Anticipating explanations in relative clause processing

We show that comprehenders’ expectations about upcoming discourse coherence relations influence the resolution of local structural ambiguity. We employ cases in which two clauses share both a syntactic relationship and a discourse relationship, and hence in which syntactic and discourse processing might be expected to interact. An off-line sentence-completion study and an on-line self-paced reading study examined readers’ expectations for high/low relative-clause attachments following implicit-causality and non-implicit causality verbs (John detests/babysits the children of the musician who…). In the off-line study, the widely reported low-attachment preference for English is observed in the non-implicit causality condition, but this preference gives way to more high attachments in the implicit-causality condition in cases in which (i) the verb’s causally implicated referent occupies the high-attachment position and (ii) the relative clause provides an explanation for the event described by the matrix clause (e.g., …who are arrogant and rude). In the on-line study, a similar preference for high attachment emerges in the implicit-causality context—crucially, before the occurrence of any linguistic evidence that the RC does in fact provide an explanation—whereas the low-attachment preference is consistent elsewhere. These findings constitute the first demonstration that expectations about ensuing discourse coherence relationships can elicit full reversals in syntactic attachment preferences, and that these discourse-level expectations can affect on-line disambiguation as rapidly as lexical and morphosyntactic cues.     

Experience and sentence processing: statistical learning and relative clause comprehension

Many explanations of the difficulties associated with interpreting object relative clauses appeal to the demands that object relatives make on working memory. MacDonald and Christiansen [MacDonald, M. C., & Christiansen, M. H. (2002). Reassessing working memory: Comment on Just and Carpenter (1992) and Waters and Caplan (1996). Psychological Review, 109, 35-54] pointed to variations in reading experience as a source of differences, arguing that the unique word order of object relatives makes their processing more difficult and more sensitive to the effects of previous experience than the processing of subject relatives. This hypothesis was tested in a large-scale study manipulating reading experiences of adults over several weeks. The group receiving relative clause experience increased reading speeds for object relatives more than for subject relatives, whereas a control experience group did not. The reading time data were compared to performance of a computational model given different amounts of experience. The results support claims for experience-based individual differences and an important role for statistical learning in sentence comprehension processes.     

Relative clause structure, relative clause perception, and the change from SOV to SVO.

This study presents a view of diachronic change in language, according to which one of the fundamental factors motivating syntactic change is to be found in the conflicting interaction of principles determining the language organization. Specifically, it will be argued that principles of structural nature and principles of perceptual nature are in conflict in languages of the SOV type, because of the relative clause construction. The way in which a relative clause is structured in an SOV language is an obstacle to its effective perceptual processing. It will be argued that this conflict is one of the major factors determining the diachronic change of a language from an OV to a VO typology.     

Relational processing and working memory capacity in comprehension of relative clause sentences

Previous research has indicated that the cognitive load imposed by tasks in various content domains increases with the complexity of the relational information processed. Sentence comprehension entails processing noun-verb relations to determine who did what to whom. The difficulty of object-extracted relative clause sentences might stem from the complex noun-verb relations they entail. Across three studies, participants read 16 types of object- and subject-extracted relative clause sentences at their own pace and then responded to a comprehension question for each sentence. Relational processing was assessed using a premise integration task or a Latin square task. These tasks predicted comprehension of object-relatives before and after controlling for subject-relatives. Working memory (WM) capacity was assessed using reading span or forward and backward digit span tests. WM tasks predicted comprehension of object-relatives before but not after controlling for subject-relatives. Comprehension of object-relatives relied more heavily on a domain-general capacity to process complex relations than on WM capacity.     

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。     

Working memory contributions to relative clause attachment processing: A hierarchical linear modeling analysis

An eye-movement-monitoring experiment tested readers' responses to sentences containing relative clauses that could be attached to one or both of two preceding nouns. Previous experiments with such sentences have indicated that globally ambiguous relative clauses are processed more quickly than are determinately attached relative clauses. Central to the present research, a recent study (Swets, Desmet, Hambrick, & Ferreira, 2007) showed that offline preferences for such sentences differ as a function of working memory capacity. Specifically, both English and Dutch participants' preference for the second of two nouns as the host for the relative clause increased as their working memory capacity increased. In the present study, readers' working memory capacity was measured, and eye movements were monitored. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to determine whether working memory capacity moderated readers' online processing performance. The modeling indicated that determinately attached sentences were harder to process than globally ambiguous sentences, that working memory did not affect processing of the relative clause itself, but that working memory did moderate how easy it was to integrate the relative clause with the preceding sentence context. Specifically, in contrast with the offline results from Swets and colleagues' study, readers with higher working memory capacity were more likely to prefer the first noun over the second noun as the host for the relative clause.     

