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Basque Word Orders, Psycholinguistic and Neurolinguistic Research

Basque Word Orders, Psycholinguistic and Neurolinguistic Research. Author: Kepa Erdozia Advisor: Itziar Laka. Quote (Chomsky 1986: 3-4).

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Basque Word Orders, Psycholinguistic and Neurolinguistic Research

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  1. Basque Word Orders, Psycholinguistic and Neurolinguistic Research Author: Kepa Erdozia Advisor: Itziar Laka

  2. Quote (Chomsky 1986: 3-4) The study of generative grammar represented a significant shift of focus in the approach to problems of language. Put in the simplest terms, to be elaborated below, the shift of focus was from behavior or the products of behavior to states of the mind/brain that enter into behavior. If one chooses to focus attention on this latter topic, the central concern becomes knowledge of language: its nature, origins, and use. • The three basic questions that arise, then, are these: • (1) (i) What constitutes knowledge of language? • (ii) How is knowledge of language acquired? • (iii) How is knowledge of language put to use? The answer to the first question is given by a particular generative grammar, a theory concerned with the state of the mind/brain of the person who knows a particular language. The answer to the second is given by a specification of UG along with an account of the ways in which its principles interact with experience to yield a particular language; UG is a theory of the “initial state” of the language faculty, prior to any linguistic experience. The answer to the third question would be a theory of how the knowledge of language attained enters into the expressions of thought and the understanding of presented specimens of language, and derivatively, into communication and other special uses of language.

  3. TALK PLANNING What constitutes knowledge of language? Linguistic research about word order in Basque How is knowledge of language acquired? How the children acquire word order in Basque How is knowledge of language put to use? How humans use their knowledge of language to generate and process word orders in Basque

  4. Free Word Order a. PP-S-IO-O-V

  5. Free Word Order a. PP S IO O V [Afaldu ondoren] [Mikelek] [Elenari] [gerriko berria] [oparitu dio]

  6. Free Word Order a. PP S IO O V [Afaldu ondoren] [Mikelek] [Elenari] [gerriko berria] [oparitu dio] [After dinner-PP] [Mikel-S] [Elena-IO] [the new belt-O] [given has-V] ‘After dinner, Mikel has given the new belt to Elena’

  7. Free Word Order a. PP SIOO V [Afaldu ondoren][Mikelek][Elenari][gerriko berria] [oparitu dio] [After dinner-PP] [Mikel-S] [Elena-IO] [the new belt-O] [given has-V] ‘After dinner, Mikel has given the new belt to Elena’ b. OPP IO S V [Gerriko berria][afaldu ondoren][Elenari][Mikelek] [oparitu dio] c. S O PP V IO [Mikelek][gerriko berria][afaldu ondoren] [oparitu dio] [Elenari] d. IO V O PP S [Elenari] [oparitu dio] [gerriko berria][afaldu ondoren][Mikelek] e. ... 5 constituent sentence; P5 = 120 sentences. Nearly, all constituent permutation are grammatical in Basque

  8. Previous Research on Word Order in Basque Generative Grammar SOV (De Rijk 1969, Eguzkitza 1986, Ortiz de Urbina 1989, Laka 1990, Artiagoitia 1995, Fernandez 1998, A. Elordieta 2001, Arregi 2001 among others …)

  9. Previous Research on Word Order in Basque Generative Grammar SOV (De Rijk 1969, Eguzkitza 1986, Ortiz de Urbina 1989, Laka 1990, Artiagoitia 1995, Fernandez 1998, A. Elordieta 2001, Arregi 2001 among others …) SVO (Ormazabal et al 1994, G. Elordieta 1997, Haddican 2004) Informational and Statistical approaches Osa 1990, Hidalgo 1994, Aldezabal et al 2003 Experimental Psycholinguistics: language acquistion Bronckart & Idiazabal 1982

  10. De Rijk 1969 Statistical analysis: SOV Addapted from De Rijk 1969: 16

  11. De Rijk 1969 NP NP NP Verb Y Y Statistical analysis: SOV Addapted from De Rijk 1969: 16 Following Greenberg: SOV Postpositions V>Aux Relative clauses: SOV

  12. Ortiz de Urbina 1989 INFL’’ Otsoak INFL’ INFL VP’’ du ardia V’ jan Subject/Object asymetries In the hierarchical configuration of Basque subjects are hierarchically higher than objects Otsoakardiajan du

  13. INFL’’ Otsoak INFL’ INFL VP’’ du ardia V’ jan Ortiz de Urbina 1989 Otsoakardiajan du Ardiaotsoak jan du

  14. CP INFL’’ CP ardiaj Otsoak INFL’ otsoaki C’ INFL VP’’ du INFL’’ C ardia V’ INFL’ tj jan duk VP’’ INFL jan V’ ti tk Ortiz de Urbina 1989 Otsoakardiajan du Ardiaotsoak jan du

