| C1 |
Verb bias in individuals with developmental language disorder
Short Abstract We examined verb bias sensitivity in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) relative to typically developing (TD) peers. Participants were 37 children, 7-9 years, 17 of whom were classified as having DLD. We employed mouse tracking in a visual world paradigm to obtain explicit and implicit measures of verb bias. Children showed sensitivity to verb bias in implicit but not explicit measures, with no differences between diagnostic groups. We found age effects when comparing results to a previous study with adults with and without DLD. Findings suggest protracted development for learning to weigh cues during sentence processing.
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Jessica Hall, Amanda Owen Van Horne, and Thomas Farmer |
| C2 |
Cross-linguistic influence on the interpretation of ambiguous wh-questions: L1 transfer but no L1 attrition
Short Abstract This study explores the extent to which German-English bilinguals’ interpretation of ambiguous wh-questions in German (e.g., Was jagt die Katze? ‘What chases the cat/What does the cat chase’) is influenced by the interpretation of their word-order-equivalent in English. Findings from a VWP study show such cross-linguistic influence in the final responses of L1-English L2 learners of German, but not among L1-German expats in the U.S. (aka ‘attriters’), whose on- and offline performance did not differ from L1-German speakers in Germany. These findings present evidence of resilience to L1 attrition at the level of syntactic processing even after long-term immersion.
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Theres Grüter and Holger Hopp |
| C3 |
The production of Object Relative clauses in Italian-speaking children: a syntactic priming study
Short Abstract "For children, Object Relative (OR) clauses with two animate noun phrases are difficult to comprehend and to produce across a number of languages. In the present study, we designed a new production task to explore the effects of syntactic priming on the production of ORs in Italian-speaking children aged 6. The results of the study demonstrate that children can be primed to produce ORs, and that they have underlying representations for ORs with two animate noun phrases. Our results are in line with previous studies suggesting that children have abstract representations for several types of syntactic structures."
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Claudia Manetti and Carla Contemori |
| C4 |
Learning subtle syntactic constraints in L2: Evidence from Norwegian-English bilinguals
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Dave Kush and Anne Dahl |
| C5 |
Effects of Misanalysed Filler-gap Dependencies in L1 and L2 Language Comprehension
Short Abstract Misinterpretation often lingers in garden-path sentences (Christianson et al., 2001), but how this influences filler-gap dependencies is little-known. We explored this issue by testing filler-gap dependencies like "Tom bought the novel which the girl read very happily about. vs. Tom bought the novel about which the girl read very happily.". In Experiment 1, natives/non-natives answered questions (Did the girl read the novel?). In Experiment 2, they read texts testing how the temporary ambiguity was resolved. These experiments showed that natives/non-natives often persist with misinterpretation in filler-gap dependencies due to a failure to erase the memory trace of the initially-assigned interpretation.
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Hiroki Fujita and Ian Cunnings |
| C6 |
Information structure and the processing of word order variation in the first and second language.
Short Abstract Presenting sentences with non-canonical word orders within contexts that meet their discourse requirements can reduce their processing cost because they are comprehended with greater ease when presented with a given-new information structure pattern. There is diverging evidence about whether the effects of information structure are the same in the processing of word order variation in the L2. This eye-tracking study explores how information structure affects the online comprehension of active (canonical) and passive (non-canonical) constructions in L2-English learners and monolinguals group. Results suggest that learners use discourse patterns in the comprehension of both canonical and non-canonical structures in their L2.
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Priscila Lopez-Beltrán, Michael Johns, Paola Dussias, Cristóbal Lozano and Alfonso Palma |
| C7 |
Processing Correlates of Verb Semantic Complexity
Short Abstract Predicate decomposition theory and construction grammar make distinctive assumptions of verb representations. A lexical decision task and a self-paced reading task were conducted to test verb reading times against the two hypotheses. Results from both experiments have supported the hypothesis of construction grammar.
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Tun Scarlett Hao |
| C8 |
Using word2vec to predict human language processing
Short Abstract Reading is sensitive to the semantic relationship between a word and upstream linguistic information (Luke & Christianson, 2016). This similarity has typically been quantified with latent semantic analysis (Landauer & Dumais, 1997). This study demonstrates the usefulness of word2vec for predicting semantic processing in eyetracking by testing how different corpus genres and model parameters affect the predictive power of word2vec-based semantic similarity scores. The best models of reading times incorporate multiple measures of semantic similarity, showing both that different models learn slightly different things from the same data and that readers use many types of semantic representations during reading.
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Cassandra L. Jacobs and Katrin Erk |
| C9 |
What Processing and Computational Modeling Can Tell Us about Syntax: The Case of Persian Relative Clauses
Short Abstract "In this abstract, we exploit a computationally specified parsing model as a bridge between processing results and theoretical syntax (Kobele, 2013), in order to discriminate between competing syntactic analyses of complex phenomena. We adopt a top-down parser for Minimalist grammars (Stabler 2013), combined with a set of metrics measuring memory usage --- a model which has been shown to successfully explain processing difficulty across a variety of phenomena (Graf et al., 2017) As a case study, we look at attachment ambiguities in Persian relative clauses, comparing Kayne's raising analysis of RCs (Kayne, 1994) to Karimi's base-generation approach (Karimi, 2001)."
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Nazila Shafiei and Aniello De Santo |
| C10 |
Individual differences guide pronoun interpretation in semantically constraining contexts
Short Abstract Syntactic and semantic cues influence pronoun interpretation. In "Ana threw the ball to Liz. She…", listeners tend to assign the pronoun to the goal (Liz), which conflicts with the bias to assign the pronoun to the subject. In two experiments, we investigate whether an individual’s print exposure (how much they read) affects the learning of these biases. Results show that print exposure correlates with use of the subject bias, but not the goal bias. This suggests that the subject bias, and not the goal, may be learned from exposure, supporting models in which referential probability explains pronoun comprehension.
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Valerie Langlois and Jennifer Arnold |
| C11 |
Reassessing the evidence for syntactic adaptation from self-paced reading studies
Short Abstract Recent self-paced reading (SPR) studies have found that there is a decrease in garden path effect over the course of the experiment (Fine et al 2013; Fine & Jaeger, 2016). This decrease has been interpreted as evidence for syntactic adaptation. With two SPR experiments we demonstrate that this interpretation is not necessarily valid. While we successfully replicated the decrease in garden path effect over time, we failed to find evidence that this was driven by syntactic adaptation. Rather, we demonstrate that this decrease was likely driven by asymmetric effects of task adaptation that impacts difficult sentences more than easy ones.
