Agrammatic sentence production: is verb second impaired in Dutch?

This study investigates effects of verb movement in nine Dutch-speaking agrammatic aphasics. According to linguistic theory, in verb second languages such as Dutch and German, the verb remains in its clause-final base position in embedded clauses, whereas it moves to second position in main clauses. In recent linguistic accounts of agrammatic sentence production, it has been suggested that the production of sentences with moved verbs is relatively difficult. However, we argue that evidence provided by previous studies on this matter is inconclusive. An experiment is reported in which the production of both types of clauses is compared. No evidence is found that sentences with moved verbs are relatively difficult to produce. In fact, there was a tendency for the base order sentences to be harder. Implications of these findings for theories of normal and agrammatic sentence production are discussed.     

Relative Clause Gap-Filling in Children with Specific Language Impairment

Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have been observed to have production and perception difficulties with sentences containing long-distance dependencies, but it is unclear whether this is due to impairment in grammatical knowledge or in processing mechanisms. The current study addressed this issue by examining automatic on-line gap-filling in relative clauses, as well as off-line comprehension of the same stimulus sentences. As predicted by both knowledge impairment and processing impairment models, SLI children showed lack of immediate gap-filling after the relative clause verb, in comparison to a control group of typically developing children. However, on the off-line measure of comprehension of the same stimuli sentences, SLI children and TD children did not differ qualitatively. This finding is incompatible with knowledge impairment. We interpret the results to show that SLI children have impaired processing mechanisms (such as temporally delayed gap-filling) but are not impaired in their grammatical knowledge.     

Plausibility and subcategorization preference in children's processing of temporarily ambiguous sentences: Evidence from self-paced reading

Three self-paced reading experiments investigated children's processing of temporarily ambiguous sentences. Across the three experiments, subcategorization preference of a verb in a subordinate clause and the semantic plausibility of the misanalysis were manipulated. Reading times in the temporarily ambiguous region and following syntactic disambiguation indicated that children in the age range tested (8 years, 11 months to 12 years, 11 months) routinely misanalyse sentences of the type tested, and their tendency to misanalyse the sentences does not depend on the subcategorization preferences of the initial verb. Additional correlational analyses suggested that subcategory information did affect the degree of difficulty that readers experienced processing the critical noun and matrix verb.     

Children's comprehension of complex sentences

Four tasks were given to children from 4–12 to test their comprehension of complex sentences containing main verbs taking underlying sentences as their complements (Sally knew that she was early). In an imperatives task, very young children interpreted only the complement verb and ignored the complex verb. In a short-term memory task, sentences with two negations usually lost the second not in recall. In direct questioning and anomaly-detection tasks, children tended to make pragmatic inferences and excessively depend on knowledge about the world, as opposed to linguistic information. Overall results showed that even sixth graders had not yet attained adult-level comprehension of complex sentences.     

To end ambiguous sentences

A study of the time required to complete ambiguous sentences suggested that: even though Ss are unaware of the ambiguity while completing sentences, they take more time to complete ambiguous sentences than unambiguous ones: the degree of difficulty in completing ambiguous sentences is related to the linguistic level at which the ambiguity occurs: sentences containing two ambiguities are more difficult to complete than those containing only one, and when these two ambiguities occur at different linguistic levels, these sentences are harder to complete than when both occur within the same linguistic level: ambiguity may affect the grammaticality and relevance of completions; and may cause stuttering and laughter, even without awareness of the ambiguity. An attempt to fit these results to several theories of the processing of ambiguous sentences led us to the conclusion that ambiguity interferes with our understanding of a single meaning of a sentence, and that the degree of interference varies with the linguistic level at which the ambiguity occurs.     

To end ambiguous sentences

A study of the time required to complete ambiguous sentences suggested that: even though Ss are unaware of the ambiguity while completing sentences, they take more time to complete ambiguous sentences than unambiguous ones: the degree of difficulty in completing ambiguous sentences is related to the linguistic level at which the ambiguity occurs: sentences containing two ambiguities are more difficult to complete than those containing only one, and when these two ambiguities occur at different linguistic levels, these sentences are harder to complete than when both occur within the same linguistic level: ambiguity may affect the grammaticality and relevance of completions; and may cause stuttering and laughter, even without awareness of the ambiguity. An attempt to fit these results to several theories of the processing of ambiguous sentences led us to the conclusion that ambiguity interferes with our understanding of a single meaning of a sentence, and that the degree of interference varies with the linguistic level at which the ambiguity occurs.     

Processing complexity and sentence memory: evidence from amnesia.

This study examines sentence memory as a function of linguistic processing complexity in amnesic patients. Sentence length as well as lexical and syntactic complexity were manipulated in two sentence repetition experiments. It was found that the amnesic patients performed considerably worse than the control subjects and that performance decreased: (1) when sentence length was increased by the addition of adjuncts compared to arguments of the verb; (2) when the verb selected more thematic frames; and (3) when sentences involved "empty" argument positions that must be linked to antecedents, particularly across clausal boundaries. These data showed how linguistic complexity affects sentence memory and implied that the amnesic deficit did not involve a generalized difficulty for materials of similar length, rather, the deficit was specific to certain representational types and processing routines.     