  15. A. Elordieta 2001 CP TP C T AuxP Aux vP vP DPsub AspP v Asp VP DPobj V SOV Otsoakardia jan du OSV: Ardiaotsoak jan du Diplaced the subject to focus position and the verb to CP position; and displaced the object to the topic position [TopObjj[FocSubji [CPjan du]V-aux [TP titjtV-aux]]]

  16. XP Specifier Head Complement Antisymmetry (Kayne 1994, 2004) Kayne: syntactic structure is universally and without exceptions of the form S[pecifier]-H[ead]-C[omplement]. The complement of a head invariably follows that head. The associated specifier invariably precedes both head and complement (2004: 3) All languages are based generated as SVO Kayne: The question is whether Japanese [Basque] objects ever surface within VP, in complement position of V. Antisymmetry says no, given OV order (2004: 5)

  17. Ormazabal, Uriagereka and Uribe-Etxebarria 1994 Japanese Mary-gasono hon-o yonda Mary-S book that-O read-V Declaratives Basque Mirenekliburu hori irakurri du Mary-S book that-O read-V Japanese Mary-wanani-o yonda ka? Mary-S what-O read-V Q-marker Interrogatives Basque Zer irakurri du Mirenek? What read-V Mary-S

  18. CP C’ IP C tIP CP C’ WH C IP Ormazabal, Uriagereka and Uribe-Etxebarria 1994 In declarative sentences, IP moves to the specifier position of CP in the both languages In Basque interrogative sentences, the WH-word raises the CP leaving behind the IP a) Before the movement of IP to CP, move the verb to C Neuter SOV order two possibilities b) Extract the arguments from the IP which is in CP

  19. CP TP C ModP T NegP Mod Neg VP DP V’ DP V G. Elordieta 1997 SVO Otsoakjan du ardia How derived SOV order: a) In functional projections above the VP b) Agreement features are present in the verb from the start of the numeration and languages choose whether to spell-out or not morphologically

  20. PolP Pol’ !VP Mod(evid)P Zorrak ordaindu Mod(evid)’ CaseP omen TP Zorraki Case’ Aux T’ VP T tm ordaindu ti Haddican 2004 Declarative sentences: V>Aux Polarity Phrase (PolP) Negative sentences: Neg>Aux>V From VO to OV But, his system allowed focus construction which are ungrammatical *JONEK Miren ikusi du

  21. Word Order and Comunicative Abilities (Osa 1990) Functionalist point of view Informational structures of Focus provide word order variability The canonical word order in Basque is Subjet-Object-Verb a) Less presupositions are elicited by SOV b) Prosodically flat c) It replies to a What happened? question d) All the sentence could be new information

  22. Word Order and Statistics (Hidalgo 1994) Statistically analyzed following De Rijk’s sentence selection criterion XVIIth Century Source: Hidalgo 1994

  23. Word Order and Statistics (Hidalgo 1994) Statistically analyzed following De Rijk’s sentence selection criterion XIXth Century Source: Hidalgo 1994

  24. Word Order and Statistics (Hidalgo 1994) Statistically analyzed following De Rijk’s sentence selection criterion Popular oral tales collections Source: Hidalgo 1994

  25. Word Order and Statistics (Hidalgo 1994) Statistically analyzed following De Rijk’s sentence selection criterion Oral testimony from 1994 The Hidalgo’s statistical research continues but he changed the sentence selection criterion and then the sentences are not the same sentences that we followed in our research. Source: Hidalgo 1994

  26. Word Order and Statistics (Aldezabal et al. 2003) The corpus of the Euskaldunon Egunkaria (from January 1999 to May 2000) 14,557 declarative sentences where 512 sentences had spelled out the subject, the object and the verb Source: Aldezabal et al. 2003

  27. Psycholinguistics: Bronckart & Idiazabal 1982 Aim: to analyze the Acquisition of different structures in Basque, and the processing strategies of these structures Participants: 7 Groups of different age people Group 1: 3-4 years Group 4: 6-7 years Group 2: 4-5 years Group 5: 7-8 years Group 3: 5-6 years Group 6: 10-11 years Group 7: adults Task: To represent the listened sentence with some toys

  28. Psycholinguistics: Bronckart & Idiazabal 1982 3-4 y.o. 4-5 y.o. 5-6 y.o. 6-7 y.o. 7-8 y.o. 10-11 y.o. adults Zakurrakneska bota du 15 1 19 1 18 2 20 0 19 1 20 0 20 0 Neskazakurrak bota du 13 7 11 9 14 3 11 9 11 9 18 2 20 0 15 1 19 1 17 3 20 0 20 0 20 0 20 0 Zakurrak bota du neska Neska bota du zakurrak 15 5 15 5 11 7 16 4 14 6 20 0 19 1 Subject first sentences were comprehended well Object first sentences were comprehended worse untill the age of 8 It seems that younger children understood the first constituent as subject and the second as object