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Grusha Prasad and Tal Linzen |
| C12 |
Aspect is distinct from time reference: An ERP study of the perfective marker -le in Mandarin Chinese
Short Abstract Past neurolinguistic experiments (ERP), conducted on tense-prominent languages (Spanish, Dutch), suggest different processes for time reference and aspect. Concerning aspect-prominent languages (Mandarin), grammatical aspect violation needs syntactic repair, yielding a P600. However, the question of time reference processing in Mandarin is not clear. Precisely, the Mandarin perfective verbal morpheme -le is related (but not restricted) to past time reference. Does its violation by aspectual means need similar processes as when it is violated due to incongruent time reference? Our results revealed different patterns for processing time reference (left anterior negativity) and aspect (P600), despite the use of the same morpheme.
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COLLART Aymeric and CHAN Shiaohui |
| C13 |
Uniqueness vs. familiarity in interpreting definite descriptions
Short Abstract Uniqueness theories of definite descriptions claim that a description is felicitous IFF a unique referent satisfies its literal meaning (Russell, 1905; Evans, 1977; Lobner, 1985). Orthogonally, familiarity theories claim that reference succeeds IFF the referent has been made salient in the preceding discourse context (Kamp, 1981; Heim, 1982). Here, we experimentally investigate the process by which hearers interpret descriptions in English to moderate between these two theories of definite descriptions. We then implement a Rational Speech Acts model (RSA; Frank \& Goodman, 2012), and discuss in what ways hearers adhere to and diverge from rationality.
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Sadhwi Srinivas and Kyle Rawlins |
| C14 |
Convergent probabilistic cues do not trigger syntactic adaptation
Short Abstract Previous work has ostensibly shown that readers rapidly adapt to a priori less predicted structures after exposure to unbalanced statistical input (e.g. a high number of garden path sentences) and that these readers grow to disfavor the a priori more predicted structure after exposure. However, recent work has failed to replicate such findings. The current study uses three self-paced reading experiments to test whether co-occurring cues (preceding semantic cues and font color) can help facilitate adaptation to reduced relative/main verb garden path sentences. Results suggest an inability to rapidly overcome pre-existing predictive biases to adapt to statistically novel linguistic contexts.
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Jack Dempsey, Kiel Christianson and Qiawen Liu |
| C15 |
Non-binary gendered reference in LGBTQ+ English: Implications of singular ‘they’ for sentence processing
Short Abstract This study used an online Likert scale survey to measure the acceptability of third person singular ‘they’ (3SG ‘they’) in sentences for LGBTQ+ and cisgender heterosexual (cishet) participants, finding that across context conditions LGBTQ+ participants rate 3SG ‘they’ as significantly more acceptable than cishet participants, and do not conform to typical English name gender biases. Furthermore, naturalistic interview transcripts reveal consistent patterns of stance-mitigation discourse strategies such as fillers and hedging by cishet, but not LGBTQ+ speakers when referencing gender non-conforming individuals. These results may have implications for social constraints on non-binary gendered sentence production and processing.
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Alecia Nichols, Elaine Chun and Amit Almor |
| C16 |
Cloze completions reveal misinterpretation of noncanonical sentences
Short Abstract In two cloze experiments, we investigated online thematic role assignment in non-canonically ordered clauses. The experiments demonstrate a strong tendency in OSV clauses to produce verbs that are expected if the reader has reversed the roles of the two preverbal arguments, but are unexpected or anomalous under the correct role assignment. We take this to be evidence that verb predictions and incremental interpretations of non-canonical sentences can be guided by non-veridical parses of the input.
|
Jon Burnsky and Adrian Staub |
| C17 |
The syntactic count/mass distinction in generalized classifier languages: evidence from classifier processing in Korean
Short Abstract Research on the count/mass distinction has investigated whether generalized classifier languages (e.g., Korean, Chinese) make the count/mass distinction in their grammars and if it is reflected in the use of the classifier system. In the current study, we seek to make headway on this debate by focusing on Korean. We found an increased N400 in the classifier-mismatched condition compared to the classifier-matched condition, but no significant P600 was observed. Our findings, consistent with the results of Kanero et al. (2015), suggest that classifiers are processed primarily semantically, eliciting the N400 effect, rather than as a syntactic (P600-eliciting) violation.
|
Sea Hee Choi, Si On Yoon, Andrew Armstrong, Kara Federmeier and James Yoon |
| C18 |
Minimizing prediction errors: Comprehenders rapidly adapt to morphosyntactic violations but not to semantic violations
Short Abstract We conducted two event-related potential experiments that examined whether people adapt to morphosyntactically anomalous sentences and semantically anomalous sentences. The results suggest that people take into consideration not only the probability of violations but also types of prediction errors (i.e., how likely a type of error might occur) in determining whether to adapt to deviant linguistic input
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Masataka Yano, Shugo Suwazono, Hiroshi Arao, Daichi Yasunaga and Hiroaki Oishi |
| C19 |
EEG alpha power desynchronization during sentence planning is linked to partial overlap in syntactic configurations
Short Abstract All theories of grammar assume that linguistic expressions share partial syntactic configurations, modeled by derivation or inheritance mechanisms. Sentences like “The rabbits eat carrots” or “The mayor gives toys to the children” share the initial structure NP V… and thus exhibit partial overlap in their syntactic configurations. Are these overlaps only computational patterns or are also implemented in the brain? To explore whether overlaps are neurophysiologically detectable during sentence production, we conducted an EEG picture description experiment in Hindi. Focusing on event-related desynchronization in the alpha band, we demonstrate that overlaps are relevant for the neurocognition underlying sentence planning.
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Sebastian Sauppe, Kamal K. Choudhary, Nathalie Giroud, Damián E. Blasi, Shikha Bhattamishra, Mahima Gulati, Aitor M. Egurtzegi, Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Martin Meyer and Balthasar Bickel |
| C20 |
Asymmetry between production and comprehension at syntactic level: Evidence from Catalan-speaking children
Short Abstract Some studies indicate that children are able to produce morphological/grammatical forms before they are able to comprehend them (e.g., Legendre, et al 2014). Evidence from 4 studies with native Catalan-speaking children aged between 4 to 10 years is presented. Results indicate that children are able to produce and comprehend active clauses. They are able to comprehend passive clause by the age of 8-9 years, though they do not produce them. In contrast they produce object-dislocated clauses by the age of 4 years, but are not able to comprehend them until around the age of 10 years.
