1
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Yoo MH, Tollan R. Transitivity and non-uniform subjecthood in agreement attraction. Mem Cognit 2024; 52:536-553. [PMID: 38114715 DOI: 10.3758/s13421-023-01482-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 10/06/2023] [Indexed: 12/21/2023]
Abstract
Research on human language converges on a view in which a grammatical "subject" is the most saliently encoded entity in mental representation. However, subjecthood is not a syntactically uniform phenomenon. Notably, many languages encode morphological distinctions between subjects of transitive verbs (i.e., verbs that require an object) and subjects of intransitive verbs. We ask how this typological pattern manifests in a language like English (which does not morphologically signal it) by examining the "distinctiveness" of transitive versus intransitive subjects in memory during online sentence processing. We conducted a self-paced reading experiment that tested for "attraction" effects (Dillon et al., Journal of Memory and Language, 69(2), 85-103, 2013; Wagers et al., Journal of Memory and Language, 61, 206-237, 2009) in the processing of subject-verb number agreement. We find that transitive subjects trigger attraction effects, but that these effects are mitigated for intransitive subject attractors (independently of the number of other noun phrases present in the intervening clause). We interpret this as indicating that transitive subjects are less distinctive and therefore less representationally salient than intransitive subjects: This is because a transitive subject must compete with another clause-mate core argument (i.e., a direct object), which draws on resources from the same pool of memory resources. On the other hand, an intransitive subject minimally only competes with a non-core argument (i.e., an oblique noun phrase); this consumes fewer memory resources, leaving the subject to enjoy greater spoils.
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Affiliation(s)
- Myung Hye Yoo
- Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies, National University of Singapore, Block AS5, 7 Arts Link, Singapore, 117570, Singapore.
| | - Rebecca Tollan
- Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, University of Delaware, Newark, NE, USA
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2
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Tung TY, Brennan JR. Expectations modulate retrieval interference during ellipsis resolution. Neuropsychologia 2023; 190:108680. [PMID: 37739260 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108680] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/20/2023] [Revised: 09/01/2023] [Accepted: 09/07/2023] [Indexed: 09/24/2023]
Abstract
Memory operations during language comprehension are subject to interference: retrieval is harder when items are linguistically similar to each other. We test how such interference effects might be modulated by linguistic expectations. Theories differ in how these factors might interact; we consider three possibilities: (i) predictability determines the need for retrieval, (ii) predictability affects cue-preference during retrieval, or (iii) word predictability moderates the effect of noise in memory during retrieval. We first demonstrate that expectations for a target word modulate retrieval interference in Mandarin noun-phrase ellipsis in an electroencephalography (EEG) experiment. This result obtains in globally ungrammatical sentences - termed "facilitatory interference." Such a pattern is inconsistent with theories that focus only on the need for retrieval. To tease apart cue-preferences from noisy-memory representations, we operationalize the latter using a Transformer neural network language model. Confronting the model with our stimuli reveals an interference effect, consistent with prior work, but that effect does not interact with predictability in contrast to human EEG results. Together, these data are most consistent with the hypothesis that the predictability of target items affects cue-preferences during retrieval.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tzu-Yun Tung
- Department of Linguistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
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3
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Chromý J, Lacina R, Dotlačil J. Number Agreement Attraction in Czech Comprehension: Negligible Facilitation Effects. Open Mind (Camb) 2023; 7:802-836. [PMID: 37946852 PMCID: PMC10631795 DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00107] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/17/2023] [Accepted: 08/31/2023] [Indexed: 11/12/2023] Open
Abstract
Number agreement attraction in comprehension has been extensively studied in various languages and it has been claimed that attraction effects are generally present across languages. In this paper, four experiments on Czech are presented, each examining a different structure. The Bayesian hierarchical models and Bayes factor analysis pointed towards no agreement attraction effects in three of the experiments. Only in one experiment an effect interpretable as signaling agreement attraction was observed. Its size, however, was so small that it did not translate into a clear preference for models with agreement attraction. The data from the four experiments were further compared to available data from several other languages (English, Armenian, Arabic, and Spanish). The emerging picture is that in Czech, agreement attraction effects are negligible in size if they appear at all. This presents a serious challenge to current theoretical explanations of agreement attraction effects.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jan Chromý
- Institute of Czech Language and Theory of Communication, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
| | - Radim Lacina
- Institute of Cognitive Science, Osnabrück University, Osnabrück, Germany
- Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
| | - Jakub Dotlačil
- Department of Languages, Literature and Communication, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
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4
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Dunagan D, Zhang S, Li J, Bhattasali S, Pallier C, Whitman J, Yang Y, Hale J. Neural correlates of semantic number: A cross-linguistic investigation. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2022; 229:105110. [PMID: 35367813 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2022.105110] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/12/2021] [Revised: 03/22/2022] [Accepted: 03/24/2022] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
One aspect of natural language comprehension is understanding how many of what or whom a speaker is referring to. While previous work has documented the neural correlates of number comprehension and quantity comparison, this study investigates semantic number from a cross-linguistic perspective with the goal of identifying cortical regions involved in distinguishing plural from singular nouns. Three fMRI datasets are used in which Chinese, French, and English native speakers listen to an audiobook of a children's story in their native language. These languages are selected because they differ in their number semantics. Across these languages, several well-known language regions manifest a contrast between plural and singular, including the pars orbitalis, pars triangularis, posterior temporal lobe, and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. This is consistent with a common brain network supporting comprehension across languages with overt as well as covert number-marking.
