Prosody and Verb Placement

1. 1 The processing of surface structure ambiguities in German: Influence of Explicit Prosody and Verb Placement 2 Susann Lingel-Zschernitz1, Thomas Pechmann1, & Christoph Scheepers2lingel@uni-leipzig.de Introduction • Prosody and Verb Placement • Research question: Do Explicit Prosody and Verb Placement modulate listeners’ PP-attachment preferences in the processing of globally ambiguous German main clauses? If so, is this information used incrementally? • What we know: • Prosodic structure is sensitive to syntactic structure (Truckenbrodt, 2007). • Prosody: Listeners immediately use the cues of prosodic boundary marking to resolve global PP-attachment ambiguities in the processing of English main clauses (e.g., Snedeker & Trueswell, 2003). • Verb Placement: PP-attachment preferences in German depend on the placement of the finite verb, i.e., the availability of possible attachment sites at the point of ambiguity  Verb-second structures favour high (VP-)attachment, verb-final structures favour low (NP-)attachment (Konieczny et al., 1995, 1997). • Predictions • Prosodic Structuring Hypothesis (Zschernitz, in prep.; following Speer, Kjelgaard, & Dobroth, 1996; Schafer, 1997) • Prosodic boundary informationguides attachment decisions. • NP-attachment preference is expected with NP-Attachment prosodic marking. • VP-attachment preference is expected with VP-Attachment prosodic marking. Syntactic attachment preferences (e.g., Minimal Attachment bias, Frazier, 1987) should be overridden. Verb Placement is not expected to have an influence. • Parameterized-Head-Attachment Hypothesis (PHA, e.g., Konieczny et al., 1995) Attachment preferences depend on the availability of lexical heads at the point of ambiguity, i.e., on Verb Placement. NP-attachment preference is predicted for verb-final sentences. VP-attachment preference is predicted for verb-second sentences. • The PHA is underspecified with respect to Prosody. • Diverging predictions for two conditions: Verb-second, NP-Attachment Prosody (V2, NP-Pros.) and verb-final, VP-Attachment-Prosody (Vfin, VP-Pros.). • Materials – Auditory stimuli • Verb-second conditions • V2, NP-Attachment Prosody • [[Der Junge berührt gleich]ip [den Adler mit der Socke]ip]IP • The boy touches soon the eagle with the stocking • V2, VP-Attachment Prosody • [[Der Junge berührt gleichden Adler]ip [mit der Socke]ip]IP • Verb-final conditions • Vfin, NP-Attachment Prosody • [[Der Junge überlegt]ip [ob er gleich]ip[den Adler mit der Socke]ip [berühren soll]ip]IP • The boy considers whether he soon the eagle with the stocking touch should • Vfin, VP-Attachment Prosody • [[Der Junge überlegt]ip [ob er gleich den Adler]ip[mit der Socke berühren soll]ip]IP • Acoustic analyses of the materials showed significant differences of prosodic boundary marking (F0 & duration) between conditions. Experimental data Experiment 1 – offline, forced choice categorisation Experiment 2 – on-line, Visual-World study Visual stimulus of Experiment 2 V N3 PP N2 Procedure: Visual-World Paradigm: participants’ eye movements were monitored while listening to structurally ambiguous sentences and looking at referentially ambiguous picture displays. Results: • Early Prosody effect for verb-second structures: 0-400 ms after PP-onset: reliably more looks to “modified NP” referent when NP-Prosody is presented than with VP-Prosody (p < .05)  prosodic boundary information immediately affects eye-movement behaviour, consistent with Prosodic Structuring; no reliable prosodic effect for verb-final structures. • Late Verb Placement effect: 800-1400 ms after PP-onset: reliably more fixations on the “modified NP” referent for verb-final structures compared to verb-second structures (p < .01)  consistent with predictions by PHA.  A post-hoc sentence completion study replicates the Prosody effect for verb-second sentences, but there was no NP-attachment preference for verb-final sentences. Procedure: Having heard auditory stimuli, Ss chose one of the two attachment types (NP- vs. VP-attachment) by selecting one of two pictures showing referents each of which is associated with one attachment of the ambiguous PP. Results:  Prosody effect: Reliably more VP-attachment responses when VP-Prosody was presented, and more NP-attachment responses when NP-Prosody was presented.  Overall VP-attachment bias: Reliably higher error rates for NP-Prosody compared to VP-Prosody conditions. I.e., listeners generally favour VP-attachment over NP-attachment.  Prosody effect overrides VP-attachment bias, consistent withProsodic Structuring.  No effect of Verb Placementon attachment preferences Conclusions • Strong evidence for Prosodic Structuring: Prosodic boundary marking immediatelyguides parsing of PP-attachment ambiguities in German (replicating Snedeker & Trueswell’s English data). • Early Prosody effect is modulated by a late Verb Placement effect exclusively in verb-final sentences of the on-line study. • Puzzle: Why does the NP-attachment preference for verb-final sentences appear so late in the on-line data, only after the onset of the sentence-final verb? References • Frazier, L. (1987). Sentence processing: A tutorial review. In Coltheart, M. (Ed.), The psychology of reading (559 – 586). Hove: Erlbaum. • Konieczny, L., Hemforth, B., Scheepers, C., & Strube, G. (1995). PP-attachment in German: Results from eye movement studies. In J. M. Findlay, R. Walker, & R. W. Kentridge (Eds.), Eye movement research. • Mechanisms, processes, and applications (Vol. 6, 405-420). Amsterdam: North Holland. • Konieczny, L., Hemforth, B., Scheepers, C., & Strube, G. (1997). The role of lexical heads in parsing: Evidence from German. Language and Cognitive Processes, 12, 307-348. • Schafer, A. J. (1997). Prosodic parsing: The role of prosody in sentence comprehension. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts. Amherst: GLSA. • Snedeker, J. & Trueswell, J. (2003). Using prosody to avoid ambiguity: Effects of speaker awareness and referential context. Journal of Memory and Language, 48, 103-130. • Speer, S. R., Kjelgaard, M. M., & Dobroth, K. M. (1996). The influence of prosodic structure on the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 25, 249 – 272. • Truckenbrodt, H. (2007). The syntax-phonology interface. In P. de Lacy (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of phonology (435-456). Cambridge: CUP. • Zschernitz, S. (in prep.). The role of prosody in the production and processing of PP-attachment ambiguities in German. Doctoral dissertation, University of Leipzig. Poster presented at Linguistic Evidence 2010, Tübingen, Germany Printed at the Computer Centre of the University of Leipzig