从讲话者和听话者两个角度看韵律的句法解歧

综述了近年来韵律句法解歧方面的一些研究。首先介绍了韵律特征及其作用;其次,简单介绍了句法歧义及其加工模型;然后从讲话者和听话者两个角度,分析了讲话者在自然的情境中是否自发稳定的生成韵律线索,以及听话者是否能够即时的使用韵律信息引导最初的句法分析两个问题,并简要地阐述了汉语韵律和句法的独特特点以及国内的相关研究;最后,初步探讨了进行汉语相应研究应该注意的问题     

The influence of prosodic structure on the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguities

This paper investigates the influence of prosodic structure on the process of sentence comprehension, with a specific focus on the relative contributions of syntactic and prosodic information to the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. We argue that prosodic structure provides an initial memory representation for spoken sentences, and that information from this prosodic representation is available to inform syntactic parsing decisions. This view makes three predictions for the processing of temporary syntactic ambiguity: 1. When prosodic and syntactic boundaries coincide, syntactic processing should be facilitated. 2. When prosodic boundaries are placed at misleading points in syntactic structure, syntactic processing should show interference effects. 3. The processing difficulties that have been reliably demonstrated in reading experiments for syntactically complex sentences should disappear when those sentences are presented with a felicitous prosodic structure in listening experiments. These predictions were confirmed by series of experiments measuring end-of-sentence comprehension time and cross-modal naming time for sentences with temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. Sentences with coinciding or conflicting prosodic and syntactic boundaries were compared to a prosodic baseline condition.This research was supported in part by NIMH grant R29 MH51768 to the first author and NIMH grant T32 MH19729 to the Northeastern University Psychology Department.     

Prosodic facilitation in the resolution of syntactic ambiguities in subjects with left and right hemisphere damage

The purpose of this study was to determine if prosody facilitates the comprehension of sentences containing temporary syntactic ambiguities in control, and left (LHD) and right hemisphere damaged (RHD) subjects. To test for effects of prosodic facilitation, sentences were created where prosodic boundaries coincided with (cooperating), were absent (baseline), or conflicted (conflicting) with syntactic boundaries in three response times (RTs) experiments. Despite differences in overall RTs and response accuracy for each group, all three groups responded faster and more accurately to sentences in the cooperating than in the baseline and conflicting conditions across experiments, indicating that prosody facilitates syntactic parsing in brain-damaged subjects just as it does with normal control subjects. Results are discussed in relation to psycholinguistic theories of syntactic parsing and neurolinguistic theories of hemispheric specialization in processing the acoustic properties of prosodic structures.     

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.     

Prosody and parsing in coordination structures

The effect of prosodic boundary cues on the off-line disambiguation and on-line parsing of coordination structures was examined. It was found that relative clauses were attached to coordinated object noun phrases in preference to second conjuncts in sentences like: The lawyer greeted the powerful barrister and the wise judge who was/were walking to the courtroom. Naive speakers signalled the syntactic contrast between the two structures by a prosodic break between the conjuncts when the relative clause was attached to the second conjunct. Listeners were able to use this prosodic information in both off-line syntactic disambiguation and on-line syntactic parsing. The findings are compatible with a model in which prosody has a strong immediate effect on parsing. It is argued that the current experimental design has avoided confounds present in earlier studies on the on-line integration of prosodic and syntactic information.     

Immediate use of prosody and context in predicting a syntactic structure

Numerous studies have reported an effect of prosodic information on parsing but whether prosody can impact even the initial parsing decision is still not evident. In a visual world eye-tracking experiment, we investigated the influence of contrastive intonation and visual context on processing temporarily ambiguous relative clause sentences in Japanese. Our results showed that listeners used the prosodic cue to make a structural prediction before hearing disambiguating information. Importantly, the effect was limited to cases where the visual scene provided an appropriate context for the prosodic cue, thus eliminating the explanation that listeners have simply associated marked prosodic information with a less frequent structure. Furthermore, the influence of the prosodic information was also evident following disambiguating information, in a way that reflected the initial analysis. The current study demonstrates that prosody, when provided with an appropriate context, influences the initial syntactic analysis and also the subsequent cost at disambiguating information. The results also provide first evidence for pre-head structural prediction driven by prosodic and contextual information with a head-final construction.     