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Merce Prat-Sala and Ulrike Hahn |
| C21 |
Predicting across the lifespan: Evidence from the visual world paradigm
Short Abstract The current research used the visual world paradigm to investigate age-related differences in prediction stemming from verb selectional restrictions (Altmann & Kamide, 1999; Experiment 1) and real world knowledge (Kamide et al., 2003; Experiment 2). While prediction was observed in both, there were no significant age effects. In contrast to the ERP literature (e.g., see Federmeier, 2007), the current results reveal that predictive eye movements are strikingly stable across adulthood.
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Yuki Kamide and Anuenue Kukona |
| C22 |
Effects of prepositional phrase type on the processing of relative clauses
Short Abstract In an eyetracking experiment, participants read sentences containing object RCs and subject RCs in which an intervening prepositional phrase could be locative or temporal. In the locative condition, reading times at the matrix verb were significantly longer for ORCs than SRCs, but in the temporal condition reading times tended to be longer for SRCs than ORCs. The results highlight the importance of considering how intervening material in complex sentences affects both the structure and the meaning of the sentence.
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Matthew Lowder and Peter Gordon |
| C23 |
Segmental duration as a cue to sentence structure
Short Abstract In order to parse speech in real time, listeners should use any informative cues available. Here we investigate the role of segmental duration. While previous work has found statistically significant differences in the mean durations of analogous segments across different lexical/syntactic structures, the goal of this work is to use production data to quantify how informative segmental duration is about syntactic/lexical structure. After implementing an ideal listener model in a Bayesian classifier, our results indicate there is indeed sufficient information contained in individual token durations so as to be useful in real-time sentence processing.
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Sten Knutsen, Karin Stromswold and Dave Kleinschmidt |
| C24 |
The time-course of rhythmic and syntactic factors in silent reading in Turkish
Short Abstract The study investigates syntactic and rhythmic factors in silent reading in Turkish via eye-tracking methodology. Experimental sentences had four versions manipulating phrase lengths (balanced, unbalanced) and syntactic structure (LC, EC). The analyses revealed an LC advantage in the disambiguating region and a preference for balanced lengths in the spillover region. The results support Fodor’s IPH and balanced-sisters constraint in projecting prosodic boundaries in silent reading. But as was predicted by Fodor (2002), prosodic factors (although used online) lag behind syntactic factors.
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Nazik Dinçtopal Deniz |
| C25 |
Context Effects in Irony Processing
Short Abstract Irony is a complex conversational phenomenon of which the successful interpretation is based on a number of linguistic and pragmatic cues. Research so far has produced mixed results on the effects of context on irony comprehension. We present evidence from two visual world eye-tracking experiments for the presence of context effects in early processing of ironic utterances. In our experiments we utilized echoic mention to manipulate context strength and found that while context did not have an effect on reference building it had a significant effect on the integration of ironic words into a previously established mental situation model.
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Saskia Leymann, Verena Haser and Lars Konieczny |
| C26 |
Effects of predictability and optionality on pronominalization
Short Abstract Predictability has been found to influence production at multiple levels of linguistic structure, but evidence for the influence of predictability on reduction in speakers’ choice of reference is mixed. This study tests the effect of the optional-vs-obligatory status of competitor referents on the pronominalization rate of subject referents, a potential confound from previous studies. Initial results suggest that pronominalization rates decrease when competitor referents are obligatory arguments compared to contexts with optional competitor referents, but this result failed to replicate in two follow-up experiments. As such, our study finds no evidence that the optional-vs-obligatory status of referents affects pronominalization.
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Jet Hoek and Hannah Rohde |
| C27 |
Ordering in numerals across languages supports rapid information processing
Short Abstract "One previously unexplained observation about numeral systems is for numerals greater than 20 to have the larger constituent number expressed before the smaller constituent. Systems that adopt the reverse ordering tend to switch order over time. To explore these phenomena, we propose the view of Rapid Information Gain, contrasting the established theory of Uniform Information Density. We find that RIG accounts for empirical patterns better than UID, suggesting an emphasis on information front-loading as opposed to smoothing in compound numerals. This shows that fine-grained generalizations about lexical compounds can be understood in information-theoretic terms in the case of numerals."
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Emmy Liu and Yang Xu |
| C28 |
Not all passives are processed equal: verb voice and word order in idiom comprehension
Short Abstract The processing of Italian idioms is observed in two passive constructions, i.e. with a preverbal (Passive I) and a postverbal subject (Passive II). Crucially, Passive II preserves the verb-noun order of the canonical active form. Passive II is rated as more natural and is more often completed as idiomatic in two offline questionnaires. Eye-tracking data confirms it to be read faster than Passive I, while Passive I reading is sped up by high familiarity and semantic transparency. Results thus suggest that the core issue in processing passive idioms is the violation of the canonical constituent order of the active form.
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Marco Silvio Giuseppe Senaldi, Paolo Canal and Alessandro Lenci |
| C29 |
Priming discourse structure guides pronoun comprehension
Short Abstract We tested the tendency to follow the subject-assignment strategy for ambiguous pronouns using 3 prime types—unambiguous 3rd person and I/you pronouns and names. We also measured individual differences (Author Recognition Task (ART)). Results showed that people were more likely to select the subject character as the referent for the ambiguous pronouns in the subject-prime than non-subject prime conditions, but most strongly when primed with unambiguous third-person pronouns, which included a main effect of ART. Name primes showed a smaller priming effect only occurring for people with high ART scores. There was no priming or ART effect with I/you pronouns.
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Elyce Williams and Jennifer Arnold |
| C30 |
Understanding over-specification: A visual-world ERP study
Short Abstract In a visual-world ERP experiment, we assessed the influence of specificity and reduction of ambiguity about the target (entropy) on referential processing. Participants saw visual scenes while listening to instructions that were either minimally-specified (MS) or over-specified (OS), depending on whether the target belonged to a contrast pair or was singleton. Entropy reduction was higher (HR) vs lower (LR) depending on the number of competitors. The noun showed a biphasic N400-P600 effect for OS vs MS, suggesting that listeners interpret the adjective contrastively, and an N400 effect for LR vs HR, indicating a cost for identifying more ambiguous referents.
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Elli Tourtouri, Francesca Delogu and Matthew Crocker |
| C31 |
Pupillometry reveals reduced effort in children’s sentence processing when visual speech cues are available
Short Abstract Processing speech can be effortful for children, particularly in classroom settings. We investigated whether the presence of visual speech cues (the speaker’s facial movements) would reduce processing effort for 7-11-year-old children, as such cues are beneficial for adults’ processing. We measured pupil dilation, an index of cognitive effort, while children completed a phoneme monitoring task with audiovisual and auditory-only stimuli in either quiet or noise. Results indicated that effort was reduced when processing audiovisual speech compared to auditory-only in both quiet and noisy conditions, suggesting that visual speech cues may facilitate language processing in the classroom and elsewhere.