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Affiliation(s)
- Donald Dunagan
- Department of Linguistics, University of Georgia, GA, USA.
| | - Shulin Zhang
- Department of Linguistics, University of Georgia, GA, USA
| | - Jixing Li
- Neuroscience of Language Lab, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
| | | | | | - John Whitman
- Department of Linguistics, Cornell University, NY, USA
| | - Yiming Yang
- Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, China
| | - John Hale
- Department of Linguistics, University of Georgia, GA, USA
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5
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Laurinavichyute A, von der Malsburg T. Semantic Attraction in Sentence Comprehension. Cogn Sci 2022; 46:e13086. [PMID: 35122319 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13086] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/14/2021] [Revised: 12/09/2021] [Accepted: 12/14/2021] [Indexed: 12/22/2022]
Abstract
Agreement attraction is a cross-linguistic phenomenon where a verb occasionally agrees not with its subject, as required by grammar, but instead with an unrelated noun ("The key to the cabinets were…"). Despite the clear violation of grammatical rules, comprehenders often rate these sentences as acceptable. Contenders for explaining agreement attraction fall into two broad classes: Morphosyntactic accounts specifically designed to explain agreement attraction, and more general sentence processing models, such as the Lewis and Vasishth model, which explain attraction as a consequence of how linguistic structure is stored and accessed in content-addressable memory. In the present research, we disambiguate between these two classes by testing a surprising prediction made by the Lewis and Vasishth model but not by the morphosyntactic accounts, namely, that attraction should not be limited to morphosyntax, but that semantic features of unrelated nouns equally induce attraction. A recent study by Cunnings and Sturt provided initial evidence that this may be the case. Here, we report three single-trial experiments in English that compared semantic and agreement attraction and tested whether and how the two interact. All three experiments showed strong semantically induced attraction effects closely mirroring agreement attraction effects. We complement these results with computational simulations which confirmed that the Lewis and Vasishth model can faithfully reproduce the observed results. In sum, our findings suggest that attraction is a more general phenomenon than is commonly believed, and therefore favor more general sentence processing models, such as the Lewis and Vasishth model.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anna Laurinavichyute
- Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam.,Center for Language and Brain, HSE University
| | - Titus von der Malsburg
- Institute of Linguistics, University of Stuttgart.,Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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6
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Paape D, Avetisyan S, Lago S, Vasishth S. Modeling Misretrieval and Feature Substitution in Agreement Attraction: A Computational Evaluation. Cogn Sci 2021; 45:e13019. [PMID: 34379348 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13019] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/01/2021] [Revised: 05/30/2021] [Accepted: 06/25/2021] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
We present computational modeling results based on a self-paced reading study investigating number attraction effects in Eastern Armenian. We implement three novel computational models of agreement attraction in a Bayesian framework and compare their predictive fit to the data using k-fold cross-validation. We find that our data are better accounted for by an encoding-based model of agreement attraction, compared to a retrieval-based model. A novel methodological contribution of our study is the use of comprehension questions with open-ended responses, so that both misinterpretation of the number feature of the subject phrase and misassignment of the thematic subject role of the verb can be investigated at the same time. We find evidence for both types of misinterpretation in our study, sometimes in the same trial. However, the specific error patterns in our data are not fully consistent with any previously proposed model.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dario Paape
- Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam
| | | | - Sol Lago
- Institute for Romance Languages and Literatures, Goethe University Frankfurt
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7
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Muralikrishnan R, Idrissi A. Salience-weighted agreement feature hierarchy modulates language comprehension. Cortex 2021; 141:168-189. [PMID: 34058618 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2021.03.029] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/27/2019] [Revised: 03/01/2020] [Accepted: 03/21/2021] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
