Grammatical planning scope in sentence production: Further evidence for the functional phrase hypothesis

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 1059-1075 ◽  
Author(s):  
LI-MING ZHAO ◽  
F.-XAVIER ALARIO ◽  
YU-FANG YANG
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Sentence Production ◽  
Syntactic Processing ◽  
Visual Grouping ◽  
Planning Unit ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Subject Experiment ◽  
Primary Unit

ABSTRACTWhile there is a consensus that speakers plan their utterances before they start producing them, the scope of the initial planning unit remains controversial. In subject-initial utterances, is the planning unit the whole subject phrase or a smaller “functional phrase” within the subject phrase? Allum and Wheeldon (2007) reported that speakers show faster onset latencies in producing utterances like The flower above the house is red, where the subject consists of two functional phrases (the flower and above the house) than in producing The flower and the house are red, where there is a single, longer functional phrase (The flower and the house), both in head-initial languages like English and head-final languages like Japanese. This has been taken to suggest that the functional phrase is a preferred unit of planning, rather than the whole subject. Experiment 1 in the present study replicates Allum and Wheeldon's study with speakers of another head-final language (Mandarin Chinese) and finds similar results. Experiments 2 and 3 investigate whether syntactic processing or visual grouping could potentially explain the pattern of responses, and find that they cannot. Together, these results provide further empirical support for the claim that the functional phrase is a primary unit of grammatical planning for speech production.

scholarly journals Empathy Measurement in Autistic and Nonautistic Adults: A COSMIN Systematic Literature Review

Assessment ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 107319112096456
Author(s):  
Jessica L. Harrison ◽  
Charlotte L. Brownlow ◽  
Michael J. Ireland ◽  
Adina M. Piovesana
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Support ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Social Differences ◽  
Item Functioning ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Clinical Conditions ◽  
Psychometric Quality

Empathy is essential for social functioning and is relevant to a host of clinical conditions. This COSMIN review evaluated the empirical support for empathy self-report measures used with autistic and nonautistic adults. Given autism is characterized by social differences, it is the subject of a substantial proportion of empathy research. Therefore, this review uses autism as a lens through which to scrutinize the psychometric quality of empathy measures. Of the 19 measures identified, five demonstrated “High-Quality” evidence for “Insufficient” properties and cannot be recommended. The remaining 14 had noteworthy gaps in evidence and require further evaluation before use with either group. Without tests of measurement invariance or differential item functioning, the extent to which observed group differences represent actual trait differences remains unknown. Using autism as a test case highlights an alarming tendency for empathy measures to be used to characterize, and potentially malign vulnerable populations before sufficient validation.

Object attraction effects during subject-verb agreement in Persian

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 742-752 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aazam Feiz ◽  
Wind Cowles
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Production ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Grammatical Errors ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Attraction Effects ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Attraction Errors

Subject-verb agreement provides insight into how grammatical and semantic features interact during sentence production, and prior studies have found attraction errors when an intervening local noun is grammatically part of the subject. Two major types of theories have emerged from these studies: control based and competition-based. The current study used an subject-object-verb language with optional subject-verb agreement, Persian, to test the competition-based hypothesis that intervening object nouns may also cause attraction effects, even though objects are not part of the syntactic relationship between the subject and verb. Our results, which did not require speakers to make grammatical errors, show that objects can be attractors for agreement, but this effect appears to be dependent on the type of plural marker on the object. These results support competition-based theories of agreement production, in which agreement may be influenced by attractors that are outside the scope of the subject-verb relationship.

The Effects of Oral Instructions and Training on the Expansion of Written Language

1981 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gayla A. Kraetsch
Keyword(s):  
Training Session ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Single Subject ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Reversal Design ◽  
Subject Experiment ◽  
And Training

This single-subject experiment explored the effect of oral instructions and training on the expansion of written language using a reversal design. The subject, a twelve-year-old boy who attended a tutorial clinic, wrote about a stimulus picture four times a week during a twelve-week period. Productivity was based on the number of words and sentences used in the composition; the type-token ratio for vocabulary diversity was also charted. During the intervention phases of the experiment, the tutor added oral instructions to write many words and ideas. These additional instructions increased the subject's productivity. As the oral instructions were changed, the number of total words and sentences also changed. When a simple training session was provided prior to the writing of a composition, the subject wrote more adjectives.