  29. INTERNAL SUMMARY 1 Previous Research onWord Order in Basque GENERATIVE GRAMMAR Basic word order Canonical word order Most linguists: SOV SOV Antisymmetrists: SVO SOV FUNCTIONALISTS: SOV Most frequent word order STATISTIC RESEARCH: SOV De Rijk SVO Hidalgo Aldezabal et al SOV Earliest acquired word order PSYCHOLINGUISTICS (ACQUISTION): SOV/SVO

  30. Psycolinguistics Tecnique in Syntax Quote: “Just as the theory of grammar has as its goals an account of Universal Grammar and parameters of language variation, the theory of sentence processing has as its goal the characterization of the universal parser, the human sentence processing mechanism” Sekerina 2003: 302

  31. Psycholinguistic Experiments in Basque: Method SELF PACED READING MOVING WINDOW Participants perform the experiment at their own pace. To move from one element to the next element, participants had to press the space bar of the computer keyboard, one press for each element. Thus, participants decided the time they needed in order to process each element of the sentence, and therefore they decide the time they needed to comprehend the whole sentence. Reaction times COMPREHENSION TASK The comprehension task allowed us to be sure that participants had understood the sentences they read. The task consisted in a yes-or-no question after each sentence. The answer of half of questions of each word order was “yes” and the other half was “no”.

  32. ***** ***** ***** *****

  33. Emakumeak ***** ***** ***** (The woman)

  34. ***** gizona ***** ***** (the man)

  35. ***** ****** ikusi ***** (seen)

  36. ***** ****** ***** du (has)

  37. Egia al da emakume batek gizon bat ikusi duela? (Is it true that a woman has seen a man?)

  38. Experiment 1: SOV-OSV Goal: to determine whether OSV sentences have a higher processing cost than SOV sentences: (a) longer reading times (b) comprehension problems Participants 23 participants (13 w and 10 m) Age-range was 18 to 36 (mean 25; SD ± 5). Materials 32 sentences in SOV and 32 sentences in OSV. 2 lists: 16 SOV and 16 OSV sentences per condition. 32 fillers (the same for two lists). Experimental conditions and fillers contained 4 words

  39. Experiment 1: Material 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’

  40. Filler sentences consisted in one argument sentences Manu futbolari bikaina da. ‘Manu is an excellent soccer player’. Experiment 1: Material

  41. Experiment 1: Recording Recording The EXPE6 (Pallier et al. 1997) recorded the reaction times and the answers of the participants: (i) time to read each word of the sentence (ii) the time to perform the comprehension task (read and answer) (iii) whether the answer to the question is correct or not. Expectations The derived OSV word order sentences (i) would require longer reading time (ii) would require longer reading time in the comprehension task (iii) would induce more errors in the comprehension task.

  42. p<0.005 Experiment 1: Results Mean Reading Times of Sentences: Global Score * • SOV order is processed faster than OSV order

  43. p<0.002 Experiment 1: Results Reaction Times in the Comprehension Task • Questions about OSV word order elicited longer reading time

  44. p<0.001 Experiment 1: Results Errors in the Comprehension Task • OSV order elicited more errors than SOV order

  45. p<0.01 p<0.05 p<0.05 p<0.05 Experiment 1: Results Mean reading times Word by Word Unmarked form processed faster than marked OSV requires a reanalysis of syntactic structure at subject position interaction between first two DPs of the sentences F = 12.9; p < 0.002

  46. Experiment 2: Ambiguous Chains Goal: to determine how the ambiguous chains were processing and how the syntactic disambiguation happened. (a) whether ambiguous chains were processed as canonical SOV sentences (b) syntactic disambiguation elicited a syntactic reanalysis of the sentences

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

  48. Experiment 2: Method METHOD Participants 23 subjects (3 man and 20 woman; mean age 20.4, SD = 2.5). Materials Three conditions (48 sentences per condition): SOV condition As in the previous experiment OSV condition AMB condition The new condition 48 filler sentences, the same for every list. Three lists: one version of each item was assigned to one of the two lists List 1: 16 SOV / 16 OSV / 16 AMB + 48 fillers ( = 96 sentences) List 2: 16 SOV / 16 OSV / 16 AMB + 48 fillers ( = 96 sentences) List 3: 16 SOV / 16 OSV / 16 AMB + 48 fillers ( = 96 sentences)

  49. Experiment 2: Material 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-X women-the Subj. seen have ‘the women have seen the men’ Ambiguous Chain Emakume-ak gizon-ak ikus-i ditu woman-X man-X seen has ‘the woman has seen the men’ or ‘the man has seen the women’

  50. Experiment 2: Results Mean Reading Times of Sentences: Global Score p<0.001 n.s. Ambiguous chain is processed as SOV sentence

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