Investigating individual differences in children's real-time sentence comprehension using language-mediated eye movements

Individual differences in children's online language processing were explored by monitoring their eye movements to objects in a visual scene as they listened to spoken sentences. Eleven skilled and 11 less-skilled comprehenders were presented with sentences containing verbs that were either neutral with respect to the visual context (e.g., Jane watched her mother choose the cake, where all of the objects in the scene were choosable) or supportive (e.g., Jane watched her mother eat the cake, where the cake was the only edible object). On hearing the supportive verb, the children made fast anticipatory eye movements to the target object (e.g., the cake), suggesting that children extract information from the language they hear and use this to direct ongoing processing. Less-skilled comprehenders did not differ from controls in the speed of their anticipatory eye movements, suggesting normal sensitivity to linguistic constraints. However, less-skilled comprehenders made a greater number of fixations to target objects, and these fixations were of a duration shorter than those observed in the skilled comprehenders, especially in the supportive condition. This pattern of results is discussed in terms of possible processing limitations, including difficulties with memory, attention, or suppressing irrelevant information.     

Word order and finiteness in Dutch and English Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia

The effect of two linguistic factors in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia was examined using Dutch and English subjects. Three tasks were used to test (1). the comprehension and (2). the construction of sentences, where verbs (in Dutch) and verb arguments (in Dutch and English) are in canonical versus non-canonical position; (3). the production of finite versus infinitive verbs. Proportions of errors as well as types of errors made by each aphasic group are similar on the sentence comprehension and sentence anagram tasks. On the verb production task the performance pattern is, again, the same, but the error types are different. The discussion focuses on how the similarities and differences across languages and across aphasia types may be interpreted with respect to the underlying deficit in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia.     

The coordinated interplay of scene, utterance, and world knowledge: evidence from eye tracking

Two studies investigated the interaction between utterance and scene processing by monitoring eye movements in agent–action–patient events, while participants listened to related utterances. The aim of Experiment 1 was to determine if and when depicted events are used for thematic role assignment and structural disambiguation of temporarily ambiguous English sentences. Shortly after the verb identified relevant depicted actions, eye movements in the event scenes revealed disambiguation. Experiment 2 investigated the relative importance of linguistic/world knowledge and scene information. When the verb identified either only the stereotypical agent of a (nondepicted) action, or the (nonstereotypical) agent of a depicted action as relevant, verb-based thematic knowledge and depicted action each rapidly influenced comprehension. In contrast, when the verb identified both of these agents as relevant, the gaze pattern suggested a preferred reliance of comprehension on depicted events over stereotypical thematic knowledge for thematic interpretation. We relate our findings to language comprehension and acquisition theories.     

Effect of lexical cues on the production of active and passive sentences in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia

This study compared the sentence production abilities of individuals with Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia in an attempt to explore the extent to which impaired lexical retrieval impedes sentence production. The ability to produce active and passive reversible and non-reversible sentences was examined when varying amounts of lexical information was provided. The results showed that both Wernicke's and Broca's aphasic individuals were impaired in passive sentence production and that these difficulties were not overcome when lexical cues (the relevant nouns and uninflected verb) were provided. However when auxiliary and past tense morphemes were provided along with the verb stem, production of passive sentences improved drastically for both groups. Analysis of error patterns, however, revealed differences between the two groups, suggesting that Broca's aphasic subjects may find passive sentences difficult due to problems with retrieving the relevant grammatical morphemes. Subjects with Wernicke's aphasia may have been unable to automatically access the passive sentence structure.     

Effects of grammatical categories on children's visual language processing: Evidence from event-related brain potentials

This study examined how school-aged children process different grammatical categories. Event-related brain potentials elicited by words in visually presented sentences were analyzed according to seven grammatical categories with naturally varying characteristics of linguistic functions, semantic features, and quantitative attributes of length and frequency. The categories included nouns, adjectives, verbs, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, and articles. The findings indicate that by the age of 9-10 years, children exhibit robust neural indicators differentiating grammatical categories; however, it is also evident that development of language processing is not yet adult-like at this age. The current findings are consistent with the hypothesis that for beginning readers a variety of cues and characteristics interact to affect processing of different grammatical categories and indicate the need to take into account linguistic functions, prosodic salience, and grammatical complexity as they relate to the development of language abilities.     

Productivity of lexical categories in French-speaking children with cochlear implants

The productivity of lexical categories was studied longitudinally in a sample of 17 young hearing-impaired French-speaking children with cochlear implants. Age of implantation ranged from 22 months to 76 months. Spontaneous speech samples were collected at six-month intervals over a period of 36 months, starting at the one-word stage. Four general measures of their linguistic production (number of utterances, verbal fluency, vocabulary, and grammatical production) as well as 36 specific lexical categories, according to the CHILDES codes, were computed in terms of tokens, i.e., total number of words. Cochlear-implanted children (CI) were compared to a French database of normally hearing children aged 2-4 compiled by the first author. Follow-up results indicate that, at the two-year post-implantation follow-up, noun, and verb morphology was significantly impaired. At the three-year follow-up, the cochlear-implanted group had recovered on adjectives, determiners and nouns, main verbs, and auxiliaries. The two groups differed significantly in processing locative adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs (infinitive verb, modal, and modal lexical), but individual variability within the cochlear-implanted group was substantial. Results are discussed in terms of recovery and developmental trends and variability in the acquisition of lexical categories by French children two years and three years post-implantation.     

汉语母语者英语动词三种屈折变化形式加工机制的差异

采用ERP技术考察了汉语母语者,英语动词三种屈折变化形式加工机制的差异。结果发现,英语动词进行式的屈折变化形式- ing的错误使用诱发了P600成分;完成式的屈折变化形式- ed的错误使用诱发了N400成分;完成式中没有明显屈折变化标识的不规则词的错误使用没有诱发典型的ERP成分。研究结果表明：对于缺乏英语使用环境、母语为汉语的晚期英语学习者来说,屈折变化形式- ing,完成式规则动词的变化形式- ed和没有明显形态变化标识的不规则动词的变化形式具有不同的加工机制,前者可能处于由陈述性记忆系统向程序性记忆系统加工的转变过程中,而后两者更多地由陈述性系统进行加工。这种加工机制的差异可能与动词屈折变化规则的复杂程度有关。     

The kindergarten path effect revisited: children's use of context in processing structural ambiguities

Research with adults has shown that ambiguous spoken sentences are resolved efficiently, exploiting multiple cues--including referential context--to select the intended meaning. Paradoxically, children appear to be insensitive to referential cues when resolving ambiguous sentences, relying instead on statistical properties intrinsic to the language such as verb biases. The possibility that children's insensitivity to referential context may be an artifact of the experimental design used in previous work was explored with 60 4- to 11-year-olds. An act-out task was designed to discourage children from making incorrect pragmatic inferences and to prevent premature and ballistic responses by enforcing delayed actions. Performance on this task was compared directly with the standard act-out task used in previous studies. The results suggest that young children (5 years) do not use contextual information, even under conditions designed to maximize their use of such cues, but that adult-like processing is evident by approximately 8 years of age. These results support and extend previous findings by Trueswell and colleagues (Cognition (1999), Vol. 73, pp. 89-134) and are consistent with a constraint-based learning account of children's linguistic development.     

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.     

Verb processing during sentence comprehension: Contextual impenetrability

This paper examines verb processing during sentence comprehension. We describe two experiments that assess the interaction between verb complexity and the structural information contained in a sentence. Verb complexity is defined in terms of a verb's possible argument structure arrangements—linguistic information arrayed against a verb's entry in the mental lexicon. Normal subjects had to perform a secondary task presented in the immediate vicinity of the verb while listening to a sentence for meaning. Reaction times to this secondary task show that all of a verb's possible argument structures are momentarily and exhaustively activated in the vicinity of the verb, even in sentences that are structurally biased toward one particular argument structure. We thus argue that verb processing in sentences involves a contextually impenetrable subcomponent of the language comprehension system.Program in Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Department of Psychology, Brandeis University.     

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。     

Normative study of the implicit causality of 100 interpersonal verbs in Spanish

This study provides normative data on the implicit causality of interpersonal verbs in Spanish. Two experiments were carried out. In Experiment 1, ratings of the implicit causality of 100 verbs classified into four types (agent-patient, agent-evocator, stimulus-experiencer, and experiencer-stimulus) were examined. An offline task was used in which 105 adults and 163 children had to complete sentences containing one verb. Both age and gender effects in the causal biases were examined. In Experiment 2, reading times for sentences containing 60 verbs were analyzed. An online reading task was used in which 34 adults had to read sentences that were both congruent and incongruent with the implicit causality of the verb. The results support the effect of implicit causality in both adults and children, and they support the taxonomy used.     

动词隐含因果语义对汉语高功能自闭症儿童代词加工的影响

个体在利用动词隐含因果语义线索确定代词所指的过程中会结合动词语义特征和语境信息两个方面,已有研究指出自闭症儿童在语言加工过程中无法有效利用语境信息,本研究采用句子理解任务,考察有无语境支持和不同动词类型（主语隐含型和宾语隐含型）四种条件下,汉语高功能自闭症儿童利用动词隐含因果语义信息加工代词的能力。结果显示,（1）汉语高功能自闭症儿童的代词加工表现显著差于典型发展儿童;（2）语境信息可以帮助被试确定代词所指,且对两组被试成绩的提高程度相当。以上结果表明汉语高功能自闭症儿童之所以无法利用动词的隐含因果语义线索确定代词所指的原因可能是他们对该类动词的语义表征存在问题,而非无法利用语境信息。