The brain establishes relations between elements of an unfolding sentence in order to incrementally build a representation of who is doing what based on various linguistic cues. Many languages systematically mark the verb and/or its arguments to imply the manner in which they are related. A common mechanism to this end is subject-verb agreement, whereby the marking on the verb covaries with one or more of the features such as person, number and gender of the subject argument in a sentence. The cross-linguistic variability of these features would suggest that they may modulate language comprehension differentially based on their relative weightings in a given language. To test this, we investigated the processing of subject-verb agreement in simple intransitive Arabic sentences in a visual event-related brain potential (ERP) study. Specifically, we examined the differences, if any, that ensue in the processing of person, number and gender features during online comprehension, employing sentences in which the verb either showed full agreement with the subject noun (singular or plural) or did not agree in one of the features. ERP responses were measured at the post-nominal verb. Results showed a biphasic negativity-late-positivity effect when the verb did not agree with its subject noun in either of the features, in line with similar findings from other languages. Crucially however, the biphasic effect for agreement violations was systematically graded based on the feature that was violated, which is a novel finding in view of results from other languages. Furthermore, this graded effect was qualitatively different for singular and plural subjects based on the differing salience of the features for each subject-type. These results suggest that agreement features, varying in their salience due to their language-specific weightings, differentially modulate language comprehension. We postulate a Salience-weighted Feature Hierarchy based on our findings and argue that this parsimoniously accounts for the diversity of existing cross-linguistic neurophysiological results on verb agreement processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- R Muralikrishnan
- Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt, Germany.
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8
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Tucker MA, Idrissi A, Almeida D. Attraction Effects for Verbal Gender and Number Are Similar but Not Identical: Self-Paced Reading Evidence From Modern Standard Arabic. Front Psychol 2021; 11:586464. [PMID: 33551906 PMCID: PMC7859339 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.586464] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/23/2020] [Accepted: 12/07/2020] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Previous work on the comprehension of agreement has shown that incorrectly inflected verbs do not trigger responses typically seen with fully ungrammatical verbs when the preceding sentential context furnishes a possibly matching distractor noun (i.e., agreement attraction). We report eight studies, three being direct replications, designed to assess the degree of similarity of these errors in the comprehension of subject-verb agreement along the dimensions of grammatical gender and number in Modern Standard Arabic. A meta-analysis of the results demonstrate the presence of agreement attraction effects in reading comprehension for gender and number on verbs. Moreover, the meta-analysis demonstrates that these two features do not behave identically: gender effects are larger and occur later relative to number attraction effects. These results challenge models of agreement that predict agreement features to be equipotent and show that real-time models of agreement require modifications in the form of cue-weighting in order to account for these differential results.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew A Tucker
- Language, Mind and Brain Lab, Division of Science, Psychology Program, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.,Amazon.com, Inc., Cambridge, MA, United States
| | - Ali Idrissi
- The Neurocognition of Language Lab, Department of English Literature and Linguistics, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
| | - Diogo Almeida
- Language, Mind and Brain Lab, Division of Science, Psychology Program, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
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9
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Paspali A, Marinis T. Gender Agreement Attraction in Greek Comprehension. Front Psychol 2020; 11:717. [PMID: 32411044 PMCID: PMC7201047 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00717] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/27/2019] [Accepted: 03/24/2020] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
This work explores gender agreement attraction in comprehension. Attraction occurs when an agreement error (such as, "the key to the cabinets are rusty") goes unnoticed, leading to the illusion of grammaticality due to a mismatch between the value of the head and the value of a local intervening phase (attractor). According to retrieval accounts, these errors occur during cue retrieval from memory and predict illusions of grammaticality. Alternatively, representational accounts predict that the errors occur due to the faulty representation of certain features, thus, illusions of ungrammaticality are also expected. In four experiments we explore: (a) whether gender agreement attraction occurs in Greek and the strategy/-ies employed, (b) the role of the agreement target, (c) the timing of gender agreement attraction, (d) the role of phonological matching between the nominal inflectional morphemes of the attractor and the agreement target, and (e) participants' sensitivity to agreement when there is no conflict from the attractor. In all four experiments, the grammaticality of the sentence and the attractor value (match or mismatch with the head) and also the phonological matching between the attractor and the agreement target in ungrammatical sentences were manipulated. The agreement target was either an adjectival predicate or an object-clitic and the gender value of the head was feminine or neuter. Attraction was found in all measures during the time-course of adjectival predicates (Experiment 1) and object-clitics (Experiment 2), and in timed (Experiment 3), and untimed (Experiment 4) judgments. Even more, both gender values showed attraction and the results mainly suggest that participants experience illusions of grammaticality, confirming retrieval accounts. Phonological matching did not modulate attraction in any of the experiments, suggesting that the similarity in the morphophonological realization between the agreement target and the attractor does not increase attraction. Furthermore, participants were sensitive to gender agreement violations in the absence of gender mismatch between the head and the attractor, suggesting that they respect agreement rules and have both neuter and feminine available in their feature content repertoire, although with some tendency in favor of neuter in feminine agreement contexts. The impact of these findings is discussed within the concept of attraction and sensitivity to agreement violations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anastasia Paspali
