for nouns. The participants in Experiment 1 were asked to remember either nouns or verbs from intransitive sentences. A recognition test included verbatim sentences, sentences with an old noun and a new verb, sentences with an old verb and a new noun, and entirely new sentences. Memory for verbs was significantly better when the verb was presented with the same noun at encoding and at retrieval. This contextual effect was much smaller for nouns. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated this effect and provided evidence that context effects reflect facilitation from bringing to mind the same meaning of a verb at encoding and at retrieval. Memory for verbs may be more dependent on semantic context because the meanings of verbs are more variable across semantic contexts than are the meanings of nouns.     

Semantic facilitation and lexical access during sentence processing

An experiment was conducted testing predictions derived from context-dependent and context-independent models of lexical access. Four types of unambiguous test sentences were constructed. The direct object of each test sentence was preceded by a verb that was either semantically related or unrelated to it, and by an adjective that was semantically related or unrelated. Context-dependent models predict that the speed with which the object noun is retrieved from the mental lexicon will be faster when the verb and/or the adjective is semantically related; context-independent models predict no such facilitation. Forty-four subjects each heard 32 test sentences and were asked to monitor within the sentence for a word-initial target phoneme. The target phoneme occurred on the word following the object noun. Reaction times to detect the targets were obtained. According to context-dependent models, these times should be shorter when related words precede the object noun, and that is what was found. It was also observed that the facilitation effects due to the related verbs and adjectives were additive. Implications of these results were discussed.     

Mandarin learners use syntactic bootstrapping in verb acquisition

Mandarin Chinese allows pervasive ellipsis of noun arguments (NPs) in discourse, which casts doubt concerning child learners' use of syntax in verb learning. This study investigated whether Mandarin learning children would nonetheless extend verb meanings based on the number of NPs in sentences. Forty-one Mandarin-speaking two- and three-year-olds enacted sentences with familiar motion verbs. The presence of an extra postverbal NP led the toddlers to extend causative meanings to intransitive verbs, and the absence of a postverbal NP led them to extend noncausative meanings to transitive verbs. The effects of adding or subtracting an NP were statistically indistinguishable. Thus, the number of NPs in a sentence appears to play a role in verb learning in Mandarin Chinese.     

Predicting complex syntactic structure in real time: Processing of negative sentences in Russian

In Russian negative sentences the verb’s direct object may appear either in the accusative case, which is licensed by the verb (as is common cross-linguistically), or in the genitive case, which is licensed by the negation (Russian-specific “genitive-of-negation” phenomenon). Such sentences were used to investigate whether case marking is employed for anticipating syntactic structure, and whether lexical heads other than the verb can be predicted on the basis of a case-marked noun phrase. Experiment 1, a completion task, confirmed that genitive-of-negation is part of Russian speakers’ active grammatical repertoire. In Experiments 2 and 3, the genitive/accusative case manipulation on the preverbal object led to shorter reading times at the negation and verb in the genitive versus accusative condition. Furthermore, Experiment 3 manipulated linear order of the direct object and the negated verb in order to distinguish whether the abovementioned facilitatory effect was predictive or integrative in nature, and concluded that the parser actively predicts a verb and (otherwise optional) negation on the basis of a preceding genitive-marked object. Similarly to a head-final language, case-marking information on preverbal noun phrases (NPs) is used by the parser to enable incremental structure building in a free-word-order language such as Russian.     

Sentence coding: Tests of the address-contents model and the fragmentation-conceptual focus hypothesis

Predictions of the address-contents model of sentence coding (Broadbent, 1971, 1973) were contrasted in two experiments with predictions based on the fragmentation hypothesis (Jones, 1974, 1976, 1978) and the conceptual focus hypothesis (Tannenbaum and Williams, 1968a,b). Participants attempted to recall lists of active-voice subject-verb-object sentences in response to a noun cue from each sentence. For persons instructed to image the sentences in Experiment I, there was a subject cuing superiority for verb partial recalls, but there were no reliable cuing asymmeties for complete sentence or noun partial recalls. For persons instructed to repeat the sentences aloud, the subject superiority for verb partial recalls did not appear. In Experiment II, there was overall a subject superiority for verb partial recall and symmetry for complete and noun partial recalls. This pattern was not affected by whether a question following each sentence required the subject or the object as response. These results support the fragmentation-conceptual focus hypothesis.