Syntactic agreement attraction reflects working memory processes

Does producing syntactic agreement rely on syntactic or memory-based retrieval processes? The present study investigated the extent to which syntactic processing deficits and working memory (WM) deficits predict susceptibility to agreement attraction [Bock, K., &; Miller, C. A. (1991). Broken agreement. Cognitive Psychology, 23, 45–93], where speakers tend to erroneously produce plural agreement for a singular subject when another noun in the sentence is grammatically plural. Four brain-injured patients with varying degrees of grammatical and WM deficits completed sentences with local nouns that matched or mismatched in number with the head noun, and that were plausible or implausible subjects. Both aspects of grammatical deficits and the extent of WM deficits predicted the extent of agreement attraction effects. These data are consistent with the proposal that producing an agreeing verb involves a cue-based search in WM for an appropriate controlling noun, which is subject to interference from other elements in memory with similar properties [cf. Badecker, W., &; Kuminiak, F. (2007). Morphology, agreement and working memory retrieval in sentence production: Evidence from gender and case in Slovak. Journal of Memory and Language, 56(1), 65–85. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2006.08.004].     

Concept Abstractness and the Representation of Noun–Noun Combinations

Research on noun–noun combinations has been largely focusing on concrete concepts. Three experiments examined the role of concept abstractness in the representation of noun–noun combinations. In Experiment 1, participants provided written interpretations for phrases constituted by nouns of varying degrees of abstractness. Interpretive focus (the modifier, the head noun, or both) for each noun–noun phrase was evaluated. In Experiment 2, a different group of participants directly indicated which noun, the modifier or the head noun, was the focus of the meaning of each noun–noun phrase. Finally, participants in Experiment 3 assessed similarity of noun–noun phrases with overlapping modifiers. If abstractness of constituent nouns affects information distribution between modifier and head noun, it would accordingly affect similarity ratings for noun–noun phrases with overlapping modifiers. Results showed that the pattern of information distribution within a noun–noun phrase differed between phrases with abstract head nouns and phrases with concrete head nouns. Specifically, the center of representation was more on the head noun side for phrases with concrete head nouns, whereas the center seemed to shift to the direction of the modifier for phrases with abstract head nouns. Some issues related to effects of concept abstractness on noun–noun combinations are discussed.     

Natural language semantics in biproduct dagger categories

Biproduct dagger categories serve as models for natural language. In particular, the biproduct dagger category of finite dimensional vector spaces over the field of real numbers accommodates both the extensional models of predicate calculus and the intensional models of quantum logic. The morphisms representing the extensional meanings of a grammatical string are translated to morphisms representing the intensional meanings such that truth is preserved. Pregroup grammars serve as the tool that transforms a grammatical string into a morphism. The chosen linguistic examples concern negation, relative noun phrases, comprehension and quantifiers.     

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.     

Agrammatic production of subject-verb agreement: the effect of conceptual number.

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that the deficit underlying agrammatic sentence production difficulties can be characterized as a limitation of computational resources and that these resources are not restricted to syntactic processing. This hypothesis was tested by eliciting subject-verb agreement errors in a sentence fragment completion paradigm. Sentence fragments were complex noun phrases, containing a subject (head) noun and a modifying prepositional phrase, containing a "local" noun. We varied the number of "tokens" a singular head noun referred to. Therefore, in one condition, grammatical and conceptual number of the head noun mismatched, whereas these numbers were the same in another condition. In Experiments 1 and 2, we observed an effect of this variable (i.e., more agreement errors when conceptual number was plural and grammatical number singular) in normal controls. Broca's aphasics, on the other hand, showed no effect. Experiment 3 consisted of a sentence/picture matching test. This test showed that the lack of effect with Broca's aphasics cannot be attributed to a comprehension deficit. We argue that these results are incompatible with the notion of a limitation in resources specific for syntactic processing. Instead, we interpret this as the result of a trade-off: Broca's aphasics lack computational resources to take into account both grammatical and conceptual information in morphosyntactic processing and rely on grammatical information only.     

汉语主、宾关系从句加工难度及其核心名词生命性效应

采用眼动追踪实验技术,考查了核心名词生命性取向对汉语主、宾关系从句加工难度调节效应。结果显示:(1)核心名词生命性格局对汉语主、宾关系从句的加工难度有着显著调节作用,具体表现为:当主、从句中的核心名词为"生命性-非生命性"格局时,在主句核心名词、核心动词位置,宾语关系从句加工较为容易;当主、从句中的核心名词为"非生命性-生命性"格局时,在上述位置,两种关系从句加工难度差异不显著;(2)汉语主、宾关系从句加工中核心名词生命性效应主要发生在语义信息提取、论元关系建构阶段,体现出汉语语言的特异性。上述结果支持了题元切适性理论。     

Morphophonological influences on the construction of subject-verb agreement

In three experiments, we investigated whether the production of subject-verb number agreement is affected by the phonological realization of grammatical information. Speakers repeated and completed German or Dutch noun phrases along the lines of The position against the demonstrations. We varied the number of the subject noun (position) and the local noun (demonstrations), as well as the number ambiguity of the subject noun's determiner and the case ambiguity of the local noun phrase. Sentence completions more often contained a verb of the wrong number if the subject and the local nouns mismatched in number than if they matched. Experiments 1 and 2, in German, showed a stronger number mismatch effect if the local noun phrase was ambiguous between the nominative and the accusative cases. Experiment 3, in Dutch, showed a stronger mismatch effect if the subject noun's determiner was ambiguous in number. We conclude that morphophonological factors affect the implementation of agreement during grammatical encoding.     

