An interference account of the missing-VP effect

In sentence comprehension, what are the cognitive constraints that determine number agreement computation? Two broad classes of theoretical proposals are: (i) Representation distortion accounts, which assume that the number feature on the subject noun gets overwritten probabilistically by the number feature on a non-subject noun, leading to a non-veridical memory trace of the subject noun; and (ii) The cue-based retrieval account, a general account of dependency completion processes which assumes that the features on the subject noun remain intact, and that processing difficulty is only a function of the memory constraints on dependency completion. However, both these classes of model fail to account for the full spectrum of number agreement patterns observed in published studies. Using 17 benchmark datasets on number agreement from four languages, we implement seven computational models: three variants of representation distortion, two cue-based retrieval models, and two hybrid models that assume both representation-distortion and retrieval. Quantitative model comparison shows that the best fit is achieved by a hybrid model that assumes both feature distortion (specifically, feature percolation) and cue-based retrieval; numerically, the second-best quantitative fit was achieved by a distortion-based model of number attraction that assumes grammaticality bias during reading. More broadly, the work furnishes comprehensive evidence to support the idea that cue-based retrieval theory, which aims to be a general account of dependency completion, needs to incorporate a feature distortion process.

A verb phrase is a kind of conformation expression, which is composed of verbs and sketch words (including prepositions and adverbs). They appear in large numbers in modern English, serving as an essential part which college students are expected to master. At the same time, the grammatical structure of verb phrases is complex and has become intricate for college students to grasp. Therefore, how to help college students effectively master verb phrases has become the focus of this study. With the development of the ecological perspective of cognitive linguistics, the phenomenon of verbs phrase has gradually received the attention of cognitive linguists. From the perspective of cognitive Linguistics ecology, this paper draws the following conclusions by comparing the teaching methods based on the ecological perspective of cognitive linguistics and the influence of traditional pedagogy on the learning of verb phrase . First, compared with the traditional pedagogy, the teaching method based on the ecological perspective of cognitive linguistics can promote the learning of the verb phrase. Second, based on the ecological perspective of cognitive linguistics, college students have better long-term memory effects on verb phrase that have been studied than short-term memory; third, based on the ecological perspective of cognitive linguistics, college students are able to apply the cognitive rationale behind phrase verbs that have been studied to new metaphorical verbs.

The paper presents and examines a previously undescribed puzzle concerning the syntactic distribution of Russian mandative verbs (velet’ ‘order’, razrešit’ ‘allow’) and non-verbal deontic modals: these predicates exhibit dual behavior as they embed non-finite clauses with either implicit obligatorily controlled (PRO) or overt referential (DP) subjects. The ambiguity holds for the same native speakers and no detectable difference in terms of the Tense – Agreement characteristics can be found between infinitival constituents with DP/PRO subjects. To account for this phenomenon, I propose, first, to analyze mandative verbs as lexical realizations of a verb of communication that embeds a silent deontic modal head; the latter, in turn, takes a clausal proposition as its complement. Second, I demonstrate that the reported DP/PRO alternation is described by the following generalization: An embedded overt referential subject is allowed only when there is no potential dative DP controller available within the higher clause. In the spirit of the traditional Case theory, I argue that an embedded lexical subject must be Case licensed, and, since non-finite clauses are Case deficient, licensing may only be done by a higher (matrix) functional head, namely Appl0, which normally introduces an obligation Holder; thus, matrix Holders and lexical embedded subjects end up competing to receive Case from the same functional head. Finally, I show that, as no true subject raising happens, Case assignment proceeds long-distance over a CP boundary.

The present study examines the semantic structure of a specific class of Japanese verbs within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. The verbs in question are highly polysemous and assumed to be centered around a particular spatial or force-dynamic schema – hence the name image schema verbs. Further, they partake in verb-verb compounding as grammatical “auxiliaries” (V2s) which functionally resemble the particles of English and German verb particle constructions (VPCs). Over the course of five case studies it is shown that the respective V2s are inherently meaningful and that their senses are motivated by the same image schematic structures that motivate the senses of the simplex. Thus, simplex and V2 are entangled in a complex network of family resemblences. Mechanisms of meaning extension such as metaphor, metonymy, and image schema transformation are examined in some detail and often from a cross-linguistic point of view. Rejecting a principled division between lexicon and grammar in favor of the symbolic continuum hypothesis, argument structure phenomena are then reexamined and reframed as issues of cognitive prominence. In the same spirit, the traditional dichotomy of “lexical” vs “grammatical” V-V compounds, a staple of Japanese linguistics, is challenged from a usage-based perspective. Based on the results of the case studies, the thesis closes with a brief cross-cultural inquiry into embodied cognition, showing that directly embodied source domains tend to have similar metaphorical scope in Japanese and German.

An active question in psycholinguistics concerns how we mentally encode and retrieve linguistic information in memory. In particular, it remains unclear what information (“cues”) guide retrieval. Previous work has extensively tested retrieval of noun phrases, but less is known about retrieval of other constituents, including verb phrases (VPs). This study examines retrieval for VP ellipsis to allow for a more comprehensive theory of cues. Four experiments (acceptability, self-paced reading) used an interference paradigm to examine voice information (active, passive) in retrieval. Results revealed a selective profile: passive ellipsis shows interference, but active ellipsis does not. These results are aligned with the markedness asymmetry observed for agreement attraction, where marked features (plural, passive) trigger interference, but unmarked features (singular, active) do not. This analysis motivates a unified account of verbal dependencies where markedness plays a more fundamental role than previously assumed. Lastly, I use ACT-R to demonstrate how markedness effects might arise in a cue-based retrieval architecture and discuss the current findings with respect to the leading theories of interference effects.

This study investigates incremental processing of subject and object relatives in Italian by comparing two experimental paradigms. Previous research has shown that object relatives are more difficult to process than subject relatives, but the source and timing of this object disadvantage remain debated. Two experiments were conducted using the same linguistic stimuli. Experiment 1 employed a novel mixed design: a lexical maze task for the relative clause combined with a self-paced reading task for the matrix clause. Experiment 2 used a self-paced reading paradigm. Results confirmed a disadvantage for object relatives across both tasks. Critically, the modified maze task revealed that this difficulty emerges immediately after the complementizer and persists in later regions, a finding that was not evident in the self-paced reading task or in previous maze task studies. This shows the greater temporal resolution of the maze paradigm for identifying the locus of syntactic difficulty in incremental processing. Although frequency-based surprisal and memory-based integration accounts explain portions of data, we consider two approaches that can offer a unified account for both early and late effects: an extension of featural relativized minimality and the cue-based retrieval account. We conclude by indicating how future research can disentangle the two accounts.

Using an off-line complexity judgement task, Gibson and Thomas (1999) demonstrated that people found sentences with double centre-embedded relative clauses as easy to understand when the second verb phrase (VP) was omitted as when there were the three required verb phrases. This paper reports a self-paced reading experiment testing this syntactic illusion in French language. The results showed that readers rated the sentences where the second VP was omitted as easier to understand than the grammatical versions, even though the reading time of the last VP was longer for the ungrammatical version. The overall results support theories predicting that the sentence acceptability rating can be enhanced when a syntactically required word with an excessive integration cost is removed. The results are consistent with resource-based theories of sentence processing.

Tense and aspect markers in Japanese relative clauses contrast with each other in unique ways not observed in matrix sentences. Different kinds of semantic contrasts appear under particular conditions, depending on whether the relative clause and matrix sentence verbal phrases represent actions vs. states, or are habitual vs. non-habitual. When verbal phrases of both the relative clause and the matrix sentence name non-habitual past actions, the occurrence of relative-clause-final -ta, -te iru , and -te ita can be explained in terms of the opposition simultaneous vs. non - simultaneous . Comparison of examples with verbal phrases of stative non-habitual matrix sentences leads to the formulation of a ‘principle of convergence’, which is later extended to other cases. When the verbal phrase of a relative clause designates a habitual past action, relative-clause-final verbal forms in -ru, -ta , and -te ita all occur, but these forms connote varying degrees of randomness, two of which are contrasted in detail as the ‘true habitual’ vs. ‘iterative’ usage.

Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar

Two eye-tracking experiments were conducted using written Chinese sentences that contained a multi-word ambiguous region. The goal was to determine whether readers maintained multiple interpretations throughout the ambiguous region or selected a single interpretation at the point of ambiguity. Within the ambiguous region, we manipulated the strength of support for the complement clause (CC) analysis and the relative clause (RC) analysis of the ambiguous construction Verb NP1 de NP2. In Experiment 1, the critical sentences were disambiguated to the dispreferred CC interpretation; in Experiment 2, the sentences were disambiguated as the preferred RC interpretation. Unsurprisingly, processing difficulty at the point of disambiguation was observed only in Experiment 1. As predicted by a parallel mechanism, greater processing difficulty arose at disambiguation when the RC interpretation was much more strongly supported by semantic cues relative to the CC alternative, than when the two analyses were semantically supported to a similar degree. Regression analyses confirmed that the degree of semantic support predicted processing difficulty at disambiguation. The findings provide evidence for a parallel constraint-based parsing mechanism.

Referential context effects in L2 ambiguity resolution: Evidence from self-paced reading

This study investigated inverse preference effects in L2 structural priming of English relative clauses and their potential influences on subsequent learning of target structures. One hundred fourteen Chinese learners of English at a low-to-intermediate proficiency level participated in a structural priming experiment with a pretest-posttest design. The experimental group underwent a priming task in which they orally produced syntactic structures immediately after viewing English object or passive relative clauses as primes, whereas the control group only read sentences unrelated to English relative clauses. A grammaticality judgment task and a sentence completion task were used to measure the inverse preference effect and its subsequent effects on L2 learning. The results showed the presence of structural priming and inverse preference effects in immediate production, which extended to subsequent learning of L2. In subsequent grammaticality judgments and production, L2 learners performed better with English object relative clauses than with English passive relative clauses in comparison with the pretest. The results are discussed in terms of the structural frequency in both L1 and L2 as well as the implicit learning mechanisms of structural priming.

The study explored the syntactic complexity and semantic function of noun phrases in TESOL academic research articles. The corpus was comprised of 60 articles (572874 words) from three TESOL journals including TESOL Quarterly, TESOL Journal, and Journal of Second Language Writing. POS tagging was added to the corpus using TagAnt 1.2.0 (Anthony, 2015). A list of 20 highest-frequency nouns was generated using wordlist tool in AntConc 3.3.4 (Anthony, 2014). Based on the specific contexts of these nouns, the researcher analyzed the syntactic complexity of noun phrases in light of their pre-modifiers and post-modifiers. The semantic function of noun phrases was analyzed based on the excerpts generated by the Concordance tool. The results showed that the complexity of noun phrases was dependent on the complexity of their premodifiers and postmodifiers. A complex postmodifier usually contained more than one element, embedding prepositional phrases, nonfinite clauses, or relative clauses. The use of noun phrases enabled the writer to increase cohesion and coherence within and across the text. The findings were of value to both L2 learners and young scholars in developing their writing performance for the target journals in the field

The current study investigates Processability Theory's PT) predictions for grammatical gender agreement in L2 French. Previous studies examining advanced L2 French learners did not find significant differences in accuracy rates for attributive and predicative adjectives and thus concluded that PT's predictions were not supported. The current study examines adjective agreement in three positions: within a noun phrase, a verb phrase, and a relative clause. Forty‐five intermediate L2 French learners completed a spot‐the‐difference task targeting noun‐adjective agreement. Learners were significantly more accurate with agreement occurring within phrasal boundaries than agreement across phrasal boundaries, in line with PT's predicted order of acquisition.

<p>This thesis focuses on verbal phrase aspect (vP-aspect) in Bahasa Indonesia (BI). In BI, vP-aspect is morphologically marked on the predicate. I claim that the sufiix -kan marks an aspect, which I refer to as kan-aspect, indicating that the object undergoes change. This is in a stark contrast with i-aspect, where the object is stationary and unchanged. The analysis is based on the notion that the semantics and syntax of a predicate should be analysed within the vP (for instance, Tenny 1987, 1994, Chomsky 1995, Arad 1998, Croft 1998, among others), with the core argument determining the aspectual property of an event structure (Tenny 1987, Arad 1998, Ritter and Rosen 1998). Since this thesis proposes to take into account the -kan and -i distinction as an important aspect in the analysis, the structural location of the two suffixes will take centre stage. This has not been done in the literature on BI that looks at these derivational suffixes. This thesis further develops the analysis beyond verb phrases: it takes into account the syntax of Voice Phrase of sentence structures that include (temporal) Aspect Phrase, Wh-extractions, and Relative Clauses.</p>