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Rebecca Holt, Laurence Bruggeman and Katherine Demuth |
| C32 |
Processing subject/object asymmetries in German: case-marking and intervention
Short Abstract Object-gap dependencies are more difficult to process than subject-gap dependencies because of intervention. However, it is unknown if any cognitively or perceptually salient features (broad definition) or only very specific, syntactic features (narrow definition) can cause intervention. We tested this by comparing dative to accusative object extraction in a self-paced reading paradigm. The results do not provide any evidence for the broad definition of intervention, but instead suggest intervention is only caused by very specific, movement attracting features. If any, the results suggest that dative conditions are more difficult than accusative conditions.
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Ankelien Schippers, Margreet Vogelzang and Esther Ruigendijk |
| C33 |
Lexical Boost from the Subject Noun: The Influence of Task
Short Abstract To test the prediction that the lexical boost is driven by explicit memory (e.g., Chang et al, 2006), we tested for a subject noun boost, using prepositional object or double object structures, when participants could look back to a prime sentence while completing a target sentence (Experiment 1) or not (Experiment 2). We report a subject noun boost but only when participants could see the prime, suggesting that when available, the prime acted as a cue to boost the activation of its structure. These results indicate that the subject noun boost is affected by how explicit the word repetition is.
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Laura Wakeford, Leila Kantola and Roger van Gompel |
| C34 |
Ambiguity processing in English natives and non-natives
Short Abstract The similarities and differences between L1 and L2 sentence processing have been strongly debated regarding whether L2 speakers have difficulty using syntactic information. The current results from our offline and online experiments examining ambiguity processing show that L1 and L2 speakers with an L1 that prefers high attachment both preferred attaching low over high. The offline attachment preferences were modulated by relative clause postion and working memory. The findings suggest that the same parsing principle was employed in L1 and L2 processing to minimise cognitive load. Further analysis on individual differences will also be discussed.
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Yesi Cheng, Ian Cunnings and Jason Rothman |
| C35 |
Inflexible structural priming in flexible word order language
Short Abstract Verb semantic similarity was shown to facilitate structural repetition in English (Yi and Koenig 2016). The present study investigated whether verb meaning also modulates structural priming in a head-final and flexible word order language, i.e. a verb occurs at the end of a sentence and preverbal phrasal order is flexible. We conducted two structural priming experiments in Korean, using both the picture-description and sentence-recall paradigms. We found purely syntactic structural priming effect was robust in Korean while prior processing of (dis-)similar verb meaning does not modulate speakers’ upcoming structural choice.
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Eunkyung Yi and Hongoak Yun |
| C36 |
ERPs and artificial mini-grammars in third language transfer/learning
Short Abstract The role of prior linguistic knowledge is a central question in L3/Ln acquisition, where more than one previous grammar may impact learning trajectories from first exposure to the L3. Two groups of L1 Spanish-L2 English speakers were exposed to one of two artificial languages (ALs) lexically based on Spanish and English, respectively, which display both number and gender agreement between nouns, determiners and adjectives. Gender and number violations in both languages elicit broadly distributed P600 effects in an ERP experiment. This may reflect transfer from Spanish in both cases (at least for gender), or rapid acquisition of the properties anew.
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Jorge González Alonso, José Alemán Bañón, Vincent DeLuca, David Miller, Sergio Miguel Pereira Soares, Eloi Puig Mayenco, Sophie Slaats and Jason Rothman |
| C37 |
Focus scope marked by “only” influences syntactic attachment
Short Abstract In addition to known effects of prosodic boundaries on attachment, evidence has been mounting that accents also influence attachment (Schafer et al. 1996, Lee & Watson 2011, Carlson & Tyler 2018). But why do accents on the head of an attachment site draw the attachment of an ambiguously-attached phrase: does the accent make an attachment site more salient? Or is it that the accent indicates focus on a phrase, which makes it important to the sentence and draws attachment? We present evidence from studies with "only" supporting a focus-based theory in which the position where focus scopes actually draws attachment.
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David Potter and Katy Carlson |
| C38 |
ZWgen: A Python-based Chinese Lexical Stimuli Generator
Short Abstract Recent research has developed various Chinese lexicon databases focusing on different aspects. An integrated database that incorporates all of these data is lacking at this moment. Combining features of multiple databases, this study provides an attempt to automatically generate Chinese lexical stimuli. ZWgen — the python-based generator consists of a variety of lexical features that focus on orthographic, phonological, morphological and syntactic aspect, including but not limited to character stroke number, orthographic neighbourhood size, homophone density and frequency of homophones. By manipulating these lexical features, ZWgen will automatically return lexical items that meet the selection criteria.
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Mingyu Yuan |
| C39 |
(In-)definites, (anti-)uniqueness, and uniqueness expectations
Short Abstract Using "A" in noun phrases such as "A father of the victim" is odd, which is commonly explained by the principle "Maximize Presupposition", requiring speakers to use the alternative with the strongest presupposition (here "the", given its uniqueness presupposition). This results in an anti-uniqueness inference for "A" (clashing with stereotypical expectations in the example at hand), sometimes labelled as an 'anti-presupposition' (Percus 2006), as it derives from reasoning over the presuppositions of alternative forms. We compare these inferences to the uniqueness inferences associated with definites, while manipulating uniqueness expectations in a picture manipulation task using visual world eye-tracking.
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Nadine Bade and Florian Schwarz |
| C40 |
Personae in syntactic processing: Socially-specified agents bias expectations of verb transitivity
Short Abstract In this study we investigated the role of personae (speakers' "social types") in syntactic ambiguity resolution. In Experiment 1, we show that personae bias the interpretation of ambiguously transitive verbs in a sentence completion task. Experiment 2 shows that these biases also affect the perceived acceptability of the same verbs when paired with or without a direct object. Experiment 3 used these materials in an eye-tracking study which showed that transitively biased personae led readers to adopt transitive interpretations even when this possibility was ruled out by punctuation. These findings suggest a strong role for personae in sentence comprehension.
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June Choe, Shayne Sloggett, Masaya Yoshida and Annette D'Onofrio |
| C41 |
Online processing of an elided r-expression
Short Abstract This study employs an eye tracking experiment to investigate the processing of verb phrase ellipsis, focusing on whether the parser computes vehicle change online. A backward VPE construction is used to check the accessibility of a name within an elided VP, which is measured using a gender mismatch effect. The observation of a GMME in first pass reading times provides evidence that vehicle change has occurred. This result suggests that new material is introduced during the resolution of ellipsis, namely that the R-expression becomes pronominal during online sentence processing.
