Linguistic Illusions : where you see them, where you don’t

1. Linguistic Illusions:where you see them, where you don’t if you can barely read these words, please move forward! Colin PhillipsDepartment of LinguisticsNeuroscience & Cognitive Science ProgramUniversity of Maryland languagescience.umd.edu

2. Language Science clinical neuroscience hearing/speech sciences cognitive neuroscience neuropsychology psychology philosophy anthropology cognitive science& linguistics computer science literacy electrical engineering second language acquisition information science engineering & computation educational

3. Today’s focus Successes & failures that we’re unaware of Ambiguity The Cotswolds, England

4. Matt Wagers Ellen Lau Brian Dillon Nina Kazanina Masaya Yoshida Ming Xiang Clare Stroud Sachiko Aoshima Akira Omaki Pedro Alcocer Wing Yee Chow Jon Sprouse Alexis Wellwood Leticia Pablos Amy Weinberg Jeff Lidz RoumiPancheva Valentine Hacquard Moti Lieberman Shevaun Lewis Dave Kush

5. Robust in noisy environments

6. Rapid Irrespective of Word Order verb ジョンがJohn-gaJohn.nom マリーにMary-niMary.dat トムがTom-gaTom.nom お店でmise-destore-at ミルクをmiruku-omilk.acc 買ったとkatta-tobought.decl 言った。ittatold ‘John told Mary that Tom bought the milk at the store.’ relative clause りんごをringo-oapple.acc 犬をinu-odog.acc マリーにMary-niMary.dat 食べたtabetaate あげた。agetagave ジョンがJohn-gaJohn.nom ‘John gave Mary the dog that ate the apple.’ relative clause Japanese verb

7. Fast ‘the dog was big and scary’ 3-5 words/second 200-400 msec/word At each word … 1. visual/acoustic processing 2. phoneme recognition 3. word recognition 4. syntactic analysis 5. semantic interpretation

8. 260 ms 280 ms 310 ms 340 ms Halgren et al. 2002 Electrical/magnetic brain activity Word access: ~250-400 msec Computational Bottleneck Updating interpretation at each word requires much more time than is available. Pylkkänen et al. 2002

9. Option 1

10. Option 2

11. Option 3

12. Linguistic Illusions

13. auditory [pa] + visual [ka] = perceptual [ta] McGurk 1976

14. Agreement “And in the absence of large-scale policy differences between the two candidates, the personal nature of their exchanges are more likely to result in lasting damage.” [4/9/08] the personal nature of their exchanges are “Republicans privately acknowledge this, arguing that in the hands of a more popular politician, the ideas that Cheney are putting forward could find fertile ground with the American people.” [5/21/09] the ideas that Cheney are putting forward

15. Comparatives “More people have been to Russia than I have.”

16. Selective Fallibility Success Failure

17. Obvious … not-so-obvious • Many features of languages are obvious …1. English verbs precede their objects (ate the pizza) Japanese verbs follow their objects (piza-otabeta)2. English distinguishes the vowels in sheep and ship Spanish does notetc. etc. etc. • Many are not remotely obvious – new discoveries dailyNon-obvious properties can be especially revealing about how human minds/brains make language possible.

18. Long Distance Relations AgreementThe children that I saw at the park this morning were building a fire. Pronouns (‘co-reference’) The children that I saw this morning knew that they were late for school. Question formationWhat were the children that I saw in the park looking for ___? Squid Giant Axon

19. Pronoun Interpretation • In some sentence-types, name-pronoun order is flexible • While John was reading the book, he ate an apple. • While he was reading the book, John ate an apple. • In minimally different sentences, it is not flexible • John ate an apple while he was reading the book. • *He ate an apple while John was reading the book. • Reflects a constraint on interpretation (‘Principle C’) that is:i. Formally straightforward (‘antecedent can’t be in scope of pronoun’)ii. Cross-linguistically robust – a likely universal of human languageiii. Developmentally privileged – children know by age 2.5-3 yearsiv. Obscure, and has limited functional value Can search for pronoun interpretation ignore inappropriate nouns?

20. Gender Mismatch Effect Good co-reference Jessica …Russell … While she … While she was taking classes full-time, Jessica was working two jobs to pay the bills. While she was taking classes full-time, Russell was working two jobs to pay the bills. (Kazanina et al., 2007)

21. Self Paced Reading ----- -- --- ------- --- ----- ---- --- -- ------

22. Self Paced Reading While -- --- ------- --- ----- ---- --- -- ------

23. Self Paced Reading ----- he --- ------- --- ----- ---- --- -- ------

24. Self Paced Reading ----- -- was ------- --- ----- ---- --- -- ------

25. Self Paced Reading ----- -- --- reading --- ----- ---- --- -- ------

26. Self Paced Reading ----- -- --- ------- the ----- ---- --- -- ------

27. Self Paced Reading ----- -- --- ------- --- book, ---- --- -- ------

28. Self Paced Reading ----- -- --- ------- --- ----- John --- -- ------

29. Self Paced Reading ----- -- --- ------- --- ----- ---- ate -- ------

30. Self Paced Reading ----- -- --- ------- --- ----- ---- --- an ------

31. Self Paced Reading ----- -- --- ------- --- ----- ---- --- -- apple.

32. Gender Mismatch Effect Good co-reference Jessica …Russell … While she … While she was taking classes full-time, Jessica was working two jobs to pay the bills. While she was taking classes full-time, Russell was working two jobs to pay the bills. Pronoun interpretation is ‘blind’ to grammatically inappropriate nouns. (multiple constructions in English, also Russian, even Japanese) Bad co-reference while Jessica …while Russell … She … She was taking classes full-time while Jessica was working two jobs to pay the bills. She was taking classes full-time while Russell was working two jobs to pay the bills. (Kazanina et al., 2007)