Constituent Length Affects Prosody and Processing for a Dative NP Ambiguity in Korean

Two sentence processing experiments on a dative NP ambiguity in Korean demonstrate effects of phrase length on overt and implicit prosody. Both experiments controlled non-prosodic length factors by using long versus short proper names that occurred before the syntactically critical material. Experiment 1 found that long phrases induce different prosodic phrasing than short phrases in a read-aloud task and change the preferred interpretation of globally ambiguous sentences. It also showed that speakers who have been told of the ambiguity can provide significantly different prosody for the two interpretations, for both lengths. Experiment 2 verified that prosodic patterns found in first-pass pronunciations predict self-paced reading patterns for silent reading. The results extend the coverage of the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis [Fodor, J Psycholinguist Res 27:285–319, 1998; Prosodic disambiguation in silent reading. In M. Hirotani (Ed.), NELS 32 (pp. 113–132). Amherst, MA: GLSA Publications, 2002] to another construction and to Korean. They further indicate that strong syntactic biases can have rapid effects on the formulation of implicit prosody.     

Sensitivity to prosodic structure in left- and right-hemisphere-damaged individuals

An experiment was conducted in order to determine whether left- (LHD) and right-hemisphere-damaged (RHD) patients exhibit sensitivity to prosodic information that is used in syntactic disambiguation. Following the work of, a cross-modal lexical decision task was performed by LHD and RHD subjects, as well as by adults without brain pathology (NC). Subjects listened to sentences with attachment ambiguities with either congruent or incongruent prosody, while performing a visual lexical decision task. Results showed that each of the unilaterally damaged populations differed from each other, as well as from the NCs in terms of sensitivity regarding prosodic cues. Specifically, the RHD group was insensitive to sentence prosody as a whole. This was in contrast to the LHD patients, who responded to the prosodic manipulation, but in the unexpected direction. Results are discussed in terms of current hypotheses regarding the hemispheric lateralization of prosodic cues.     

Processing focus structure and implicit prosody during reading: differential ERP effects

Several recent studies have shown that focus structural representations influence syntactic processing during reading, while other studies have shown that implicit prosody plays an important role in the understanding of written language. Up until now, the relationship between these two processes has been mostly disregarded. The present study disentangles the roles of focus structure and accent placement in reading by reporting event-related brain potential (ERP) data on the processing of contrastive ellipses. The results reveal a positive-going waveform (350-1300 ms) that correlates with focus structural processing and a negativity (450-650 ms) interpreted as the correlate of implicit prosodic processing. The results suggest that the assignment of focus as well as accent placement are obligatory processes during reading.     

The neural underpinnings of prosody in autism

This study examines the processing of prosodic cues to linguistic structure and to affect, drawing on fMRI and behavioral data from 16 high-functioning adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and 11 typically developing controls. Stimuli were carefully matched on pitch, intensity, and duration, while varying systematically in conditions of affective prosody (angry versus neutral speech) and grammatical prosody (questions versus statement). To avoid conscious attention to prosody, which normalizes responses in young people with ASD, the implicit comprehension task directed attention to semantic aspects of the stimuli. Results showed that when perceiving prosodic cues, both affective and grammatical, activation of neural regions was more generalized in ASD than in typical development, and areas recruited reflect heightened reliance on cognitive control, reading of intentions, attentional management, and visualization. This broader recruitment of executive and "mind-reading" brain areas for a relative simple language-processing task may be interpreted to suggest that speakers with high-functioning autism (HFA) have developed less automaticity in language processing and may also suggest that "mind-reading" or theory of mind deficits are intricately bound up in language processing. Data provide support for both a right-lateralized as well as a bilateral model of prosodic processing in typical individuals, depending upon the function of the prosodic information.     