整体语境和局部语境对代词理解的影响

通过眼动实验,考察了语篇理解中整体语境和局部语境对代词理解的影响。实验一是预备实验,发现名词与动词词组之间关系的典型性不同,整合的速度也不一样。实验二发现,代词的理解不是一次完成的,代词理解的初期受整体语境的语义偏向影响,而不受局部语境的影响。在第二阶段主要受到局部语境的影响。代词的理解过程比较符合Cook（2004）所提出的两阶段模型     

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.     

Sentence contexts as facilitators of noun pair learning in children

Fifth graders were asked to learn noun pairs embedded in sentence contexts varied in terms of verb voice and grammatical relations. Also, their ability to reproduce sentence contexts for nouns was examined. Recall was prompted with both first- and final-position nouns. Results indicated that variations in deep structure grammatical relations but not surface structure complexity influenced noun pair retrieval. Subjects' incidental memory for the deep structure of sentences was substantial, suggesting that learners were noticing and making use of the meaningful relations aroused between nouns by the contexts. Various sentence generative strategies involving verb voice and noun prompt position were noted.     

汉语名词短语产生中的量词一致性效应

目前,语言产生领域的多数研究都集中在口语词语产生方面,许多研究者针对不同的语言系统的特色,对功能词进行了大量跨语言的研究。汉语量词是汉藏语系独有的功能词,本研究采用词图干扰范式,以名词短语和简单名词两种不同的图片命名任务,探讨了汉语量词的产生过程。实验结果发现,在名词短语命名任务下,存在量词的一致性效应;在名词命名的任务下,则不存在这种一致性效应。研究还发现语义干扰效应在两种不同命名任务下出现了分离。语义干扰效应只在命名名词的任务下出现,在命名名词短语的任务下未被发现。     

汉语口语句子产生的语法编码计划单元

语法编码的计划单元作为口语句子产生领域的一个重要命题,近年来备受心理语言学者的关注。本研究利用词图干扰范式下的语义效应,通过两个行为实验探讨了汉语口语句子产生中的语法编码计划单元。实验中要求被试用介词短语做主语的句子或者并列名词短语做主语的句子来命名两个竖直排列的图片,并视觉呈现干扰词。结果表明,对于两个句式而言,在第二个名词上都没有潜伏期的语义干扰效应,只有错误率上的语义干扰效应,而且这个结果并没有随着SOA(目标图片和干扰词开始呈现的时间间隔)的改变(0、150或300ms)而改变。当干扰词与图片同时呈现时(SOA=0)在并列名词短语做主语的句子中,第二个名词上出现了潜伏期的语义促进效应。这些结果说明,语法编码的说法较为宽泛,应具体描述为:词汇选择是严格递进的,而概念激活的计划单元可能是功能短语。     

A purple giraffe is faster than a purple elephant: Inconsistent phonology affects determiner selection in English

The form of a determiner is dependent on different contextual factors: in some languages grammatical number and grammatical gender determine the choice of a determiner variant. In other languages, the phonological onset of the element immediately following the determiner affects selection, too. Previous work has shown that the activation of opposing determiner forms by a noun’s grammatical properties leads to slower naming latencies in a picture naming task, as does the activation of opposing forms by the interaction between a noun’s gender and the phonological context. The present paper addresses the question of whether phonological context alone is sufficient to evoke competition between determiner forms. Participants produced English phrases in which a noun phrase’s phonology required a determiner that was the same as or differed from the determiner required by the noun itself (e.g., a purple giraffe; an orange giraffe). Naming latencies were slower when the phrase-initial determiner differed from the determiner required by the noun in isolation than when the phrase-initial determiner matched the isolated-noun determiner. This was true both for definite and indefinite determiners. The data show that during the production of a determiner–noun phrase, nouns automatically activate the phonological forms of their determiners, which can compete with the phonological forms that are generated by an assimilation rule.     