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Kathleen Hall and Masaya Yoshida |
| C42 |
Grammatical factors in morphological processing: evidence from allomorphy
Short Abstract Language processing is often analysed in terms of two sets of factors: quantitative-distributional and grammatical, with schools of thought differing in the postulated relation between the two. Our study investigates whether sensitivity to allomorphy - a grammatical factor - has an impact on lexical processing. Mixed effects regression models were fit to participant data from the BLP corpus with the independent variables being frequency, orthographic length, orthographic neighbourhood and inflectional entropy. A variable coding for sensitivity to allomorphy among stems was introduced as hasallos and showed a significant effect on both reaction times and accuracy scores (modelled separately).
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Daniil Bondarenko, Onur Özsoy and Itamar Kastner |
| C43 |
Cost of ungrammatical predictions during online sentence processing: evidence against surprisal
Short Abstract Surprisal has been successful in explaining comprehension difficulty in a number of online studies. While surprisal assumes predicted parses to be grammatical, such predictions can also be ungrammatical (Apurva & Husain, 2018). Therefore, similar to reranking cost due to incorrect (grammatical) predictions, there should be a cost for ungrammatical predictions as well. A cloze study was conducted to select two conditions that differed in the no. of ungrammatical predictions while being similar in their most frequent grammatical prediction. A self-paced reading experiment for this manipulation shows a cost of ungrammatical predictions, thereby highlighting the limitation of the surprisal metric.
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Apurva Apurva and Samar Husain |
| C44 |
Different effects of grammatical violations in Italian: an EEG study on verb-particle constructions
Short Abstract Using event-related brain potentials, we examined the comprehension of sentences with different types of Verb-Particle Constructions (VPCs). 44 participants read sentences containing aspectual VPCs (e.g., raschiare via “*to scrape away”) that have compositional meaning and sentences including idiomatic VPCs (e.g., fare fuori “to kill”) that have non-compositional meaning. Half of the sentences were correct and half were violated, containing a non-existing VPC. Results show violation effects (N400) in different time-windows depending on the type of VPCs, suggesting that the compositional nature of the aspectual VPCs relative to the idiomatic ones plays a crucial role in the processing of these sentences.
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Federica Mantione, Patrizia Cordin and Francesco Vespignani |
| C45 |
Multimodal prediction in text + emoji sentences: an ERP study
Short Abstract This ERP study investigates cross-modal lexical prediction of emojis in sentence contexts. Participants read highly and lowly constraining sentences in which a corresponding emoji was substituted for the final word (Experiment 1) or the word appeared in its written form (Experiment 2). Results indicate that participants were capable of lexical prediction of emojis in a manner qualitatively similar to that of words; follow-up analyses indicate participants’ anticipations were more lexical than conceptual or visual. This work contributes both to the nascent program of research on the language processing of emojis and to continuing research on prediction processes during language comprehension.
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Benjamin Weissman, Neil Cohn and Darren Tanner |
| C46 |
The Effect of Eventive Verbs on Children's Online Argument Representation
Short Abstract The current study examines 32- to 36-month-old English learners’ representation of verb arguments. In particular, we used eventive (e.g., “destroy”, “spill”) and stative verbs (e.g., “love”, ”own”) to examine whether children simply access the semantic prototypes of words or whether their representations go beyond a word’s linguistic identity and include context-specific properties (e.g., a broken rather than intact bottle upon hearing “Susan dropped the”). The results of our eye-tracking study tentatively show that toddlers possess basic verb type knowledge that they rapidly integrate in their argument representation during language comprehension. This suggests that their real-time language processing is relatively fine-grained.
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Boyang Qin and Marieke van Heugten |
| C47 |
Language dynamics across the life span: The comprehension of verbal jokes
Short Abstract Age-related differences in joke comprehension were studied using a paradigm that separates cognitive from affective aspects. Most verbal jokes are based on an incongruency whose revision puts demands on working memory and cognitive flexibility. Fifty older participants (70 -92 years of age) - compared to a middle aged control group - needed longer to read jokes and non-funny revision stories, they made more errors on revision stories, and their funniness ratings showed less differentiation between jokes and revision stories. Thus, despite preserved pragmatic language skills, humor comprehension in older readers seems affected by a decline of executive functions.
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Evelyn Ferstl |
| C48 |
Sustained negativities for wh-movement may not extend to other types of syntactic prediction.
Short Abstract We evaluated whether an ERP response (sustained anterior negativities, SAN) indexes online maintenance of a memory representation of predictively generated structures until they are confirmed by upcoming input. We assessed whether SANs for wh-dependencies extend to sentences requiring prediction of a subordinate clause (subordinating adverbials). Across 3 experiments we replicated SANs for wh-dependencies, failed to observe SANs for subordinating adverbials, and replicated this dissociation using a within-subjects design. We concluded that SANs for wh-dependencies do not necessarily extend to other constructions requiring online maintenance of syntactic predictions, suggesting that ERP correlates of structural prediction per se have not been identified.
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Aura Cruz Heredia, Bethany Dickerson and Ellen Lau |
| C49 |
Turkish “unless” is not biconditional unless the pragmatic context allows it
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Ebru Evcen, Umut Özge and Duygu Özge |
| C50 |
The Impact of Stereotypes and Noun Endings on Processing Gender in English: Comparing Native and Non-Native Performance
Short Abstract "This study aimed at establishing whether the perception of the noun ending “-er” as masculine carries over into English for native speakers of German. Since German is a language with a grammatical gender system, professions which end in “-er” identify a person as male in German (e.g. der Gärtner – “the (male) gardener”) while in English, they are not grammatically marked for gender. Eye-tracking data from 64 participants suggests that “-er” may slightly, but “-or” more considerably, slow down processing for German speakers when used with “women”, indicating transfer effects. Beyond that, stereotypical associations significantly influenced reading behaviour."
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Julia Müller, Verena Haser and Lars Konieczny |
| C51 |
Alternative constructions and scope ambiguities: What counts as an alternative?
Short Abstract Hemforth & Konieczny (2019) suggest that the existence of an accessible alternative such as “Not all my friends went to the movies.” plays a role in cross-linguistic differences in the interpretation of “all...not” constructions, such as “All my friends didn’t go to the movies.”, explaining the preference for linear scope in English and German where the “not … all” alternative exists but inverse scope in French where it does not. We extend the picture by investigating another possible alternative construction “Mes amis ne sont pas tous allés voir le film.”/ “My friends did not all go to see the movie.”