scholarly journals The effect of controlling the weight variable on the typeface attribute assessment

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena Žarko ◽  
◽  
Uroš Nedeljković ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Support ◽  
Research Problem ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
The Subject

Certain characteristics specific for typeface design initiate different impressions on observers, but here arises a research problem where we cannot identify what specific or universal characteristics of the typeface initiate the impressions on certain attributes. A common problem encountered in previous researches is that fonts may vary in many variables and at the same time differ in width, weight, contrast, and structure. Therefore, it is difficult to determine and isolate which universal and specific characteristics of the typeface affect the impression. The subject of this paper is the isolation of the weight variable and the investigation of its relationship with typeface personality attributes. The main goal of this paper is to provide empirical support for theoretical assumptions, building on previous researches on the typeface personality and typographic rhetoric to show how specific typographic characteristics influence the experience of writing itself.

Empirical Analyses of Deterrence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen L. Quackenbush
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Deterrence Theory ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Quantitative Studies ◽  
Early Case ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Empirical Analyses

Deterrence is an important subject, and its study has spanned more than seven decades. Much research on deterrence has focused on a theoretical understanding of the subject. Particularly important is the distinction between classical deterrence theory and perfect deterrence theory. Other studies have employed empirical analyses. The empirical literature on deterrence developed at different times and took different approaches. The early empirical deterrence literature was highly limited for varying reasons. Much of the early case study literature did not seek to test deterrence theory. Early quantitative studies did seek to do so, but they were hampered by rudimentary methods, poor research design, and/or a disconnect between quantitative studies and formal theories of deterrence. Modern empirical research on deterrence has made great strides toward bridging the formal-quantitative divide in the study of deterrence and conducting theoretically driven case studies. Further, researchers have explored the effect of specific variables on deterrence, such as alliances, reputations and credibility, and nuclear weapons. Future empirical studies of deterrence should build on these modern developments. In addition, they should build on perfect deterrence theory, given its logical consistency and empirical support.

EFFECTS OF THE TRIPLE SPLIT WINDOW SCREEN ON VISUAL PRIVACY AND VIEW IN THE RESIDENTIAL LIVING SPACE

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Oe ◽  
K. Saito ◽  
T. Souma ◽  
N. Yoshizawa
Keyword(s):  
Middle Layer ◽  
Living Space ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Upper Level ◽  
Residential Living ◽  
Subject Experiment ◽  
Visual Privacy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Window Screen

In order to examine the effect of the translucent level of each layer on the visual privacy and the view when the window equipment is divided into three sections, the subject experiment was carried out. It was found that “visibility from inside” and “estimated visibility from outside” were proportional to each other regardless of the window equipment condition. The relationship between “visibility from inside” and “estimated visibility from outside” was affected by the shielding position of the window equipment, and it was revealed that the clearer the view from the middle layer, the more privacy could be secured. In addition, it was suggested that opening the lower level of the window rather than the upper level would ensure both privacy and view.

scholarly journals Exploring the nature of the ‘subject’-preference: Evidence from the online comprehension of simple sentences in Mandarin Chinese

2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 1180-1226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luming Wang ◽  
Matthias Schlesewsky ◽  
Balthasar Bickel ◽  
Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Simple Sentences

The Role of Predictability in Intonational Variability

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rory Turnbull
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Design ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Fundamental Frequency ◽  
General Property ◽  
American English ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Two Measures ◽  
Interpretation Of Results

Predictability is known to affect many properties of speech production. In particular, it has been observed that highly predictable elements (words, syllables) are produced with less phonetic prominence (shorter duration, less peripheral vowels) than less predictable elements. This tendency has been proposed to be a general property of language. This paper examines whether predictability is correlated with fundamental frequency (F0) production, through analysis of experimental corpora of American English. Predictability was variously defined as discourse mention, utterance probability, and semantic focus. The results revealed consistent effects of utterance probability and semantic focus on F0, in the expected direction: less predictable words were produced with a higher F0 than more predictable words. However, no effect of discourse mention was observed. These results provide further empirical support for the generalization that phonetic prominence is inversely related to linguistic predictability. In addition, the divergent results for different predictability measures suggests that the parameterization of predictability within a particular experimental design can have significant impact on the interpretation of results, and that it cannot be assumed that two measures necessarily reflect the same cognitive reality.

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