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.     

Interface Problems: Structural Constraints on Interpretation?

Five experiments investigated the interpretation of quantified noun phrases in relation to discourse structure. They demonstrated, using questionnaire and on-line reading techniques, that readers in English prefer to give a quantified noun phrase in (VP-external) subject position a presuppositional interpretation, in which the noun phrase limits or restricts the interpretation of an already available set, rather than giving it a nonpresuppositional or existential interpretation, in which it introduces completely new entities into the discourse. Experiment 1 showed that readers prefer a presuppositional interpretation of three ships over the existential interpretation in Five ships appeared on the horizon. Three ships sank. Experiment 2 showed longer reading times in sentences that are disambiguated toward the existential interpretation than in sentences that permit the presuppositional interpretation. Experiment 3 suggested that the presuppositional preference is greater when the phrase three ships occurs outside the verb phrase than when it occurs inside the verb phrase. Experiment 4 showed that Korean subjects marked with a topic marker received more presuppositional interpretations than subjects marked with a nominative marker. Experiment 5 showed that German subjects in VP-external (but nontopic) position received more presuppositional interpretations than VP-internal subjects. The results suggest the syntactic position of a phrase is one determinant of its interpretation, as expected according to the mapping hypothesis of Diesing (1992).This research was supported in part by grants HD-18708 and HD-17246 to the University of Massachusetts. Rayner was also supported by a Research Scientist Award (MH01255).     

The influence of semantic fit on on-line sentence processing

The interactive influence of verb complement preferences and noun phrase semantic fit on resolution of temporary syntactic ambiguity was investigated in an eye movement experiment. The present semantic fit manipulation included noun phrases that fit well as direct objects of the verbs that they followed and noun phrases that were possible but less likely direct objects of the verbs in question. This contrasted with existing research on the use of verb complement preferences and semantic fit during sentence processing, in which processing of noun phrases that are possible direct objects has been compared with processing of noun phrases that are not possible direct objects of the verbs that they follow. Verb complement preference information and noun phrase semantic fit interacted at early stages of on-line sentence processing. Implications of these results for interactive and structural models of sentence processing are discussed.     

Lexical guidance in sentence processing: a note on Adams, Clifton, and Mitchell (1998)

Mitchell (1987) conducted a self-paced reading experiment that showed that people experienced difficulty reading a noun phrase when it immediately followed an intransitive verb. From this, he argued for a two-stage theory of parsing, in which verb subcategorization information is initially ignored. In response, Adams, Clifton, and Mitchell (1998) found no evidence to support this claim in an eye-tracking experiment and argued that Mitchell's segmentation procedure distorted the parsing process. We report an eye-tracking experiment, in which materials similar to those in Adams et al., but with longer noun phrases, were used, that showed a pattern of difficulty similar to Mitchell's findings. Hence, Mitchell's results did not depend on the use of an artificial method of presentation. The results cast further doubt on the adequacy of constraint-based accounts of parsing.     

The role of noun imagery in the speed of processing the grammaticality of adjective-noun phrases

This experiment investigated speed of processing the grammaticality of phrases consisting of the adjective “one” or “two” followed by a singular or plural noun. The subject’s task was to press one of two keys, depending upon whether the phrase was grammatically correct or incorrect. There were eight types of phrases, formed by the factorial combinations of singular or plural adjectives, singular or plural nouns, and high or low noun imageD’. These served as within-subjects variables. Between-subjects variables were the factorial combinations of sex of subject, duration of stimulus phrase (.2 or 2.5 sec), and hand assigned to the correct-grammar key. A fourth between-subjects variable was whether or not the subject reported using an artificial phrase-scanning strategy to determine grammaticality. Correct grammar, singular noun form, high noun imagery, and reported use of the strategy all produced highly significant reductions in reaction times. Only 1% of the interactions were significant. A multistage serial processing model that could be based upon Sternberg’s additive factor paradigm or even Donders’ subtraction method was found to be highly successful in describing the results.     