The influence of only on syntactic processing of "long" relative clause sentences

We report an eye movement experiment investigating the influence of the focus operator only on syntactic processing of "long" relative clause sentences. Paterson, Liversedge, and Underwood (1999) found that readers were garden pathed by "short" reduced relative clause sentences containing the focus operator only . They argued that due to thematic differences between "short" and "long" relative clause sentences, garden path effect might not occur when "long" reduced relative clause sentences are read. Eye-tracking data show that garden path effects found during initial processing of the disambiguating verb of "long" reduced sentences without only were absent or delayed in the case of counterparts with only . We discuss our results in terms of current theories of sentence processing.     

Animacy and competition in relative clause production: a cross-linguistic investigation

This work investigates production preferences in different languages. Specifically, it examines how animacy, competition processes, and language-specific constraints shape speakers' choices of structure. English, Spanish and Serbian speakers were presented with depicted events in which either an animate or inanimate entity was acted upon by an agent. Questions about the affected participant in these events prompted the production of relative clauses identifying these entities (e.g., the bag the woman is punching). Results indicated that in English, animacy plays a strong role in determining the choice of passive structures. In contrast, it plays a less prominent role in Spanish and Serbian structure choices, where more active structures were produced to varying degrees. Critically, the semantic similarity between the agent and the patient of the event correlated with the omission of the agent in all languages, indicating that competition resulted in the agent's inhibition. Similarity also correlated with different functional choices in Spanish. The results suggest that similarity-based competition may influence various stages of production planning but its manifestations are constrained by language-specific grammatical options. Implications for models of sentence production and the relationship between production and comprehension are discussed.     

Cross-structural priming: prepositional phrase attachment primes relative clause attachment

In this paper we show that attachment height (high vs. low attachment) of a modifier to a complex noun phrase (CNP; e.g., "the servant of the actress"), can be primed between dissimilar syntactic structures. In a sentence completion experiment, we found that the attachment height of a prepositional phrase (PP) in the prime sentence primed the attachment height of a relative clause (RC) in the target sentence. This cross-structural priming effect cannot be explained in terms of the priming of specific phrase-structure rules or even sequences of specific phrase-structure rules (Scheepers, 2003), because the attachment of a PP to a CNP is generated by a different phrase-structure rule than the attachment of an RC. However, the present data suggest that the location at which the RC is attached to the CNP is mentally represented, independent of the specific phrase-structure rule that is attached, or by extension, that the abstract hierarchical configuration of the full CNP and the attached RC is represented (Desmet & Declercq, 2006). This is the first demonstration of a cross-structural priming effect that cannot be captured by phrase-structure rules.     

Meaning through syntax: language comprehension and the reduced relative clause construction

A new explanation is proposed for a long standing question in psycholinguistics: Why are some reduced relative clauses so difficult to comprehend? It is proposed that the meanings of some verbs like race are incompatible with the meaning of the reduced relative clause and that this incompatibility makes sentences like The horse raced past the barn fell unacceptable. In support of their hypotheses, the authors show that reduced relatives of The horse raced past the barn fell type occur in naturally produced sentences with a near-zero probability, whereas reduced relatives with other verbs occur with a probability of about 1 in 20. The authors also support the hypotheses with a number of psycholinguistic experiments and corpus studies.     

Testing the online reading effects of emotionality on relative clause attachment

Previous research has shown the impact of the emotional dimension of nouns (i.e., valence and arousal) on the completion of relative clauses (RC) that are preceded by a double antecedent [e.g.,: Someone shot the servant (the first noun phrase, NP1) of the actress (the second noun phrase, NP2) who was on the balcony] (Fraga et al. in Q J Exp Psychol 65:1740–1759, 2012). The present study explored for the first time the role of emotional valence, specifically emotional positive nouns, on RC disambiguation in a self-paced reading experiment. Two types of NP1–NP2 relationships were compared: emotional–neutral vs. neutral–emotional. Results showed NP1 preferences in the emotional–neutral condition, whereas no preferences were found in the neutral–emotional condition. We conclude that during reading, the emotional properties of nouns play a role in disambiguation preferences: RC attachment preferences can be neutralized when emotional factors are manipulated. The results are discussed within the framework of current models of sentence processing and with reference to the controversial differences between comprehension and production.     

Syntactic priming of relative clause attachments: persistence of structural configuration in sentence production

Three sentence completion experiments will be reported in which participants had to generate German equivalents of "the servant of the actress who..." (NP-of-NP-RC) constructions. Target fragments (which were unconstrained as to whether the relative pronoun permitted high or low attachment) were preceded by constrained prime fragments, which were either structurally congruent with the targets (Experiments 1 and 2) or structurally incongruent with the targets (anaphoric adverbial clauses rather than relative clauses (RCs), Experiment 3). While the first two experiments established reliable repetition of RC attachments between primes and targets, Experiment 3 failed to obtain a significant priming effect, indicating that RC attachment priming is dependent on a syntactic overlap between primes and targets. The results suggest a tendency of language producers to retain hierarchical syntactic relations over consecutive trials. Current models of syntactic priming in production do not offer an explanatory mechanism for this kind of observation as they presently stand.     

