1 / 32

Kepa Erdozia (University of the Basque Country) Itziar Laka (University of the Basque Country)

S YNTACTIC C OMPLEXITY OF D IFFERENT B ASQUE W ORD O RDERS: E VIDENCE FROM N EUROIMAGE (ERP). Kepa Erdozia (University of the Basque Country) Itziar Laka (University of the Basque Country) Anna Mestres (University of Barcelona) Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells (ICREA and UB).

rhoman
Download Presentation

Kepa Erdozia (University of the Basque Country) Itziar Laka (University of the Basque Country)

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. SYNTACTIC COMPLEXITY OF DIFFERENT BASQUE WORD ORDERS: EVIDENCE FROM NEUROIMAGE (ERP) Kepa Erdozia (University of the Basque Country) Itziar Laka (University of the Basque Country) Anna Mestres (University of Barcelona) Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells (ICREA and UB) ESF/MCYT/EUROCORES: BFF2002-10379-E

  2. BASQUE: Free Word Order • Phrases can be arranged in almost any order • Canonical Order: Subject-Object-Verb • (De Rijk, 1969, Ortiz de Urbina 1986, Elordieta 2001…) • Derived Orders: Object-Subject-Verb • Subject-Verb-Object • Object-Verb-Subject…

  3. SOV order vP DP VP DP V gizon-ak emakume-a ikus-i du man-the woman-the seen has Subject-Object-Verb

  4. XP OVS order vP DP VP DP V emakume-a woman-the gizon-ak emakume-a ikus-i du man-the woman-the seen has Object-Subject-Verb

  5. MORPHOLOGICAL AMBIGUITY EMAKUME-AK ‘WOMAN-X’ OBJECT PLURAL PACIENT SUBJECT SINGULAR AGENT Emakume-ak gizon-ak ikusi ditu woman-? man-? seehas ‘The woman has seen the men’ or ‘The man has seen the women’

  6. SOV and OSV Processing Experiments I & II: Self Paced Reading & comprehension task: • SOV is processed faster • SOV is processed easier • Ambiguous Chains are processed like canonical word order (Kaan, 1997) Experiment III: Event Related Potentials (ERP): • LAN & P600: Syntactic Complexity in derived order (Matzke et al, 2001; Felser et al, 2003) • N400: Semantic desambiguation (Hagoort et al., 2004)

  7. Experiment I: self-pace readingSOV vs OSV Goal: to determine whether OSV sentences have a higher processing cost than SOV sentences: (a) longer reading times (b) comprehension problems Participants:23 native speakers Materials: 2 conditions, 32 sentences per condition 2 lists :16 SOV sentences/16 OSV sentences 32 fillers (the same for two lists)

  8. Experiment I: Materials Subject Object Verb Aux emakume-akgizon-a ikus-i du woman-the/Subj. man-the/Obj. seen has ‘the woman has seen the man’ Object Subject Verb Aux gizon-aemakume-ak ikus-i du man-the/Obj.woman-the/Subj. seen has ‘the woman has seen the man’

  9. Experiment I: Results p<0.005 Mean Reading times of sentences: global score • SOV order is processed faster than OSV order

  10. Experiment I:Results p<0.001 Errors in the comprehension task • OSV order elicited more errors than SOV order

  11. Experiment I:Results Mean reading times Word by Word • Unmarked form processed faster than marked • OSV requires a reanalysis of syntactic structure at subject position

  12. Experiment I: SOV vs OSV • Marked constituents are harder to processed • Displaced constituents increase syntactic complexity • Canonical SOV sentences require less processing time • Derived OSV sentences require syntactic reanalysis

  13. Experiment II: Processing of ambiguous chains Goal: to determine whether there is any preference when processing ambiguous chains (SOV/OSV). Participants:23 native speakers Materials:3 conditions, 48 sentences per condition 3 lists: 16 SOV sentences 16 OSV sentences 16 AMBIGUOUS 48 fillers

  14. MORPHOLOGICAL AMBIGUITY EMAKUME-AK ‘WOMAN-X’ OBJECT PLURAL PACIENT SUBJECT SINGULAR AGENT Emakume-ak gizon-ak ikusi ditu woman-? man-? seehas ‘The woman has seen the men’ o ‘The man has seen the women’

