1 / 38

Back to Usual Issues

Back to Usual Issues. So, evidence supports both Parallelism & Interaction of multiple within-sentence constraints And shows Verb Bias effects in sentences that should not require any reanalysis But Verb Bias effects could be part of 1 st stage, since may be a kind of syntactic knowledge

zada
Download Presentation

Back to Usual Issues

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. Back to Usual Issues • So, evidence supports both Parallelism & Interaction of multiple within-sentence constraints • And shows Verb Bias effects in sentences that should not require any reanalysis • But Verb Bias effects could be part of 1st stage, since may be a kind of syntactic knowledge • And N+V plausibility effects are only testable in sentences with Clause structure, so could be due to reanalysis • What about constraints from outside sentence? Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  2. Discourse Context • What are Non-minimally Attached PPs? • They modify the NP they follow • When does an NP need modification? • When it wouldn’t be clear in context who or what it refers to • If you see/hear The doctor examined the patient with ... • In a context where there are several patients in the waiting room • You may expect what follows to tell you which patient is meant • i.e., context may lead you to expect a Non-minimal Attachment Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  3. Altmann & Steedman(1988) Contexts: A burglar broke into a bank carrying some dynamite. He planned to blow open a safe. Once inside, he saw that there was ... • 2-safe context: ... a safe with a new lock and a safe with an old lock. • 1-safe context: ... a safe with a new lock and a strongbox with an old lock. • Target Sentences: MA:The burglar blew open the safe with the dynamite and ... NMA:The burglar blew open the safe with the new lock and ... Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  4. Prediction • If people use discourse context immediately, • they'll read new lockfaster than dynamite after the 2-safe context • because they need new lock to know which safe is meant • Results (Moving-Window RT) • People did read new lockfaster than dynamite after 2-safe context • i.e., the Non-Minimally Attached sentence was easier than the Minimally Attached sentence • So, suggests people don’t always try the simpler structure 1st • What they try first seems to depend on the discourse context • BUT, these results have been notoriously difficult to replicate! • What if the context comes from the world rather than the discourse? • If that influences parsing, the system is clearly very interactive Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  5. Tanenhaus, Spivey-Knowlton, Eberhard & Sedivy (Science, 1995) • Head-mounted eyetracker • Track eyes while people look at visual scenes & hear spoken instructions • They usually look at objects before reaching for them • So eye movements can show what they’re thinking of reaching for, based on how they’re understanding a sentence so far Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  6. Procedures • People looked at displays of 4 objects while hearing instructions like: • Put the apple on the towel in the box. • Ambiguous between: • Put the apple on the towel in the box.towel =destination (MA) • Put the apple on the towel in the box.towel = modifier (NMA) • The visual scene had either 1 or 2 apples present • If visual context influences parsing, then when there are 2 apples: • They should think PP modifies it, to pick out which apple • So they should not think the towel is a destination & thus should not look at it (much) • - i.e., They should prefer the Non-Minimal Attachment Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  7. Only 1 apple in display Ambiguous version Typical Result in 1-Ref Condition Unambiguous version Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  8. Ambiguous version Unambiguous version Typical Result in 2-Ref Condition 2 apples in display Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  9. Overall Results Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  10. Interpretation • When there were 2 apples, people rarely looked at the empty towel • Suggests rarely considered it as a possible destination • Thus, that they did not always try MA first? • So, non-linguistic visual context immediately constrained interpretation • So, sentence comprehension processing is Interactive • Whether you believe this interpretation • Depends on whether you think people would move their eyes to the empty towel if they briefly mis-parsed the sentence & thought it was a destination ??? Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  11. The next section has slides from a talk of mine about a study with Reduced Relatives, showing some individual difference effects. I will talk about this study when we talk about memory and language processing, so don’t worry if you can’t figure it out from just the slides. Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  12. Individual Differences in the Effect of Yet-to-be-Fixated Words during Sentence Reading With thanks to: Elizabeth Myers Neal Pearlmutter Kate Pirog Mike Tanenhaus John Trueswell Gary Wolverton Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  13. My Very Favorite Example of a Garden-Path Sentence “A University student charged with threatening to kill the President via email was arrested Thursday, following issuance of a complaint and warrant, officials said.” - Daily Illini, 2/27/94 Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  14. “A University student charged with threatening to kill the President via email Y X Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  15. You may not have noticed that there was another opportunity for garden-pathing in this example who was ^ with threatening to kill the President … ” “A University student charged “Reduced Relative” Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  16. fell. What makes this one so much harder? 2. The word past is no help after raced vs A University student charged with The Most Famous English Garden-Path Sentence The horse raced past the barn 1. Horses are good racers Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  17. Dual Purkinje Eyetracker For the font size and distance we use, spatial resolution is ~1/4 character Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  18. First-pass ReadingTime = Sum of all fixations in a region before leaving the region - Used as a measure of “initial processing” Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  19. Scoring Regions: The evidence / (that was) / examined / by the lawyer / turned out /… Disambiguating Region Example Stimulus Set for All of the Studies that Follow Animate = Good Agent The witness (who was) examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable. Inanimate = Bad Agent = Possible Passive Patient The evidence (that was) examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable. Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  20. Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  21. Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  22. We thought there were some problems with the materials: e.g., The trashsmelled by the dog was laying on the sidewalk. The questionsaskedabout the murder could not be answered. The storiestoldabout the incident were a great source of concern. Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  23. Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  24. Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  25. Daneman & Carpenter’s (1980) Reading Span Test At the conclusion of the musicians' performance, the enthusiastic crowd applauded. Without any hesitation, he plunged into the difficult mathematics assignment blindly. The devastating effects of the flood were not fully realized until months later. When I got to the big tobacco field I saw that it had not suffered much. Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  26. What does the test measure? - Verbal working memory capacity? - Ability to focus attention? - Skill with language and reading? - . . . ? For some purposes, it doesn’t matter - As long as it reliably identifies subgroups of people - Who can then be tested for differences in other tasks - Which may help us figure out what the test measures Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  27. Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  28. Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  29. Parafoveal Preview in Reading Burgess (1991) - Self-paced moving window reading time study - Varied window size from single to several words - Found an animacy effect only when people saw the disambiguating preposition “by” chunked together with the verb preceding it the lawyer examined by turned out … e.g., The evidence Ferreira & Clifton used a 40-character wide display - Sometimes the preposition was on the next line Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  30. If last fix before “by” was here, trial not used If last fix before “by” was here, trial coded as “Preview Likely” If last fix before “by” was here, trial coded as “Preview Unlikely” We created sentences with verbs at least 8 characters long - So we could analyze data contingent on whether or not people were likely to get preview of “by” while still fixating on verb The professor confronted by the student was not ready to … Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  31. 48 item sets with 4 versions each: The professor (who was) confronted by the student was not ready for an argument. The professor (had) confronted the student but was not ready for an argument. All animate – Want people biased toward main clause interpretations - So sentences are fairly hard, so there’s a better chance to see how much preview of “by” can help Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  32. Participants - 23 high-span (>=3.5, 13 female) - 20 low-span (<=3.0, 10 female) (More would be good, since breaking it down by both span & critical fixation locations & dropping some trials) Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  33. Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  34. Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  35. Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  36. Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  37. Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

  38. People are differently abled when it comes to • making rapid use of cues that can help in • understanding hard sentences - In Trueswell et al. (1994), - We probably just happened to get a high proportion of high-span subjects - And something about the display &/or materials happened to make it easy to get preview of “by” - Presenting sentences one word at a time in ERP studies (among others) may yield unrepresentative results especially for highly skilled readers Psyc / Ling / Comm 525 Spring08

More Related