The neural underpinnings of prosody in autism

This study examines the processing of prosodic cues to linguistic structure and to affect, drawing on fMRI and behavioral data from 16 high-functioning adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and 11 typically developing controls. Stimuli were carefully matched on pitch, intensity, and duration, while varying systematically in conditions of affective prosody (angry versus neutral speech) and grammatical prosody (questions versus statement). To avoid conscious attention to prosody, which normalizes responses in young people with ASD, the implicit comprehension task directed attention to semantic aspects of the stimuli. Results showed that when perceiving prosodic cues, both affective and grammatical, activation of neural regions was more generalized in ASD than in typical development, and areas recruited reflect heightened reliance on cognitive control, reading of intentions, attentional management, and visualization. This broader recruitment of executive and “mind-reading” brain areas for a relative simple language-processing task may be interpreted to suggest that speakers with high-functioning autism (HFA) have developed less automaticity in language processing and may also suggest that “mind-reading” or theory of mind deficits are intricately bound up in language processing. Data provide support for both a right-lateralized as well as a bilateral model of prosodic processing in typical individuals, depending upon the function of the prosodic information.     

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     

Prosodic phrasing is central to language comprehension

Words, like musical notes, are grouped together into phrases by their rhythmic and durational properties as well as their tonal pitch. This 'prosodic phrasing' affects the understanding of sentences. Many processing studies of prosody have investigated sentences with a single, grammatically required prosodic boundary, which might be interpreted strictly locally, as a signal to end the current syntactic unit. Recent results suggest, however, that the global pattern of prosodic phrasing is what matters in sentence comprehension, not just the occurrence or size of a single local boundary. In this article we claim that the impact of prosodic boundaries depends on the other prosodic choices a speaker has made. We speculate that prosody serves to hold distinct linguistic representations together in memory.     

Pupillometry reveals processing load during spoken language comprehension

This study investigated processing effort by measuring peoples’ pupil diameter as they listened to sentences containing a temporary syntactic ambiguity. In the first experiment, we manipulated prosody. The results showed that when prosodic structure conflicted with syntactic structure, pupil diameter reliably increased. In the second experiment, we manipulated both prosody and visual context. The results showed that when visual context was consistent with the correct interpretation, prosody had very little effect on processing effort. However, when visual context was inconsistent with the correct interpretation, prosody had a large effect on processing effort. The interaction between visual context and prosody shows that visual context has an effect on online processing and that it can modulate the influence of linguistic sources of information, such as prosody. Pupillometry is a sensitive measure of processing effort during spoken language comprehension.     

The prosodic property of lexical stress affects eye movements during silent reading

The present study examined lexical stress in the context of silent reading by measuring eye movements. We asked whether lexical stress registers in the eye movement record and, if so, why. The study also tested the implicit prosody hypothesis, or the idea that readers construct a prosodic contour during silent reading. Participants read high and low frequency target words with one or two stressed syllables embedded in sentences. Lexical stress affected eye movements, such that words with two stressed syllables took longer to read and received more fixations than words with one stressed syllable. Findings offer empirical support for the implicit prosody hypothesis and suggest that stress assignment may be the completing phase of lexical access, at least in terms of eye movement control.     

The extraction of structure during reading: Evidence from reading prosody

According to the structural approach to reading, the extraction of structure precedes the analysis of meaning and paves the way for it. In this study, reading prosody was used to examine this proposition. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that reading prosody produced on line reflects the early extraction of structure. In Experiment 1, readers were successful in assigning natural prosody to unfamiliar text immediately upon its reading. Experiment 2 showed that the prosodic patterns applied are tuned to the structure of the sentence and are largely indifferent to the content of the sentence or to its semantic coherence. The results join with other findings in speech production and comprehension in supporting the precedence of structure to meaning in reading.     

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.