  15. Experiment II:Materials Subject Object Verb+aux Emakume-ekgizon-ak ikus-i dituzte women the Subj. men the Obj. seen have ‘the women have seen the men’ Object Subject Verb+aux Gizon-akemakume-ek ikus-i dituzte man-? women-the Subj. seen have ‘the women have seen the men’ Ambiguous Chain Emakume-ak gizon-ak ikus-i ditu woman-? man-? seen has ‘the woman has seen the men’ or ‘the man has seen the women’

  16. p<0.001 n.s. Results: Mean Reading time of the sentences • Ambiguous chain is processed as SOV sentence

  17. Results: SOV vs OSV, word by word • Comparing SOV and OSV orders: replication of the first experiment, syntactic reanalysis

  18. Results: SOV vs Ambiguous Chain, Word by Word • No evidences of syntactic reanalysis • Ambiguous chains are processed as SOV order sentences • SOV is the simplest processing solution.

  19. EXPERIMENT III:Electrophysiological evidences using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) This experiment suggests that: a)SOV is the canonical, underived word order in Basque, and it constitutes the simplest choice for sentence parsing b)OSV word order is syntactically derived and therefore more complex to parse Participants:24 right-handed native speakers Materials: 4 conditions, 240 sentences per condition 2 conditions, unambiguous 2 conditions, temporally ambiguous

  20. Otso-ek Wolfs/the/Subj ardi-ak sheep-the/Obj jan eaten dituzte have ‘the wolfs have eaten the sheep(pl)’ jan eaten du has Ardi-a Sheep-the/Obj otso-ak wolf-the/Subj ‘the wolf has eaten the sheep’ Experiment III: Materials Subject Object Verb+aux Verb+aux Object Subject

  21. Experiment III: Materials SOV temporally ambiguous Otso-ak wolf ? ardi-ak sheep ? jan eaten ditu has ‘the wolf has eaten the sheep(pl)’ OSV temporally ambiguous Ardi-ak sheep ? otso-ak wolf ? jan eaten ditu has ‘the wolf has eaten the sheep(pl)’

  22. Experiment III: ERP Results Constituents of unambiguous SOV/OSV sentences: • Syntactically displaced constituents increase the processing costs. (Kluender y Kutas, 1997) • Left Anterior Negativitywas obtained for displaced subjects and objects

  23. ERP RESULTS: SOV vs OSV SOV OSV Left Anterior Negativity LAN

  24. ERP RESULTS: SOV vs OSV LAN Left Anterior Negativity SOV OSV

  25. Experiment III: ERP Results Verb of unambiguous SOV/OSV sentences: • Syntactic integration of displaced constituent at verb position increases processing cost (Felser et al, 2003) • At verb position of OSV non-canonical sentences we obtained a syntax related P600 component.

  26. ERP RESULTS: SOV vs OSV P600/SPS SOV OSV

  27. Experiment III: ERP Results Unambiguous SOV/OSV sentences: • These components, LAN and P600 showed that non-canonical OSV sentences are syntactically more complex than canonical SOV sentences in the grammar of Basque

  28. Experiment III: ERP Results Temporally ambiguous SOV/OSV: • We didn´t find any difference between the two first constituents. • The semantic disambiguation at the verb of OSV elicited a N400 component, related to semantic analysis and complexity

  29. ERP RESULTS: DISAMBIGUATION N400 SOV OSV

  30. Conclusions • Basque’s underived word order is SOV • Displaced elements increase syntactic complexity • Non-canonical OSV order is syntactically more complex

  31. Summary • We have provided processing and ERP evidence that gives support to the claim that Basque grammar is built upon a basic, head final sentence structure (SOV word order), despite the fact that this language allows almost all constituent combinations in a sentence. • Building upon results from other languages, where it has been shown that underived word orders yield shorter reading times and less comprehension difficulties, we have shown that these results also replicate in Basque, although the specific word order signaled as less complex and easier to understand is systematically SOV. • ERP results also showed that OSV generated LAN and P600, both signaling syntactic complexity

  32. Thank you! Contact e-mail: kepa9815@euskalnet.net http://www.ehu.es/HEB/english_erdozia.htm

More Related