- Department of English and American Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Theodoros Marinis
- Department of Linguistics, Universität Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany
- School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom
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10
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Vasishth S, Nicenboim B, Engelmann F, Burchert F. Computational Models of Retrieval Processes in Sentence Processing. Trends Cogn Sci 2019; 23:968-982. [DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2019.09.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 36] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/13/2019] [Revised: 08/31/2019] [Accepted: 09/03/2019] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
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11
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Schlueter Z, Parker D, Lau E. Error-Driven Retrieval in Agreement Attraction Rarely Leads to Misinterpretation. Front Psychol 2019; 10:1002. [PMID: 31133936 PMCID: PMC6524724 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/12/2018] [Accepted: 04/15/2019] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Previous work on agreement computation in sentence comprehension motivates a model in which the parser predicts the verb's number and engages in retrieval of the agreement controller only when it detects a mismatch between the prediction and the bottom-up input. It is the error-driven second stage of this process that is prone to similarity-based interference and can result in the illusory licensing of a subject-verb number agreement violation in the presence of a structurally irrelevant noun matching the number marking on the verb ('The bed by the lamps were…'), giving rise to an effect known as 'agreement attraction'. Here we ask to what extent the error-driven retrieval process underlying the illusory licensing alters the structural and thematic representation of the sentence. We use a novel dual-task paradigm that combines self-paced reading with a speeded forced choice task to investigate whether agreement attraction leads comprehenders to erroneously interpret the attractor as the thematic subject, which would indicate structural reanalysis. Participants read sentence fragments ('The bed by the lamp/lamps was/were undoubtedly quite') and completed the sentences by choosing between two adjectives ('comfortable'/'bright') which were either compatible with the subject's head noun or with the attractor. We found the expected agreement attraction profile in the self-paced reading data but the interpretive error occurs on only a small subset of attraction trials, suggesting that in agreement attraction agreement checking rarely matches the thematic relation. We propose that illusory licensing of an agreement violation often reflects a low-level rechecking process that is only concerned with number and does not have an impact on the structural representation of the sentence. Interestingly, this suggests that error-driven repair processes can result in a globally inconsistent final sentence representation with a persistent mismatch between the subject and the verb.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zoe Schlueter
- Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, United States
- Department of Linguistics and English Language, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
| | - Dan Parker
- Linguistics Program, Department of English, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, United States
| | - Ellen Lau
- Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, United States
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12
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The grammaticality asymmetry in agreement attraction reflects response bias: Experimental and modeling evidence. Cogn Psychol 2019; 110:70-104. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2019.01.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 42] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/05/2018] [Revised: 01/18/2019] [Accepted: 01/21/2019] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
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13
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Parker D. Cue Combinatorics in Memory Retrieval for Anaphora. Cogn Sci 2019; 43:e12715. [DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12715] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/17/2018] [Revised: 01/23/2019] [Accepted: 01/30/2019] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Dan Parker
- Department of English Linguistics Program College of William & Mary
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14
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Parker D, An A. Not All Phrases Are Equally Attractive: Experimental Evidence for Selective Agreement Attraction Effects. Front Psychol 2018; 9:1566. [PMID: 30210399 PMCID: PMC6121010 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01566] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/04/2018] [Accepted: 08/06/2018] [Indexed: 12/04/2022] Open
Abstract
Research on memory retrieval during sentence comprehension suggests that similarity-based interference is mediated by the grammatical function of the distractor. For instance, Van Dyke and McElree (2011) observed interference during retrieval for subject-verb thematic binding when the distractor occurred as an oblique argument inside a prepositional phrase (PP), but not when it occurred as a core argument in direct object position. This contrast motivated the proposal that constituent encodings vary in the distinctiveness of their memory representations based on an argument hierarchy, which makes them differentially susceptible to interference. However, this hypothesis has not been explicitly tested. The present study uses an interference paradigm involving agreement attraction (e.g., Wagers et al., 2009) to test whether the argument status of the distractor determines susceptibility to interference. Results from two self-paced reading experiments show a clear contrast: agreement attraction is observed for oblique arguments (e.g., PP distractors), but attraction is nullified for core arguments (i.e., direct object and subject distractors). A follow-up experiment showed that this contrast cannot be reduced to the syntactic position of the distractor, favoring an account based on the semantic properties of the distractor. These findings support the proposal that interference is mediated by the argument status of the distractor and extend previous results by showing that the effect generalizes to a broader set of syntactic contexts and a wider range of syntactic dependencies. More generally, these results motivate a more nuanced account of real-time agreement processing that depends on both retrieval and encoding mechanisms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dan Parker
- Linguistics Program, Department of English, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, United States
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15
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Villata S, Tabor W, Franck J. Encoding and Retrieval Interference in Sentence Comprehension: Evidence from Agreement. Front Psychol 2018; 9:2. [PMID: 29403414 PMCID: PMC5780450 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/13/2017] [Accepted: 01/03/2018] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Long-distance verb-argument dependencies generally require the integration of a fronted argument when the verb is encountered for sentence interpretation. Under a parsing model that handles long-distance dependencies through a cue-based retrieval mechanism, retrieval is hampered when retrieval cues also resonate with non-target elements (retrieval interference). However, similarity-based interference may also stem from interference arising during the encoding of elements in memory (encoding interference), an effect that is not directly accountable for by a cue-based retrieval mechanism. Although encoding and retrieval interference are clearly distinct at the theoretical level, it is difficult to disentangle the two on empirical grounds, since encoding interference may also manifest at the retrieval region. We report two self-paced reading experiments aimed at teasing apart the role of each component in gender and number subject-verb agreement in Italian and English object relative clauses. In Italian, the verb does not agree in gender with the subject, thus providing no cue for retrieval. In English, although present tense verbs agree in number with the subject, past tense verbs do not, allowing us to test the role of number as a retrieval cue within the same language. Results from both experiments converge, showing similarity-based interference at encoding, and some evidence for an effect at retrieval. After having pointed out the non-negligible role of encoding in sentence comprehension, and noting that Lewis and Vasishth's (2005) ACT-R model of sentence processing, the most fully developed cue-based retrieval approach to sentence processing does not predict encoding effects, we propose an augmentation of this model that predicts these effects. We then also propose a self-organizing sentence processing model (SOSP), which has the advantage of accounting for retrieval and encoding interference with a single mechanism.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sandra Villata
- Psycholinguistics Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Université de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland
| | - Whitney Tabor
- Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States
- Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT, United States
| | - Julie Franck
- Psycholinguistics Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Université de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland
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16
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Tanner D, Grey S, van Hell JG. Dissociating retrieval interference and reanalysis in the P600 during sentence comprehension. Psychophysiology 2016; 54:248-259. [DOI: 10.1111/psyp.12788] [Citation(s) in RCA: 44] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/10/2016] [Accepted: 10/12/2016] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Darren Tanner
- Department of Linguistics; Neuroscience Program, and Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Urbana Illinois USA
| | - Sarah Grey
- Department of Psychology and Center for Language Science; Pennsylvania State University; University Park Pennsylvania USA
- Department of Modern Languages and Literatures; Fordham University; New York New York USA
| | - Janet G. van Hell
- Department of Psychology and Center for Language Science; Pennsylvania State University; University Park Pennsylvania USA
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17
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Reifegerste J, Hauer F, Felser C. Agreement processing and attraction errors in aging: evidence from subject-verb agreement in German. AGING NEUROPSYCHOLOGY AND COGNITION 2016; 24:672-702. [DOI: 10.1080/13825585.2016.1251550] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/20/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Jana Reifegerste
- Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
| | - Franziska Hauer
- Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
| | - Claudia Felser
- Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
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18
