scholarly journals Children's production of verb-phrase anaphora in a spoken task

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 449-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
MORAG L. DONALDSON ◽  
LYNN S. M. COOPER
Keyword(s):  
Presentation Order ◽  
Developmental Changes ◽  
Sentence Completion ◽  
Syntactic Priming ◽  
Priming Effects ◽  
Verb Phrase ◽  
Completion Task

ABSTRACTTo investigate the influence of semantic/pragmatic variables on children's production of verb-phrase anaphora (VPA), a spoken sentence completion task (e.g. John is throwing a ball and … Mary is too) was administered to four-, seven- and ten-year-olds. The frequency of VPA production was affected by whether the two clauses had the same or different polarity and by whether the actions were portrayed as simultaneous or sequential. These effects interacted in complex ways with age and with the presentation order of the polarity types. We speculate that developmental changes in the influence of semantic/pragmatic factors may be linked to increases with age in the strength of syntactic priming effects.

Lexical activation of cross-language syntactic priming

2006 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANGELIKI SALAMOURA ◽  
JOHN N. WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Completion ◽  
Syntactic Priming ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Shared Representations ◽  
Lexical Activation ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
Completion Task ◽  
Structural Preferences ◽  
Prepositional Object ◽  
Cross Language

Cross-language (L1-to-L2) syntactic priming is the repetition of utterance structure from one language to another independently of meaning and has motivated models of language-shared representations of L1-L2 equivalent structures (Salamoura and Williams, submitted; Schoonbaert, Hartsuiker and Pickering, submitted). These models assume that the phenomenon is the result of residual activation of syntactic features encoding verb structural preferences and they, therefore, predict its initiation by a single verb prime (cf. Pickering and Branigan, 1998, for L1). This prediction was confirmed in a sentence completion task where we obtained syntactic priming from L1 Dutch to L2 English with Prepositional Object (PO) and Double Object (DO) datives upon presentation of single Dutch verbs that take either PO or DO only.

Qualitatively Different Effects of Undetected and Unidentified Auditory Primes

1988 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Groeger
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Priming ◽  
Forced Choice ◽  
Sentence Completion ◽  
Semantic Activation ◽  
Unconscious Processing ◽  
Priming Stimulus ◽  
Completion Task ◽  
Threshold Measurement

The suggestion that semantic activation can occur without conscious identification of the priming stimulus is still controversial. Many studies supporting such a contention, especially those where primes were auditorially presented, suffer from methodological shortcomings, frequently with regard to threshold measurement. In the study reported here 24 subjects underwent a considerably more rigorous thresholding procedure than has been usual, prior to engaging in a forced-choice sentence completion task. The results show that semantic priming operates when subjects were unable to detect the presence of primes and that phonological (but not semantic) priming operates when the primes were invariably detected but never correctly identified. The relevance of these qualitatively different effects of primes, as a function of the level at which they are presented, in discussed in the light of recent accounts of unconscious processing.

Psycholinguistic and corpus-linguistic evidence for L2 constructions

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 163-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Th. Gries ◽  
Stefanie Wulff
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Short Distance ◽  
Priming Effect ◽  
Sentence Completion ◽  
Priming Effects ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Foreign Language Learners ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
Acceptability Rating

In Construction Grammar, highly frequent syntactic configurations are assumed to be stored as symbolic units in the mental lexicon alongside words. Considering the example of gerund and infinitival complement constructions in English (She tried rocking the baby vs. She tried to rock the baby), this study combines corpus-linguistic and experimental evidence to investigate the question whether these patterns are also stored as constructions by German foreign language learners of English. In a corpus analysis based on 3,343 instances of the two constructions from the British component of the International Corpus of English, a distinctive collexeme analysis was computed to identify the verbs that distinguish best between the two constructions; these verbs were used as experimental stimuli in a sentence completion experiment and a sentence acceptability rating experiment. Two kinds of short-distance priming effects were investigated in the completion data: we checked how often subjects produced an ing-/to-/’other’-construction after having rated an ing- or to-construction (rating-to-production priming), and how often they produced an ing-/to-/’other’-construction when they had produced and ing- or to-construction in the directly preceding completion (production-to-production priming). Furthermore, we considered the proportion of to-completions before a completion in the questionnaire as a measure of a within-subject accumulative priming effect. We found no rating-to-production priming effects in the expected direction, but a weak effect in the opposite direction; short-distance production-to-production priming effects from ing to ing and from ‘other’ and to to to, and, on the whole at least, a suggestive accumulative production-to-production priming effect for both constructions. In the rating task, we found that subjects rate sentences better when the sentential structure is compatible with the main verb’s collexemic distinctiveness.

Alcohol-Related Sentence-Completion Task

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. K. Rose ◽  
M. Mason-Li ◽  
D. Nicholas ◽  
M. Hobbs
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Completion ◽  
Completion Task

Transformation of the incomplete figure in young children

2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-32
Author(s):  
Mitsuru Noda
Keyword(s):  
Correct Response ◽  
Developmental Changes ◽  
Sensitive Information ◽  
Rotation Effect ◽  
Geometric Figures ◽  
Geometric Conditions ◽  
Completion Task ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Feature Information ◽  
Contour Information

This study aims to examine the developmental changes in young children’s perception. A matching completion task consisting of three geometric figures and one bird-like figure were completed by children 3–5 years of age ( N = 99). The rotation effect, in which the correct response decreased with orientation (45°, 90° 135°, and 180°), was confirmed, except in one of the geometric conditions. We found that two factors were needed for a child to perform the bird-like completion task: clarification of the reference to each stimulus and awareness of the turning orientation. These studies suggest that the children processed the contour and feature information individually, and that the contour information was processed earlier than the feature information. We derived three criteria for sensitive information to resolve the task, contact, contour, and left-right. Findings are discussed with regard to the reference action and the part-whole relationship.

Predictors of Differential Responding on a Sentence Completion Task in Traumatized Children

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brittany B. Kugler ◽  
Marlene Bloom ◽  
Lauren B. Kaercher ◽  
Samantha Nagy ◽  
Tatyana V. Truax ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Completion ◽  
Traumatized Children ◽  
Completion Task

The representation of morphologically complex words in the developing lexicon*

2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 453-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENNIFER RABIN ◽  
HÉLÈNE DEACON
Keyword(s):  
Target Word ◽  
Developmental Period ◽  
Priming Effects ◽  
Completion Task ◽  
Complex Words

ABSTRACTThe study reported here examined the manner in which children represent morphologically complex words in the lexicon. Children in grades 1 to 5 completed a fragment completion task to assess the priming effects of morphologically related words. Both inflected and derived words (e.g. needs and needy, respectively) were more effective primes than control words (e.g. needle) that share similar orthography and phonology with the target word (e.g. need). These effects were consistent across the developmental period studied. Further, equivalent priming effects from the inflected and derived forms suggest that these word types are represented similarly in the developing lexicon.

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