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Articles 1 - 21 of 21
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Online Processing Of Even's Likelihood Presupposition, Erika Mayer
The Online Processing Of Even's Likelihood Presupposition, Erika Mayer
Doctoral Dissertations
Even is a focus-sensitive semantic operator that introduces a presupposition about likelihood. Under many semantic accounts, even’s likelihood presupposition requires the sentence with even to be less likely than a set of contextually-relevant alternatives. On one hand, even’s presupposition is complex, and this complexity may cause delays in processing. On the other hand, despite—and indeed because—of this complexity, even has the potential to be highly informative to readers. In this dissertation, I investigate whether and how even interacts with lexical predictability in online processing. If comprehenders are able to rapidly process even, they may be able to …
What Did You Expect? An Investigation Of Lexical Preactivation In Sentence Processing, Jon Burnsky
What Did You Expect? An Investigation Of Lexical Preactivation In Sentence Processing, Jon Burnsky
Doctoral Dissertations
Language users predictively preactivate lexical units that appear to the comprehen- der to be likely to surface. Despite ample language experience and grammatical competence, it appears that language users tend to preactivate verbs in some contexts, called role-reversal contexts, that would create plausibility violations if they were to actually appear; these verbs assign thematic roles to their arguments in such a way that it leads to implausibility. These anomalous predictions provide a window into the mechanisms underlying lexical preactivation and are the case study that this dissertation focuses in on. This dissertation is an exploration of what linguistic information is …
Visual, Lexical, And Syntactic Effects On Failure To Notice Word Transpositions: Evidence From Behavioral And Eye Movement Data, Kuan-Jung Huang
Visual, Lexical, And Syntactic Effects On Failure To Notice Word Transpositions: Evidence From Behavioral And Eye Movement Data, Kuan-Jung Huang
Masters Theses
Evidence of systematic misreading has been taken to argue that language processing is noisy, and that readers take noise into consideration and therefore sometimes interpret sentences non-literally (rational inference over a noisy channel). The present study investigates one specific misreading phenomenon: failure to notice word transpositions in a sentence. While this phenomenon can be explained by rational inference, it also has been argued to arise due to parallel lexical processing. The study explored these two accounts. Visual, lexical, and syntactic properties of the two transposed words were manipulated in three experiments. Failure to notice the transposition was more likely when …
There And Gone Again: Syntactic Structure In Memory, Caroline Andrews
There And Gone Again: Syntactic Structure In Memory, Caroline Andrews
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation addresses the relationship between hierarchical syntactic structure and memory in language processing of individual sentences. Hierarchical syntactic structure is a key part of human languages and language processing but its integration with memory has been uneasy ever since Sachs (1967) demonstrated that the syntactic structure of individual sentences is lost in explicit sentence recall tasks much faster than other linguistic information (lexical, semantic, etc.). Nonetheless, psycholinguists have continued to draw on memory in syntactic processing theories, in part due to (i) the explanatory power that memory can give to sentence processing hypotheses, and (ii) the conflicting results that …
Shifting The Perspectival Landscape: Methods For Encoding, Identifying, And Selecting Perspectives, Carolyn Jane Anderson
Shifting The Perspectival Landscape: Methods For Encoding, Identifying, And Selecting Perspectives, Carolyn Jane Anderson
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation explores the semantics and pragmatics of perspectival expressions. Perspective, or point-of-view, encompasses an individual’s thoughts, perceptions, and location. Many expressions in natural language have components of their meanings that shift depending on whose perspective they are evaluated against. In this dissertation, I explore two sets of questions relating to perspective sensitivity. The first set of questions relate to how perspective is encoded in the semantics of perspectival expressions. The second set of questions relate to how conversation participants treat perspectival expressions: the speaker’s selection of a perspective and the listener’s identification of the speaker’s perspective. In Part I, …
Talking About Her(Self): Ambiguity Avoidance And Principle B. A Theoretical And Psycholinguistic Investigation Of Romanian Pronouns, Rudmila-Rodica Ivan
Talking About Her(Self): Ambiguity Avoidance And Principle B. A Theoretical And Psycholinguistic Investigation Of Romanian Pronouns, Rudmila-Rodica Ivan
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation answers a deceivingly simple question: why can her in Hermione talked about her refer to the sentence subject in Romanian, but not in English? The Romanian facts, which are surprising for both classic and competition-based accounts of the Binding Theory over the last 40 odd years, bring us to the following overarching question: what are the constraints on pronominal reference? To address these main questions, I carry out a psycholinguistic investigation of Romanian pronouns and argue that the distribution and interpretation of pronominal forms is jointly determined by pragmatic and morphosyntactic constraints. I discuss evidence from four experiments, …
Person-Based Prominence In Ojibwe, Christopher Hammerly
Person-Based Prominence In Ojibwe, Christopher Hammerly