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Barbara Hemforth and Lars Konieczny |
| C52 |
Facilitation vs. inhibition as mechanisms for syntactic constraints on word recognition
Short Abstract We investigated whether syntactic category expectations constrain auditory word recognition by preventing competition from items that don’t fit the context, or by facilitating items that do fit the context. In a visual world experiment whose critical trials did not contain targets, we tested for increased fixations to a cohort competitor that could only be a noun, during noun and verb contexts. We found that the wrong-category lexical candidate does demonstrate phonological competition, ruling out complete inhibition as the mechanism for the syntactic category constraint.
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Phoebe Gaston, Ellen Lau and Colin Phillips |
| C53 |
Turn-taking differs between parents and therapists speaking to children with ASD
Short Abstract Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often lag behind typically-developing (TD) peers in communication skills. We evaluate differences in conversational turn-taking using transcribed LENA recordings of parent-ASD child interactions, therapist-ASD child interactions and parent-TD control pairs. We find that ASD children respond less frequently and have trouble with conversational coordination. Therapists speaking to these children emphasize their full sentences using repeated non-sentential utterances, especially discourse markers, filled pauses and exclamations, to retain the child’s attention. Therapist speech patterns do not approximate TD parental speech but are adapted to meet the attentional needs of children with ASD.
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Micha Elsner, Benjamin Allen, Elizabeth Kryszak and Kiwako Ito |
| C54 |
Same sized sisters: Relative clause attachment to conjoined NPs
Short Abstract RC-Attachment is ambiguous in sentences like “I am interested in novels and films that talk about love.” in that the relative clause can attach to the conjoined NP novels and films (high attachment) or to the local NP films (low attachment). Incremental processing predicts a preference for attaching the relative clause to the conjoined NP. Fodor’s SSS, however, predicts that this preference can be modified by the length of the constituents. Two acceptability studies in French and English show that the acceptability of local attachment increases with the length of the first conjoint (e.g. “19th century foreign novels”).
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Antoine Hedier, Peijia Su, Fahima Maouche and Barbara Hemforth |
| C55 |
The agent preference in sentence planning is modulated by case marking: Eye tracking evidence from Hindi, Basque and Swiss German
Short Abstract The agent preference is a well-established cognition principle instantiated in sentence comprehension and gesture production, i.a. We present two eye-tracking picture-description studies exploring the agent preference in sentence planning. Study 1 focused on a language-internal contrast between case-marked and unmarked agents in Hindi, conditioned by aspect; Study 2 compared planning of sentences with unconditionally marked agents in Basque to unmarked agents in German. In all three languages speakers allocated most visual attention to agents (during relational encoding). This preference is modulated in Hindi, however, by speakers' need to decide between planning marked and unmarked agents.
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Aitor Egurtzegi, Sebastian Sauppe, Damian Blasi, Kamal Choudhary, Yingqi Jing, Nathalie Giroud, Shikha Bhattamishra, Mahima Gulati, Bornkessel-Schlesewsky Ina, Itziar Laka, Martin Meyer and Balthasar Bickel |
| C56 |
Maze Made Easy: Better and easier measurement of incremental processing difficulty
Short Abstract The Maze task has shown promise as a way to measure incremental processing difficulty with high sensitivity and accuracy. We demonstrate that the Maze task runs reliably over the web and is substantially more sensitive than SPR on Mechanical Turk. Furthermore, we demonstrate and validate a method for automatically generating materials which dramatically reduces the preparation required while yielding the same sensitivity and accuracy. The resulting “Auto-Maze” task provides all the advantages of Maze while being as easy to prepare and run as SPR. We make our code freely available online at github.com/vboyce/Maze.
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Veronica Boyce, Richard Futrell and Roger Levy |
| C57 |
EEG signatures of perceptual reversals of bistable visual and linguistic stimuli
Short Abstract The Reversal Negativity is an event-related potential elicited when one’s subjective perception of a bistable figure (e.g. the Necker Cube) switches from one of its possible configurations to the other. We investigated whether a similar reversal signature occurs in the linguistic domain when one’s interpretation of a “bistable” ambiguous sentence, such as “The chicken is ready to eat,” is reversed. We identified a frontal negativity occurring over a similar time course as the visual RN for reversals of bistable sentences, suggesting that similar reversal processes may occur in response to “conceptual” ambiguities, such as those present in language comprehension.
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Kevin Ortego, Michael Pitts and Enriqueta Canseco-Gonzalez |
| C58 |
LANGUAGE CONTROL IN HABITUALLY CODE-SWITCHING BILINGUALS: DOES COGNITIVE CONTROL DECLINE WITH CODE-SWITCHING
Short Abstract In order to untangle the effect of bilingualism from the effect of weaker proficiency, we examined the effect the frequency of daily code-switching and proficiency in the non-dominant language (L2 French) on cognitive control in the Simon task. An interaction between proficiency and the frequency of code-switching showed that the high proficient bilinguals who were also frequently code-switching performed faster over time in the incongruent trials and consequently had the smallest Simon effect. The interaction between proficiency and the frequency of code-switching emphasizes the role of code-switching in exercising cognitive control and monitoring abilities in bilingual speakers.
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Souad Kheder |
| C59 |
Verbs retrieve subjects, not clausal attachment sites
Short Abstract Similarity-based interference can cause difficulty in processing subject-verb dependencies: when an intervening subject matches the retrieval cues of the matrix verb, the parser may erroneously retrieve the intervener. Previous studies have identified the relevant dimensions of similarity for subjects, but none have explicitly attempted to disentangle the contribution of tensed clauses from their subjects. These clauses could lead to interference if the parser retrieves the embedded clause as the attachment site for the matrix verb. In two experiments, we replicate previous findings of subject interference but fail to find evidence for interference from embedded clauses.
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Netta Ben-Meir, Nick Van Handel and Matt Wagers |
| C60 |
Computing object agreement in Georgian is easier than computing subject agreement
Short Abstract While subject–verb agreement is well-studied, little is known about the processing of object–verb agreement. This study investigates Georgian, a language with both flavors. In a speeded acceptability judgement experiment, participants detected errors in various kinds of agreement morphology. A Signal Detection Theory analysis reveals that participants are (i) more sensitive to agreement errors on verbs with canonical morphosyntactic properties than to errors on verbs with non-canonical properties, and (ii) more sensitive to errors in object agreement than to errors in subject agreement. Both results, we propose, follow from differing levels of certainty about the form of the sentence-final verb.