33. Question Formation Few people think that anybody realizes that Englishmen cook wonderful dinners

34. Question Formation Few people think that anybody realizes that Englishmen cook what

35. Question Formation What do few people think that anybody realizes that Englishmen cook

36. Question Formation What do few people believe anybody who claims that Englishmen cook  relative clause A relative clause is an ‘island’ – a wh-word cannot escape from it. (another cross-linguistically robust constraint) Does the constraint impact real-time comprehension of questions?

37. classroom students enlarge school many How the the for? did How many students did the school enlarge the classroom for __?

38. Question Formation What do few people believe anybody who claims that Englishmen cook  A relative clause is an ‘island’ – a wh-word cannot escape from it. (another cross-linguistically robust constraint) relative clause Does the constraint impact real-time comprehension of questions? Yes! Even in Japanese, where relative clauses come at you from behind! Stowe 1986; Traxler & Pickering 1996; Phillips 2006; Wagers & Phillips, 2009; Yoshida, Aoshima, & Phillips 2004

39. Infallibility • Moral so far for the comprehension “bottleneck”: • Language comprehension is remarkably grammatically sensitive • Little need to appeal to mechanisms that build ‘rough and ready’ interpretations to get the job done

40. Peripheral drift illusionAkiyoshiKitaoka, Kyoto U

41. Agreement “And in the absence of large-scale policy differences between the two candidates, the personal nature of their exchanges are more likely to result in lasting damage.” [4/9/08] the personal nature of their exchanges are “Republicans privately acknowledge this, arguing that in the hands of a more popular politician, the ideas that Cheney are putting forward could find fertile ground with the American people.” [5/21/09] the ideas that Cheney are putting forward

42. Agreement Illusions Not only do we produce agreement errors – we generally fail to noticethem “The key to the cell unsurprisingly were rusty …” “The key to the cells unsurprisingly were rusty …” It’s not simply ‘proximity concord’: “The musicians who the reviewer praise so highly …” “The musician who the reviewer praise so highly …” And it is selective – plurals create illusions, singulars don’t “The keys to the cell unsurprisingly was rusty …” And it happens to the best of us … (Bock & Miller 1991; Pearlmutter et al. 1999; Deevy et al. 1998; Staub 2009; Wagers, Lau, & Phillips 2009; Eberhard et al. 2005)

43. “The sheer weight of all these facts and figures make them hard for anyone to understand.” [10/13/81] Ronald Reagan To: colin@umd.edu From: mwagers@ucsc.edu Date: February 1, 2011, 3:38:53AM Subject: ugh "The ill-formedness of center self-embeddings are consequently believed to stem from …”(me, 10 minutes ago) Matt Wagers UC Santa Cruz

44. Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) John hasn’t ever been to DC. yet ever John has ever been to DC. anything Nobody can solve the problem yet. anywhere Somebody can solve the problem yet. anybody lift a finger the slightest bit in years say a word a damn thing a red cent

45. Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) NPIs are licensed by negation and negative-like contexts Nobody expects Congress to ever change. Voters expect Congress to ever change. Few people expect Congress to ever change. Voters doubt that Congress will ever change. But the negation can’t be just anywhere – must be structurally higher than NPI *The people [rel. cl. who can’t stand it] expect Congress to ever change. NPI Illusions No bills [that the democratic senators supported] will ever become law. *The bills [that the democratic senators supported] will ever become law. *The bills [that no democratic senators supported] will ever become law. (German: Drenhaus et al. 2005; English: Xiang, Dillon, & Phillips, 2009)

46. Comparative Illusion “More people have been to Russia than I have.” (Montalbetti 1984, Townsend & Bever 2001, Wellwood et al. 2009)

47. I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate I’m not one to attribute every activity of man to climate change 9/30/08 Role Reversal Illusion 10/02/08

48. Selective Fallibility • Real-time processes are not grammatically ‘infallible’ • … but nor are they the product of a rough-and-ready analyzer • Possible sources of “selective fallibility” profile: • Hard-coded in parser – arbitrary? • Predictable based on properties of individual constraints?(i) Time-course(ii) Memory search mechanisms(iii) Interpretive consequences(iv) etc.

49. Explaining Selective Fallibility Directionality Memory Access Semantic Extensions

50. Recipe for Success • Examples of very successful on-line constraint application • Pronoun interpretation (Principle C) hei… Johni … • Wh-questions (‘islands’) whati … verbi … • Plus various other cases of impressive speed or sensitivity • All implicate predictive processes • Analyzer can engage in prospective search for specific items • Forewarned is forearmed: parser can anticipate relevant details • Grammatically inappropriate domains can be excluded in advance of perceptual content; may protect against interference