言语产生和理解中汉语个体量词的通达

个体量词是汉语的特色词类,是名词的限定词。关于个体量词的通达,目前主要有两种假说：直接选择假说和间接选择假说。实验1和实验2采用图词干扰范式考察了名词短语和简单名词产生中个体量词的通达。实验3采用启动范式考察了言语理解中个体量词的通达。结果表明,无论是在言语产生中,还是在言语理解中,都存在量词一致性效应：当启动词和目标词量词一致时反应时短,错误率亦低。整个研究表明,个体量词的通达涉及个体名词系统和个体量词系统,涉及双向选择的组合网络。个体量词的通达是直接选择和间接选择的有机结合。个体量词在名词短语产生的早期就得到了通达。     

Semantic short-term memory and its role in sentence processing: a replication

Previous studies have shown that an aphasic patient (AB) with a semantic short-term memory deficit (STM) had difficulties comprehending and producing sentences with structures that demanded the simultaneous retention of several individual word meanings (Martin & Freedman, 2001a, 2001b; Martin & Romani, 1994; Martin, Shelton, & Yaffee, 1994). The present study provides a replication of these findings with an additional case (ML) who shows a striking dissociation between preserved semantic knowledge and disrupted semantic STM. ML performed poorly on comprehension tasks for sentences that required the retention of single word meanings across several intervening words. In contrast, he did not show an effect of intervening words on processing grammatical relations. ML had difficulty producing adjective-noun phrases, though able to produce the individual nouns and adjectives. These findings support the contention that there is a semantic retention capacity, involved in both comprehension and production, that is separate from semantic knowledge representations.     

Differential effects of grammatical gender and gender inflection in bare noun production

In a new series of experiments with the picture-word interference paradigm, we replicated the grammatical gender interference effect in bare noun production in Italian: naming times are slower to picture-word noun pairs sharing the same gender. This effect is independent from the morphological transparency for gender, but responses are significantly slower when the distracters are transparent for gender. Overall, the pattern of results supports the assumption that in bare noun production grammatical gender is always selected, at least in languages like Italian. We assume that the differential effects of the nominal endings are due to the mechanisms involved in the recognition of grammatical gender of the distracter nouns which are sensitive to the morphological transparency for gender: lexical representation of transparent written words leads to a higher level of activation, thus resulting in stronger gender interference.     

Sentence comprehension in aphasia in two clear case-marking languages

Studies of aphasia in Indo-European languages point to a selective vulnerability of morphological case marking in sentence comprehension. However, in case-marking languages such as German and Serbo-Croatian, the use of case marking to express formal grammatical gender diminishes the clarity of grammatical role marking. In Hungarian and Turkish, there are simple and reliable markings for the direct object. These markings are not linked to grammatical gender. Compared to Hungarian, the Turkish accusative marking is somewhat lower in availability, but somewhat higher in detectability. The processing of these cues by aphasics was tested using the design of MacWhinney, Pléh, and Bates (1985. Cognitive Psychology, 17, 178-209). Simple sentences with two nouns and one transitive verb were read to Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics, anomics, and control subjects in both Turkey and Hungary. The main effect of case marking was extremely strong. However, this was not true for all groups. The aphasics used the case cue far less than the normals, with the Hungarian Wernicke's group showing the greatest loss. Word order variations were largely ignored in all groups whenever the case-marking cue was present. When case marking was absent, Turkish subjects had a clear SOV interpretation for NNV sentences and Hungarians had a clear SVO interpretation for NVN sentences, in accord with basic patterns in their languages. When there was a contrast between the animacy of the two nouns, subjects choose the animate nouns significantly more often. The effect of animacy was particularly strong in Turkish, in accord with basic facts of Turkish grammar. In Hungarian, VNN sentences without case marking were interpreted as VOS when the first noun was inanimate. In Turkish, VNN sentences without case marking were often interpreted as VSO. In general, the aphasic subjects showed a clear preservation of virtually all aspects of their native languages, albeit in a much noisier form. Despite the high reliability of the case-marking cue, it was damaged more than the word order cue in English subjects. The near-chance processing of the case cue by the Wernicke's aphasics in Hungarian can probably be attributed to the relatively greater difficulty involved in detecting the Hungarian accusative suffix.     

Determiner selection in noun phrase production

In 3 experiments, native speakers of German named pictures of 1 or 2 objects by producing singular or plural noun phrases consisting of a definite gender-marked determiner and a noun. When singular and plural determiners differed (masculine and neuter gender), naming latencies were longer for plural utterances than for singular utterances. By contrast, when singular and plural determiners were identical (feminine gender), no such effect was obtained. When participants produced bare nouns, the Gender x Number interaction disappeared. This pattern indicates that during the production of plural definite-determiner noun phrases, singular and plural determiners compete for selection. The resulting constraints on number and gender processing in noun phrase production are discussed in the framework of models of language production.     

Pronoun resolution in Italian: The role of grammatical gender and context

The aim of this self-paced reading study was to investigate the role of grammatical and context-based gender in assigning an antecedent to a pronoun where the antecedent is an epicene or a bigender noun. In Italian, epicene nouns (e.g., vittima, victim) have grammatical gender, whereas bigender nouns (e.g., assistente, assistant) do not have grammatical gender but instead acquire it from the context in which they occur. We devised three different types of context: incongruent contexts (i.e., contexts containing a gender bias that differed from the grammatical gender of the epicene), congruent contexts (i.e., contexts where the gender bias and grammatical gender coincided), and neutral contexts. In the case of epicenes, pronoun resolution was driven by grammatical gender; in the case of bigenders it was driven by the gender assigned by context. The results are discussed in the light of current models of anaphor resolution.