The on-line resolution of the sentence complement/relative clause ambiguity: evidence from Spanish

Two self-paced reading experiments investigated syntactic ambiguity resolution in Spanish. The experiments examined the way in which Spanish subjects initially interpret sentences that are temporarily ambiguous between a sentence complement and a relative clause interpretation. Experiment 1 examined whether the sentence complement preference found in English is observed in Spanish speaking subjects. In Experiment 2, verbal mood was manipulated in order to study the influence of verb-specific information on sentence processing. Since subcategorization for a subjunctive complement clause is generally assumed to be a lexical property of some verbs, the manipulation of the mood of the embedded verb affords us an interesting and novel way to examine the influence of lexical information on syntactic ambiguity resolution. Experiment 1 showed that Spanish speakers initially interpret the ambiguous that-clause as a sentence complement. Experiment 2 showed that verb-specific information, in particular, the information that specificies that a verb subcategorizes for a subjunctive complement, is accessed and used rapidly and affects the ambiguity resolution process. The results are discussed in relation to current models of sentence processing.     

The influence of clause order,congruency, and probability on the processing of conditionals

Conditional information can be equally asserted in the forms if p, then q (e.g., “if I am ill, I will miss work tomorrow”) and q, if p (e.g., “I will miss work tomorrow, if I am ill”). While this type of clause order manipulation has previously been found to have no influence on the ultimate conclusions participants draw from conditional rules, we used self-paced reading to examine how it affects the real time incremental processing of everyday conditional statements. Experiment 1 revealed that clause order interacts with presuppositional congruency as readers hypothetically represent counterfactual statements. When if p, then q counterfactuals contained a presupposition that was incongruent with prior context, these statements took longer to read than when the presupposition was congruent, but for q, if p conditionals there was no such congruency effect. Experiment 2 revealed that reading times were influenced by the subjective probability of an indicative conditional regardless of clause order, with a penalty observed for low-probability statements relative to high-probability statements in both conditional clause orders. These data reveal a dissociation whereby clause order mediates the effect of suppositional congruency on reading times, but does not mediate the effect of subjective probability.     

The role of animacy in European Portuguese relative clause attachment: evidence from production and comprehension tasks

This work presents an analysis of the role of animacy in attachment preferences of relative clauses to complex noun phrases in European Portuguese (EP). The study of how the human parser solves this kind of syntactic ambiguities has been focus of extensive research. However, what is known about EP is both limited and puzzling. Additionally, as recent studies have stressed the importance of extra-syntactic variables in this process, two experiments were carried out to assess EP attachment preferences considering four animacy conditions: Study 1 used a sentence-completion-task, and Study 2 a self-paced reading task. Both studies indicate a significant preference for high attachment in EP. Furthermore, they showed that this preference was modulated by the animacy of the host NP: if the first host was inanimate and the second one was animate, the parser's preference changed to low attachment preference. These findings shed light on previous results regarding EP and strengthen the idea that, even in early stages of processing, the parser seems to be sensitive to extra-syntactic information.     

Discourse in aphasia: Integration deficits in processing reference

The present study investigated moderately impaired aphasic subjects' ability to integrate information across sentences by having them identify antecedents for ambiguous pronouns in brief narratives. In order to disambiguate the pronouns, the subjects had to consult either textual cues and/or extratextual cues. In addition, the subjects' ability to retrieve factual information was measured by having them identify explicitly stated noun referents. The results show that the aphasic subjects had significant difficulty using textual cues to resolve referents when the referents were not readily accessible through world knowledge. The patients had little difficulty interpreting referents which were recoverable from world knowledge or were stated explicitly. The explanatory power of world knowledge effects, grammatical class effects, memory effects, and linguistic integration effects in accounting for the deficit pattern observed is considered.     

Effects of relative embodiment in lexical and semantic processing of verbs

Research examining semantic richness effects in visual word recognition has shown that multiple dimensions of meaning are activated in the process of word recognition (e.g., Yap et al., 2012). This research has, however, been limited to nouns. In the present research we extended the semantic richness approach to verb stimuli in order to investigate how verb meanings are represented. We characterized a dimension of relative embodiment for verbs, based on the bodily sense described by Borghi and Cimatti (2010), and collected ratings on that dimension for 687 English verbs. The relative embodiment ratings revealed that bodily experience was judged to be more important to the meanings of some verbs (e.g., dance, breathe) than to others (e.g., evaporate, expect). We then tested the effects of relative embodiment and imageability on verb processing in lexical decision (Experiment 1), action picture naming (Experiment 2), and syntactic classification (Experiment 3). In all three experiments results showed facilitatory effects of relative embodiment, but not imageability: latencies were faster for relatively more embodied verbs, even after several other lexical variables were controlled. The results suggest that relative embodiment is an important aspect of verb meaning, and that the semantic richness approach holds promise as a strategy for investigating other aspects of verb meaning.