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Steven Foley and Matt Wagers |
| C61 |
Evidence for integration of noisy linguistic evidence and prior expectations depends on the task
Short Abstract We investigated the noisy channel model which posits a rational integration of plausibility with “noisy” input during parsing/interpretation of sentences. Experiment 1 assessed participants’ interpretations via yes/no questions. In experiment 2, to evaluate the possibility that integration of plausibility occurs when processing the question rather than during the initial parse/interpretation, participants typed repetitions of sentences. Evidence for a predicted interaction between syntax and plausibility was convincing in experiment 1, but not in experiment 2. These results suggest that reliance on plausibility is more likely when an implausible parse is highlighted, e.g. when answering a question.
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Eli Kane and L. Robert Slevc |
| C62 |
Fixation measures as a function of comprehension accuracy
Short Abstract This study explores eye fixations in sentences in which subjects provided correct and incorrect answers to questions about aspects of sentences meaning directly related to parsing operations postulated to be triggered by specific words. We found different patterns of fixations as a function of the accuracy of the response. We discuss the implication of this result and broader issues pertaining to the determinants of eye fixations during reading.
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Maria Varkanitsa and David Caplan |
| C63 |
Pragmatic inferences are modulated by informativity across cultures
Short Abstract Listeners make sophisticated pragmatic inferences during real-time comprehension. When they hear “Hand me the big…,” they anticipate the referent to be of a pair that differ in size (e.g., big cup, small cup). Here, we study pragmatic inference in the Tsimane’, an indigenous people of the Bolivian lowlands. We find that 1) Tsimane’ speakers made anticipatory looks consistent with contrastive inference while listening to size-modified references, pointing to a universal expectation that speakers typically choose their utterances to be optimally informative; and 2) the contrast effect was not significantly smaller for color modifiers relative to size (with one exception).
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Rachel Ryskin, Miguel Salinas, Steven Piantadosi, Paula Rubio-Fernández and Edward Gibson |
| C64 |
How do repeated result states fare in sentence comprehension and production?
Short Abstract We test how discourse level information and verbs’ lexical semantics guide expectations/predictions in comprehension and production. Specifically, we investigate the processing and production of result states after change-of-state events. These events can be described with verbs that do or do not semantically encode result states (result verbs vs. manner verbs). We find that both the comprehension and production systems have a stronger preference for a result-related linguistic expression after encountering a result verb than a manner verb. We also find that although comprehension and production may be closely related, dispreference against repetition is reflected more in production than in comprehension.
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Sarah Hye-yeon Lee and Elsi Kaiser |
| C65 |
Semantic predictability of implicit causes affects referential form choice
Short Abstract It is debated whether speakers are more likely to pronominalize predictable referents. With transfer events, speakers tend to pronominalize predictable goals more than sources. Thus far, the same has not been observed for predictable implicit causes versus non-causes in emotion events. This may be due to the passage continuation method used. In a paradigm more similar to natural language (i.e. with greater contextual support, where participants already knew the content of their contribution), speakers did pronominalize implicit causes more than non-causes. We hypothesize this paradigm provided greater discourse context and allowed speakers to plan responses earlier, incorporating coherence relation knowledge.
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Kathryn Weatherford and Jennifer Arnold |
| C66 |
Word Skipping in Deaf and Hearing Bilinguals: Cognitive control remains with increased perceptual span
Short Abstract The word-processing efficiency hypothesis (Belanger & Rayner, 2015; Belanger et al. 2012, 2013) posits that deaf readers have larger perceptual spans than comparably skilled hearing readers. We used eye-tracking to compare deaf readers with comparably skilled Native-English speakers and Chinese-English bilinguals. Between groups, deaf readers skipped words more often and had shorter first pass and total reading times, but comprehended sentences as well as the other groups. These results are broadly consistent with the word processing efficiency hypothesis.
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Matt Traxler, Pilar Pinar, David Corina, Kurt Winsler, Liv Hoversten and Trevor Brothers |
| C67 |
Syntactic Structure aids Learning of Grammatical Dependencies in Neural Networks
Short Abstract We assess the grammatical competence of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) by treating them as human subjects in psycholinguistics experiments, using targeted sentence stimuli to elicit evidence for latent syntactic representation. We compare two RNN language models, one that computes explicit parse trees and one that does not. We evaluate how well these models capture NPI licensing dependencies, filler-gap dependencies, and island constraints. We find that explicit representation of syntax aids the learning of structurally-adjacent dependencies, but all models have difficulty threading word expectations through embedded clauses in filler-gap dependencies, a key difference between sentence processing by humans and RNNs.
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Ethan Wilcox, Peng Qian, Richard Futrell, Miguel Ballesteros and Roger Levy |
| C68 |
Inferring sentence comprehension from eye movements in reading
Short Abstract How much information can be obtained about the cognitive state of a specific reader from their eye movements over an individual sentence? In this work we address this question by examining the extent to which logistic regression and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models can predict whether a reader will answer a comprehension question correctly based on their eye movements while reading a single sentence. We evaluate how well these models generalize to new readers and new sentences.
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Yunyan Duan, Yevgeni Berzak, Klinton Bicknell and Roger Levy |
| C69 |
Studying Morphological Computation and Storage via Lexical Decision Data
Short Abstract In lexical decision tasks, reaction time to certain stimuli has historically been used to infer properties of morphological processing. Reaction time has been shown to depend on a number of measures, with frequency being among the most discussed. We review modeling approaches of Lignos & Gorman, amongst others, and find that despite updated methodology, their modeling procedure is still insufficient to accurately account for the numerous autocorrelated measures of frequency in morphologically complex forms that are central to most analyses.
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Gregory Theos and Timothy O'Donnell |
| C70 |
How do readers adapt to unfamiliar syntax?: Evidence from needs+past participle
Short Abstract Comprehenders rapidly adapt to unfamiliar syntactic constructions. We investigate the underlying mechanisms using self-paced reading. Participants unfamiliar with the dialectal needs+past participle construction encountered either it or the conventional needs+present participle in an initial exposure phase. In a second phase, we tested the consequences of that exposure for processing other structures. Exposure to needs+past participle did not impair the conventional structure, providing evidence against probabilistic prediction (Expt. 1). But, it did impair dissimilar dialectal structures, indicating comprehenders were not just accommodating any anomalous input (Expt. 2). These results suggest comprehenders prepare for certain classes of input without specifically predicting them.
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Rachel Peters and Scott Fraundorf |
| C71 |
Context effects in the interpretation of Haddock descriptions
Short Abstract The interpretation of definite descriptions has been claimed to involve pragmatic context accommodation. This mechanism ensures that reference resolution is successful, even when the maximal context violates the uniqueness presupposition of the definite article. In two reference-resolution studies involving Haddock Descriptions, we show that context accommodation is less felicitous when the embedded description refers to different objects in the maximal and the restricted context, suggesting that listeners consider maximal contexts even when they are ruled out by independent linguistic constraints. An RSA model is proposed that derives the observed effects from pragmatic context coordination and uncertainty about possible adjectival thresholds.