The difficult mountain: enriched composition in adjective–noun phrases

When readers need to go beyond the straightforward compositional meaning of a sentence (i.e., when enriched composition is required), costly additional processing is the norm. However, this conclusion is based entirely on research that has looked at enriched composition between two phrases or within the verb phrase (e.g., the verb and its complement in . . . started the book . . .) where there is a discrepancy between the semantic expectations of the verb and the semantics of the noun. We carried out an eye-tracking experiment investigating enriched composition within a single noun phrase, as in the difficult mountain. As compared with adjective–noun phrases that allow a straightforward compositional interpretation (the difficult exercise), the coerced phrases were more difficult to process. These results indicate that coercion effects can be found in the absence of a typing violation and within a single noun phrase.     

Plausibility and argument structure in sentence comprehension

In two experiments, we investigated how reading time was affected by the plausibility of the prepositional phrase in subject-verb-noun-phrase-prepositional-phrase sentences, and the status of the prepositional phrase as argument versus adjunct of the verb. Highly plausible prepositional phrases were read faster than less plausible ones, and argument prepositional phrases were read faster than adjuncts. These effects appeared both in a self-paced reading experiment and in an experiment that measured eye movements during normal reading. The effects of plausibility were substantially larger and longer lasting than the effects of argument status, but both appeared very early in the reading of the prepositional phrase. The implications of these effects for models of parsing and sentence interpretation are discussed.     

Experience and grammatical agreement: Statistical learning shapes number agreement production

A robust result in research on the production of grammatical agreement is that speakers are more likely to produce an erroneous verb with phrases such as the key to the cabinets, with a singular noun followed by a plural one, than with phrases such as the keys to the cabinet, where a plural noun is followed by a singular. These asymmetries are thought to reflect core language production processes. Previous accounts have attributed error patterns to a syntactic number feature present on plurals but not singulars. An alternative approach is presented in which a process similar to structural priming contributes to the error asymmetry via speakers’ past experiences with related agreement constructions. A corpus analysis and two agreement production studies test this account. The results suggest that agreement production is shaped by statistical learning from past language experience. Implications for accounts of agreement are discussed.     

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).     

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.     

Interpreting conjoined noun phrases and conjoined clauses: Collective versus distributive preferences

Two experiments are reported that show that introducing event participants in a conjoined noun phrase (NP) favours a single event (collective) interpretation, while introducing them in separate clauses favours a separate events (distributive) interpretation. In Experiment 1, acceptability judgements were speeded when the bias of a predicate toward separate events versus a single event matched the presumed bias of how the subjects' referents were introduced (as conjoined noun phrases or in conjoined clauses). In Experiment 2, reading of a phrase containing an anaphor following conjoined noun phrases was facilitated when the anaphor was they, relative to when it was neither/each of them; the opposite pattern was found when the anaphor followed conjoined clauses. We argue that comprehension was facilitated when the form of an anaphor was appropriate for how its antecedents were introduced. These results address the very general problem of how we individuate entities and events when presented with a complex situation and show that different linguistic forms can guide how we construe a situation. The results also indicate that there is no general penalty for introducing the entities or events separately-in distinct clauses as "split" antecedents.     

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.     

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.     

Lexical and Prosodic Effects on Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution in Aphasia

The purpose of this study was to determine whether and when individuals with aphasia and healthy controls use lexical and prosodic information during on-line sentence comprehension. Individuals with aphasia and controls (n = 12 per group) participated in a self-paced listening experiment. The stimuli were early closure sentences, such as "While the parents watched(,) the child sang a song." Both lexical and prosodic cues were manipulated. The cues were biased toward the subject- or object- of the ambiguous noun phrase (the child). Thus, there were two congruous conditions (in which both lexical cues and prosodic cues were consistent) and two incongruous conditions (in which lexical and prosodic cues conflicted). The results showed that the people with aphasia had longer listening times for the ambiguous noun phrase (the child) when the cues were conflicting, rather than consistent. The controls showed effects earlier in the sentence, at the subordinate verb (watched or danced). Both groups showed evidence of reanalysis at the main verb (sang). These effects demonstrate that the aphasic group was sensitive to the lexical and prosodic cues, but used them on a delayed time course relative to the control group.     