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation develops a formal and psycholinguistic theory of person-based prominence effects, the finding that certain categories of person such as "first" and "second" (the "local" persons) are privileged by the grammar. The thesis takes on three questions: (i) What are the possible categories related to person? (ii) What are the possible prominence relationships between these categories? And (iii) how is prominence information used to parse and interpret linguistic input in real time? The empirical through-line is understanding obviation — a “spotlighting” system, found most prominently in the Algonquian family of languages, that splits the (ani- mate) third persons into …
Representing Context: Presupposition Triggers And Focus-Sensitivity, Alexander Goebel
Representing Context: Presupposition Triggers And Focus-Sensitivity, Alexander Goebel
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation investigates the role of Focus-sensitivity for a typology of presupposition triggers. The central hypothesis is that Focus-sensitive triggers require a linguistic antecedent in the discourse model, whereas presuppositions of triggers lacking Focus-sensitivity are satisfied as entailments of the Common Ground. This hypothesis is supported by experimental evidence from two borne out predictions. First, Focus-sensitive triggers are sensitive to the salience of the antecedent satisfying their presupposition, as operationalized via the Question Under Discussion, and lead to interference-type effects, while triggers lacking Focus-sensitivity are indifferent to the QUD-structure. Second, Focus-sensitive triggers are harder to globally accommodate than triggers lacking …
Binding And Coreference In Vietnamese, Thuy Bui
Binding And Coreference In Vietnamese, Thuy Bui
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation investigates the real-time comprehension and final interpretation of object pronouns in Vietnamese, a language in which reflexive and non-reflexive pronominal forms have overlapping meanings. It addresses the questions of whether and how Principle B is applied as a structural constraint to determine the appropriate antecedent for pronouns in the language. The central argument is that Vietnamese speakers rely on two distinct mechanisms to resolve anaphoric relations: Within a pronoun's local domain, even though coreference is highly permissive, binding is strictly prohibited. Results from three two-alternative forced choice and three self-paced reading experiments show consistent profiles for both the …
Computing Agreement In A Mixed System, Sakshi Bhatia
Computing Agreement In A Mixed System, Sakshi Bhatia
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation develops a comprehensive response to the question of how agreement is computed in Hindi-Urdu – a language with a mixed agreement system where the verb can agree with a subject or an object depending on the structural context. This dissertation covers new empirical and theoretical ground in two domains. First, I identify three kinds of atypical agreement patterns which are not accounted for under traditional approaches Hindi-Urdu agreement -- verb agreement with the nominal component of Noun-Verb complex predicates, long distance agreement of embedding Adjective-Verb predicates with embedded infinitive clause objects, and copular agreement in identity copula structures. …
When Errors Aren't: How Comprehenders Selectively Violate Binding Theory, Shayne Sloggett
When Errors Aren't: How Comprehenders Selectively Violate Binding Theory, Shayne Sloggett
Doctoral Dissertations
It has been claimed that comprehenders use the Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1986) to restrict the search for a reflexive’s antecedent in early stages of comprehension (Dillon, Mishler, Sloggett, & Phillips, 2013; Sturt, 2003; Nicol & Swinney, 1989) However, recent findings challenge this view, demonstrating that comprehenders occasionally access antecedents on the basis of their match with a reflexive’s morphosyntactic features (Chen, Jäger, & Vasishth, 2012; Patil, Lewis, & Vasishth, 2016, Parker, & Phillips, 2017). In this dissertation, I investigate the source of this ’grammatical fallibility’ in the real-time application of Principle A of the Binding Theory. Specifically, I ask whether …
Preferential Early Attribution In Segmental Parsing, Amanda Rysling
Preferential Early Attribution In Segmental Parsing, Amanda Rysling
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation investigates parsing in segmental perception, or the process by which listeners map the continuous acoustic signal that reaches their ears to the linguistic representations over which phonology operates. It addresses questions of when listeners decide that they have heard acoustic evidence about the identity of one speech sound, versus evidence about the identity of a following sound, and when this linguistic knowledge is applied relative to when it is received during the course of on-line perception and processing. The central argument advanced here is that the beginnings of answers to these questions require the recognition of a domain-general …
The Form And Acquisition Of Free Relatives, Michael Clauss
The Form And Acquisition Of Free Relatives, Michael Clauss
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation examines the syntax of Free Relatives (FRs) in English at different stages of first language acquisition. The goal is to provide a theory of Free Relatives that explains phenomena in adult and child FRs, is feasibly learnable by a child, and reflects principles expressed in theories of Universal Grammar based on the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1993, 1995, 2005). The central empirical concern is the difference between the distribution of Wh expressions in FRs vs. Wh questions in English, the difference in grammaticality between Charles wondered dish what Sebastian made and *Charles ate what dish Sebastian made (*Wh-NP). To …
Distinct Mechanisms Underlie Attraction Errors And Agreement With Coordination, Lap-Ching Keung
Distinct Mechanisms Underlie Attraction Errors And Agreement With Coordination, Lap-Ching Keung
Masters Theses