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Kaltsa M, Tsimpli IM, Marinis T, Stavrou M. Processing Coordinate Subject-Verb Agreement in L1 and L2 Greek. Front Psychol 2016; 7:648. [PMID: 27242577 PMCID: PMC4860499 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00648] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/03/2015] [Accepted: 04/18/2016] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
The present study examines the processing of subject-verb (SV) number agreement with coordinate subjects in pre-verbal and post-verbal positions in Greek. Greek is a language with morphological number marked on nominal and verbal elements. Coordinate SV agreement, however, is special in Greek as it is sensitive to the coordinate subject's position: when pre-verbal, the verb is marked for plural while when post-verbal the verb can be in the singular. We conducted two experiments, an acceptability judgment task with adult monolinguals as a pre-study (Experiment 1) and a self-paced reading task as the main study (Experiment 2) in order to obtain acceptance as well as processing data. Forty adult monolingual speakers of Greek participated in Experiment 1 and a hundred and forty one in Experiment 2. Seventy one children participated in Experiment 2: 30 Albanian-Greek sequential bilingual children and 41 Greek monolingual children aged 10-12 years. The adult data in Experiment 1 establish the difference in acceptability between singular VPs in SV and VS constructions reaffirming our hypothesis. Meanwhile, the adult data in Experiment 2 show that plural verbs accelerate processing regardless of subject position. The child online data show that sequential bilingual children have longer reading times (RTs) compared to the age-matched monolingual control group. However, both child groups follow a similar processing pattern in both pre-verbal and post-verbal constructions showing longer RTs immediately after a singular verb when the subject was pre-verbal indicating a grammaticality effect. In the post-verbal coordinate subject sentences, both child groups showed longer RTs on the first subject following the plural verb due to the temporary number mismatch between the verb and the first subject. This effect was resolved in monolingual children but was still present at the end of the sentence for bilingual children indicating difficulties to reanalyze and integrate information. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that (a) 10-12 year-old sequential bilingual children are sensitive to number agreement in SV coordinate constructions parsing sentences in the same way as monolingual children even though their vocabulary abilities are lower than that of age-matched monolingual peers and (b) bilinguals are slower in processing overall.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maria Kaltsa
- Language Development Lab, Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Aristotle University of ThessalonikiThessaloniki, Greece
| | - Ianthi M. Tsimpli
- Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of CambridgeCambridge, UK
| | - Theodoros Marinis
- Department of Clinical Language Sciences, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of ReadingReading, UK
| | - Melita Stavrou
- Department of Linguistics, School of Philology, Aristotle University of ThessalonikiThessaloniki, Greece
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Blanco-Elorrieta E, Pylkkänen L. Composition of complex numbers: Delineating the computational role of the left anterior temporal lobe. Neuroimage 2016; 124:194-203. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.08.049] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/02/2015] [Revised: 07/30/2015] [Accepted: 08/22/2015] [Indexed: 11/28/2022] Open
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Parker D, Lago S, Phillips C. Interference in the processing of adjunct control. Front Psychol 2015; 6:1346. [PMID: 26441723 PMCID: PMC4561755 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01346] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/20/2015] [Accepted: 08/21/2015] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Recent research on the memory operations used in language comprehension has revealed a selective profile of interference effects during memory retrieval. Dependencies such as subject-verb agreement show strong facilitatory interference effects from structurally inappropriate but feature-matching distractors, leading to illusions of grammaticality (Pearlmutter et al., 1999; Wagers et al., 2009; Dillon et al., 2013). In contrast, dependencies involving reflexive anaphors are generally immune to interference effects (Sturt, 2003; Xiang et al., 2009; Dillon et al., 2013). This contrast has led to the proposal that all anaphors that are subject to structural constraints are immune to facilitatory interference. Here we use an animacy manipulation to examine whether adjunct control dependencies, which involve an interpreted anaphoric relation between a null subject and its licensor, are also immune to facilitatory interference effects. Our results show reliable facilitatory interference in the processing of adjunct control dependencies, which challenges the generalization that anaphoric dependencies as a class are immune to such effects. To account for the contrast between adjunct control and reflexive dependencies, we suggest that variability within anaphora could reflect either an inherent primacy of animacy cues in retrieval processes, or differential degrees of match between potential licensors and the retrieval probe.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dan Parker
- Linguistics Program, Department of English, College of William and Mary Williamsburg, VA, USA
| | - Sol Lago
- Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland College Park, MD, USA
| | - Colin Phillips
- Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland College Park, MD, USA ; Language Science Center, University of Maryland College Park, MD, USA
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