Some attractions of verb agreement

In English, words like scissors are grammatically plural but conceptually singular, while words like suds are both grammatically and conceptually plural. Words like army can be construed plurally, despite being grammatically singular. To explore whether and how congruence between grammatical and conceptual number affected the production of subject-verb number agreement in English, we elicited sentence completions for complex subject noun phrases like The advertisement for the scissors. In these phrases, singular subject nouns were followed by distractor words whose grammatical and conceptual numbers varied. The incidence of plural attraction (the use of plural verbs after plural distractors) increased only when distractors were grammatically plural, and revealed no influence from the distractors' number meanings. Companion experiments in Dutch offered converging support for this account and suggested that similar agreement processes operate in that language. The findings argue for a component of agreement that is sensitive primarily to the grammatical reflections of number. Together with other results, the evidence indicates that the implementation of agreement in languages like English and Dutch involves separable processes of number marking and number morphing, in which number meaning plays different parts.     

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.     

Interpreting conjoined noun phrases and conjoined clauses: Collective versus distributive preferences

Two experiments are reported that show that introducing event participants in a conjoined noun phrase (NP) favours a single event (collective) interpretation, while introducing them in separate clauses favours a separate events (distributive) interpretation. In Experiment 1, acceptability judgements were speeded when the bias of a predicate toward separate events versus a single event matched the presumed bias of how the subjects' referents were introduced (as conjoined noun phrases or in conjoined clauses). In Experiment 2, reading of a phrase containing an anaphor following conjoined noun phrases was facilitated when the anaphor was they, relative to when it was neither/each of them; the opposite pattern was found when the anaphor followed conjoined clauses. We argue that comprehension was facilitated when the form of an anaphor was appropriate for how its antecedents were introduced. These results address the very general problem of how we individuate entities and events when presented with a complex situation and show that different linguistic forms can guide how we construe a situation. The results also indicate that there is no general penalty for introducing the entities or events separately—in distinct clauses as “split” antecedents.     

Spanish-English L2 speakers' use of subcategorization bias information in the resolution of temporary ambiguity during second language reading

Using a self-paced moving window reading paradigm, we examine the degree to which structural commitments made while 60 Spanish-English L2 speakers read syntactically ambiguous sentences in their second language (L2) are constrained by the verb's lexical entry about its preferred structural environment (i.e., subcategorization bias). The ambiguity under investigation arises because a noun phrase immediately following a verb can be parsed as either the direct object of the verb 'The CIA director confirmed the rumor when he testified before Congress', or as the subject of an embedded complement 'The CIA director confirmed the rumor could mean a security leak'. In an experiment with 59 monolingual English participants, we replicate the findings reported in the previous literature demonstrating that native speakers are guided by subcategorization bias information during sentence interpretation. In a bilingual experiment, we then show that L2 subcategorization biases influence L2 sentence interpretation. The results indicate that L2 speakers keep track of the relative frequencies of verb-subcategorization alternatives and use this information when building structure in the L2.     

Lexical guidance in sentence processing?

An eyetracking experiment was conducted to explore a self-paced reading effect reported by Mitchell (1987). Mitchell found that a noun phrase (NP) was read slowly when it immediately followed an intransitive verb, as long as the verb and NP appeared in the same presentation region. This effect has been used to support the claim that verb subcategorization information is not used initially in sentence parsing. However, the effect did not appear in the eyetracking experiment reported in the present paper, supporting criticisms that Mitchell’s segmentation procedure distorted the parsing process.