Previous research has suggested that attraction errors are not due to the proximity of the local noun and verb, as a more distant local noun can result in more errors than a nearer one (e.g., *The helicopter for the flights over the canyon are vs. *The helicopter for the flight over the canyons are; Franck, Vigliocco, & Nicol, 2002). However, the verb tends to agree in number with the nearer noun of a disjoined subject, suggesting that linear order can indeed play a role in agreement computation (e.g., The horse or the clocks are vs. The horses …
The Representation Of Probabilistic Phonological Patterns: Neurological, Behavioral, And Computational Evidence From The English Stress System, Claire Moore-Cantwell
The Representation Of Probabilistic Phonological Patterns: Neurological, Behavioral, And Computational Evidence From The English Stress System, Claire Moore-Cantwell
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation investigates the cognitive mechanism underlying language users' ability to generalize probabilistic phonological patterns in their lexicon to novel words. Specifically, do speakers represent probabilistic patterns using abstract grammatical constraints? If so, this system of constraints would, like categorical phonological generalizations (a) be limited in the space of possible generalizations it can represent, and (b) apply to known and novel words alike without reference to specific known words. I examine these two predictions, comparing them to the predictions of alternative models. Analogical models are specifically considered. In chapter 3 I examine speakers' productions of novel words without near lexical …
Audible Voice In Context, Airlie S. Rose
Audible Voice In Context, Airlie S. Rose
Doctoral Dissertations
The term audible voice refers to the sound of the text experienced by the reader during silent reading. It was coined by Elbow in his Landmark Essays to help the field of composition wrestle more productively with the concept of voice in writing. In this dissertation, voice is not a metaphor. Drawing on contemporary work in psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, and consciousness studies, it examines the phenomenon of audible voice as a form of inner speech[1]. The premise of this study is that the experience of audible voice by the reader is a unique intersection of the individual's inner landscape …
A Heart Thing To Hear But You'll Earn: Processing And Learning About Foreign Accent Features Generated By Phonological Rule Misapplications, Monica Lee Bennett
A Heart Thing To Hear But You'll Earn: Processing And Learning About Foreign Accent Features Generated By Phonological Rule Misapplications, Monica Lee Bennett
Masters Theses
The present thesis focuses on how native English listeners process phonological rule misapplications in non-native-accented speech. In Experiment 1, we examined whether listeners use information about a speaker’s native language to help them understand that speaker’s accented English. The test case for this scenario was word-final obstruent devoicing in German and German-accented speech. Results showed that participants did not generalize their knowledge cross-linguistically. In Experiment 2, we used a categorization task and an eye-tracking visual world paradigm to investigate listeners’ use of a position-sensitive allophonic alternation, the velarization of /l/, as a word segmentation cue in native English. Participants were …
Linguistic Cognition And Bimodalism: A Study Of Motion And Location In The Confluence Of Spanish And Spain’S Sign Language, Francisco Meizoso
Linguistic Cognition And Bimodalism: A Study Of Motion And Location In The Confluence Of Spanish And Spain’S Sign Language, Francisco Meizoso
Doctoral Dissertations
The goal of this dissertation is to study the intrapersonal and symbolic function of gesture by a very specific type of population: hearing speakers of Spanish who, having been born to deaf parents, grew up developing a bimodal (Spanish and Spain’s Sign Language) linguistic interface, which borrows elements from the manual and spoken modalities. In the ordering of gestures devised by Kendon (1988) and cited by McNeill (1992), gesticulation and sign languages are placed at opposite ends of a continuum. At one end, gesticulation is formed by idiosyncratic spontaneous gestures lacking any conventional linguistic proprieties, which are produced in combination …
Comprehending Each Other: Weak Reciprocity And Processing, Helen Majewski
Comprehending Each Other: Weak Reciprocity And Processing, Helen Majewski
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation looks at the question of how comprehenders get from an underspecified semantic representation to a particular construal. Its focus is on reciprocal sentences. Reciprocal sentences, like other plural sentences, are open to a range of interpretations. Work on the semantics of plural predication commonly assumes that this range of interpretations is due to cumulativity (Krifka 1992): if predicates are inherently cumulative (Kratzer 2001), the logical representations of plural sentences underspecify the interpretation (rather than being ambiguous between various interpretations). The dissertation argues that the processor makes use of a number of general preferences and principles in getting from …
The Grammar Of Individuation And Counting, Suzi Lima
The Grammar Of Individuation And Counting, Suzi Lima
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation investigates the linguistic expression of individuation, counting, quantifying and measuring in Yudja (Juruna family), a Tupi language spoken in Brazil. Based on elicitation data and experimental studies with children and adults, three main topics are explored: (i) the semantic properties of numeral constructions and their compatibility with notional count and notional mass nouns; (ii) the semantics of container phrases and their interaction with numerals, and finally (iii) the semantics of nominal quantifiers. Relying on the principles of mereotopology (Casati and Varzi 1999, Varzi 2007), the main claim of this dissertation is that in Yudja all nouns can be …
Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent
Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent
Doctoral Dissertations
What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …