Immediate Constraint Application

Immediate Constraint Application

While she was taking classes full-time, Jessica was working two jobs to pay the bills.While she was taking classes full-time, Russell was working two jobs to pay the bills.

She was taking classes full-time while Jessica was working two jobs to pay the bills.She was taking classes full-time while Russell was working two jobs to pay the bills.

While she …

She …

Jessica …

Russell …

while Jessica …

while Russell …

Self-Paced Reading, Gender Mismatch Paradigm

(Kazanina, Lau, Lieberman, Phillips, & Yoshida, submitted)

-60

-40

-20

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

because lastsemester

while-cd SHE wastaking

classes while-ab NAME wasworking

full-time to…

Residual Reading Times

nonPrC GM

nonPrc GMM

PrC GM

PrC GMM

Results

GME at the 2nd NP in non-PrC pair

while while Jessica

Russell

(Kazanina et al., submitted)

-60

-40

-20

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

because lastsemester

while-cd SHE wastaking

classes while-ab NAME wasworking

full-time to…

Residual Reading Times

nonPrC GM

nonPrc GMM

PrC GM

PrC GMM

Results

GME at the 2nd NP in non-PrC pair

NO GME at the 2nd NP in PrC pairCondition C – immediate

while while Jessica

Russell

(Kazanina et al., submitted)

Incrementality in Production


• Different domains

– Speech errors

– Flexibility and incrementality

– Look-ahead in planning

Broca’s Aphasia

Message

FunctionalProcessing

PositionalProcessing

PhonologicalEncoding

a. Lexical selectionb. Function assignment

a. Constituent assemblyb. Inflection

Adapted from Bock & Levelt (1994)

Kay Bock

Pim Levelt

Speech Errors

“…the most slippable units are the most basic units in languageproduction […] each of these - the word, the morpheme, and thephoneme - is the basic building block for a particular linguisticlevel.” (Dell 1995, p. 190)

Word Errors - Category Constraint


Message

FunctionalProcessing

PositionalProcessing

PhonologicalEncoding

a. Lexical selectionb. Function assignment

a. Constituent assemblyb. Inflection

Adapted from Bock & Levelt (1994)

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

“…the main job will be to do as muchas can be done with strictly incrementalproduction. This is a time-honoredprinciple in psycholinguistics. Wundt(1900) said that word order follows thesuccessive apperception of the parts ofa total conception [Gesamtvorstellung].Of course, Wundt added that this canonly hold to the degree that word orderis free in a language.” (Levelt 1989, p. 26).

V. Ferreira 1996

• Incremental models predict easier production with syntactic flexibility for two reasons– All structures are freely available to be filled

– Strict incremental construction permits the most active lexical representation (rather than syntactic competition) to determine structural decisions.

+

I gave

toyschildren

to

250ms

500ms

1500ms

250ms

Until button press

I gave toys to the children.I gave the children toys.I donated toys to the children.*I donated the children toys.

She gave it to the child.*She gave the child it.She gave the box to him.She gave him the box.

confused

himstory

250ms

1500ms

1000ms

Until button press

The story confused John. John rejected the story.John was confused by the story. The story was rejected by John.The story confused him. He rejected the story.*Him was confused by the story. *The story was rejected by he.

confused

rejected

Ferreira & Dell 2000

• “Production proceeds more efficiently if syntactic structures are used that permit quickly selected lemmas to be mentioned as soon as possible. We call this the principle of immediate mention.” (Ferreira & Dell, 2000, p. 299)

• Availability effects

– The coach knew (that) you missed practice.

– ‘that’ omitted more frequently the more accessible the embedded subject is.


• Repetition

– I knew (that) I had booked a flight for tomorrow.

– You knew (that) I had booked a flight for tomorrow.

– I knew (that) you had booked a flight for tomorrow.

– You knew (that) you had booked a flight for tomorrow.




Picture-Word Interference



cat cat

cat


duck duck

duck


rice rice

rice

Levels of Encoding

• Task: picture description

– Conjunctions: “the arrow and the bag”– Simple sentences “the arrow is next to the bag”

• Auditory distractor: semantic, phonological, unrelated

• Interference effects - delay in utterance onset latencies

– Semantic NP1 NP2– Phonological NP1

(Meyer 1996)

Look-Ahead

• “Is the verb an obligatory part of the advance planning unit?”

• Task - simple scene description + distractors– Intransitive: verb + subject– Transitive: verb + subject + object

• Prompts– Auf dem nächsten Bild sieht man wie… S (O) V

in the next pic. sees one how…– Und auf dem nächsten Bild… V S (O)

and on the next pic. …

• Distractors: SEM, UNREL, SYN, IDENT, NONE

(Schriefers et al., 1998)

Look-Ahead


Look-Ahead

• “The production system does not have to wait for successful retrieval of the verb lemma when it occurs late in the utterance.”


Look-Ahead

(Schriefers et al., 1998)Distractor onsets after 200ms

Look-Ahead

• “It appears that speakers can assign syntactic functions without knowing the verb lemma and its subcategorization frame and argument structure, and they do so if the verb does not occur in utterance initial position.”


Look-Ahead


Expt. 5 - simple main clauses, no prompts“…the verb is only part of the grammatical advance planningunit if it occurs in utterance initial position.”

More Production

Summary so far…

• Evidence for incremental grammatical encoding

– V. Ferreira (1996): give/donate alternation - opportunistic choice of word order

– Schriefers et al. (1998): lack of picture-word interference effects on verb in S (O) V structures

– V. Ferreira & Dell (2000): modulation of use of that.

Arithmetic

• Add the following

– 21 + 4 =– 4 + 21 =

(Dutch, French speakers)

(Brysbaert et al., 1998)

Arithmetic

• Language contrast

– Dutch: 51ms advantage for 4 + 21 order– French: 56ms advantage for 21 + 4 order

• Radically incremental account

– “the Dutch speakers try to get access to the unit of the response first, because they can start programming the pronunciation of the answer as soon as the value of the unit is known. In contrast, the French speakers have to capitalise on the value of the ten, which they must know before the response execution can be started” (p. 67)

(Brysbaert et al., 1998)

Arithmetic

• Say the following

– 24 + 31• “[…]”

• “[…] is the sum”

• “the sum is […]”

(Ferreira & Swets, 2002)

Expt 1: utterance duration unaffected by difficultyExpt 2: utterance duration affected by difficulty

Look-Ahead in Grammatical Encoding

Swets & F. Ferreira (2003)

(Swets & Ferreira 2003)



How Incremental is Production?

• This question can mean different things

– What are the units of grammatical encoding?

– What are the units of phonological encoding?

– How closely time-locked are grammatical and phonological encoding?

Psycholinguistics II

The Dynamics of Language

LING 641

Colin Phillips, Jeff Lidz

Last semester…

Abstraction

Abstraction

• Abstraction is valuable

– Provides representational power

– Provides representational freedom

• Abstraction is costly

– Linguistic representations are more distant from experience

– This places a burden on the learner - motivation for innate knowledge

– This places a burden on comprehension/production systems

– (and it makes it harder to know what to look for in the brain)

This semester…

• Progression in focus

– ‘What are the mental representations?’

– ‘How do the representations change?’

– Inference and dynamics

Multiple Time Resolutions

days - years

seconds

milliseconds

Recurring Themes

• How does information/input lead to change?

– Highly general inferences using abstract categories … or not

– Inferences based on robust generalizations … or not

– Risk-taking in inferences … and recovery from error

– Integration of information/input across levels of representationDoes certain information have priority?

Memory for Structure

Old finding - Bransford/Franks

Old finding - Sachs

Potter & Lombardi 1990

Regeneration in the Short-term Recall of Sentences

Journal of Memory & Language, 29, 633-654

+

The

knight

rode

around

the

palace

looking

for

a

place

to

enter.

%%%%%

BRIDGE

TABLE

GOOSE

CASTLE

HORSE

%%%%%

?HOUSE

?

Recall the original sentence…

TargetThe knight rode around the palace searching for a place to enter.

Distractors

BRIDGETABLEGOOSECASTLEHORSE

lure

ResultsSpontaneous intrusion of lures: 9%Intrusion of lures from distractors: 27%

ConclusionShort-term recall is no different from regular message generation.

(Potter & Lombardi 1990)

Lombardi & Potter 1992

The Regeneration of Syntax in Short-term Memory

Journal of Memory & Language, 31, 713-733

Lombardi & Potter 1992

• Logic: if recall involves message re-generation, then it should be possible to create syntactic lures, parallel to the lexical lures in Potter & Lombardi (1990).

• Targets– The rich widow is going to give a million dollars to the university.

– The rich widow is going to give the university a million dollars.

• Lure– DONATE

Intrusion in recall of NP-PP targets 11% 7% changed syntaxIntrusion in recall of NP-NP targets 7% (n.s.) 90% changed syntax

Sentence

words

meaning

structureNot yet shown

But there is memory for structure…

(Potter & Lombardi 1998, exp. 1)

(Potter & Lombardi 1998, exp. 1)

Syntactic Priming

• Repeating a structure aloud (e.g., passive, dative construction) increases the tendency to use the same surface syntax when generating a subsequent, unrelated sentence to describe a picture (Bock, 1986, 1989; Bock & Loebell, 1990).

Picture for active/passive alternation

Granularity of Priming

• Superficially similar V-NP-PP sequences prime one another, e.g., dative and locative PPs.

– The wealthy widow gave an old Mercedes to the church.

– The wealthy widow drove an old Mercedes to the church.

– The construction worker was hit by the bulldozer.

– The construction worker was digging by the bulldozer.

– Susan brought a book to Sally.

– Susan brought a book to study.

Priming Effects

• Production - Production

• Comprehension - Comprehension

• Comprehension - Productionetc.

Documents

Immediate Constraint Application