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Helena Aparicio and Elizabeth Coppock |
| C72 |
Antecedent search for Turkish reflexive kendi: Evidence from eye tracking during reading
Short Abstract Previous work on reflexives reports mixed views on whether the parser implements an intelligent search. The current study addresses this with a novel reflexive form, Turkish kendi ‘self’, using object relative clauses, where candidate antecedents were manipulated by animacy. The objective was to find if processing difficulty occurred when binding accessible antecedent was inanimate. Results showed that participants had longer reading times in first pass time when accessible antecedent was inanimate. However, binding incompatible candidate antecedent influenced processing in later stages; longer fixations were made in accessible match and inaccessible match conditions than in accessible match and inaccessible mismatch conditions.
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Hasan Sezer |
| C73 |
Different Types and Qualities of Fillers: Maintenance and Retrieval
Short Abstract We uncover the mechanisms working behind both maintenance and retrieval components by testing what aspects of a filler are retrieved in different WhFGD (e.g. wh-filler gap dependency) constructions: "reactivated" WhFGD formation (the filler that is linked to the verb once, and is reactivated later) and "active" WhFGD formation. Information associated with the active wh-filler was well-preserved compared to the reactivated wh-filler that was linked to the gap once, released from memory and later reactivated. We argue for the position that posits both maintenance and retrieval playing a role in the processing of whFGD.
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Nayoun Kim, Laurel Brehm, Patrick Sturt and Masaya Yoshida |
| C74 |
Emotion Regulation through Irony - Evidence from Behavior and ERPs
Short Abstract This study investigates the effects of ironic and literal language on the perceived mental state of a speaker in either high or low emotional situations. Results from a web-based rating study show that a speaker using ironic language is perceived as being in a less negative mental state (higher in valence and lower in arousal) compared to the same speaker using literal language. In an ERP reading task, irony elicited a larger N400 effect. Furthermore, results showed enhanced P200 effects for literality in mildly negative situations, suggesting that irony is perceived differently depending on how emotional the context is.
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Valeria Pfeifer and Vicky Tzuyin Lai |
| C75 |
Grammatical and pragmatic cues guide temporal interpretation in discourse
Short Abstract What factors modulate the on-line comprehension of intersentential temporal relations, and how strongly? Do baseline comprehension costs vary between relations? Three self-paced reading studies compared progression (S1 event precedes S2 event) and backshift (S1 event follows S2 event), and the effects pragmatic and grammatical factors had on their comprehension. Results from all studies suggest that baseline comprehension costs of progression and backshift are not very different, if at all. Study 2 results suggest that pragmatic plausibility cues can be leveraged fairly quickly and strongly. Study 3 results suggest that aspect marker 'had' may not be leveraged very strongly.
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Kelsey Sasaki |
| C76 |
Investigating the real-world costs of intra-sentential code-switching for lexical processes
Short Abstract Bilinguals often engage in code-switching or switching between languages during a conversation. Prior EEG studies have found that code-switched words are harder to process; however, these tasks primarily use isolated words or single sentence contexts. We reasoned that code-switching might be facilitated by top-down expectations developed throughout a spoken discourse. In this study, we use new naturalistic EEG techniques to see how code-switches are perceived in rich contexts and how they compare to other lexical switches. We find evidence that code-switched words are initially difficult to process but are rapidly facilitated if the word makes sense in the given context.
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Anthony Yacovone, Emily Moya and Jesse Snedeker |
| C77 |
Gender mismatch and possession type effects on interpretation of VP ellipsis
Short Abstract "Mark walked his dog, and Larry did, too." has two possible interpretations: Larry walked Mark's dog (coreference) or Larry walked his own dog (variable binding). What influences resolution of these ambiguous constructions? We build on previous work which found that different possession types (e.g. kinship: "her mother"; ownership: "her bicycle") modulate interpretational preference in such sentences. We report four experiments testing how the effect of possession type interacts with grammatical gender and quantified nouns (e.g. "every man"), which have been claimed to influence discourse processing. Our results support a discourse-based account of how this type of ambiguity is resolved.
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Jesse Storbeck and Elsi Kaiser |
| C78 |
Contrastive informativity strength drives real-time language variation and change: an online study of the Spanish habitual in three dialectal varieties
Short Abstract An SPR task in three Spanish dialects shows that, with respect to the expression of the habitual meaning, besides the use of the Simple Present, Argentinian and Iberian speakers allow Present Progressive-marking when contextual information satisfies the presuppositional demands of estar, the auxiliary in the verbal periphrasis. Contrastively, Mexican speakers do not need this contextual support. This pattern is consistent with a generalization process already underway in the three varieties, with the Mexican variety appearing further along the grammaticalization path. This process of change is driven by the contrastive informativity strength of the lexico-semantic properties of the Present Progressive marker.
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Martín Fuchs and María Mercedes Piñango |
| C79 |
Plausibility in Chinese concession and causality: Evidence from self-paced reading and eye-tracking
Short Abstract In two experiments, we investigate the effect of plausibility on the processing of concessive and causal relations. In a self-paced reading experiment, we found the effect of plausibility at both the critical and post-critical regions in causality but only at the post-critical region in concession, showing a delayed effect in concessive relation. In an eye-tracking study, participants regressed out more at the critical regions of concession, but no such effect was found in causality, showing reprocessing of previous text and greater difficulty in concession. Together, this study suggests more complex processing and greater cognitive cost in processing concession than causality.
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Siqi Lyu, Jung-Yueh Tu and Charles Lin |
| C80 |
Prosody-meaning mismatches in PP ambiguity: Incremental processing with pupillometry
Short Abstract We report the results of a pupillometry experiment on the prosodic disambiguation of PP modifier sentences. We manipulated instrument plausibility ("pen" vs. "gun") and prosodic boundary placement, so that a prosodic boundary biased towards a Modifier [A] or Instrument [B] construal of the prepositional phrase ("The artist sketched [A] the man [B] with the pen/gun"). A growth curve analysis of change in pupil size suggests that listeners attend to prosodic boundary locations that disambiguate the structure, and that an online processing penalty, as indexed by increased pupil dilation, is generated when prosodic boundary information leads to an implausible construal.
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Jesse Harris, Chie Nakamura, Bethany Sturman and Sun-Ah Jun |
