Modifier Attachment in Sentence Parsing: Evidence from Dutch

1996 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 664-695 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Brysbaert ◽  
Don C. Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Attachment Site ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Garden Path ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
On Line

Current theories of parsing suggest a wide variety of mechanisms by which modifiers, such as relative clauses, may be related to constituents that offer more than one potential attachment site. Some, like the tuning hypothesis, are based on the premise that people's parsing performance is shaped by prior exposure to language. Others (e.g. garden-path theory and construal theory) play down any potential role of past linguistic experience, stressing instead the varying influences of structural characteristics of the sentence in question. The two views encourage differing expectations about cross-linguistic variation in parsing preference. A questionnaire study and two on-line experiments were carried out to investigate attachment preferences in Dutch. The results pose a number of problems for the majority of the existing parsing models and are clearly inconsistent with some of the traditional theories. In contrast, the findings are compatible with models incorporating parsing mechanisms that are tuned by language experience. The results highlight the need for further corpus studies to subject these accounts to more searching scrutiny.

scholarly journals Effects of Cooperating and Conflicting Prosody in Spoken English Garden Path Sentences: ERP Evidence for the Boundary Deletion Hypothesis

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (10) ◽  
pp. 2731-2751 ◽  
Author(s):  
Efrat Pauker ◽  
Inbal Itzhak ◽  
Shari R. Baum ◽  
Karsten Steinhauer
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Brain Response ◽  
Garden Path ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Prosodic Boundaries ◽  
On Line ◽  
Prosodic Boundary

In reading, a comma in the wrong place can cause more severe misunderstandings than the lack of a required comma. Here, we used ERPs to demonstrate that a similar effect holds for prosodic boundaries in spoken language. Participants judged the acceptability of temporarily ambiguous English “garden path” sentences whose prosodic boundaries were either in line or in conflict with the actual syntactic structure. Sentences with incongruent boundaries were accepted less than those with missing boundaries and elicited a stronger on-line brain response in ERPs (N400/P600 components). Our results support the notion that mentally deleting an overt prosodic boundary is more costly than postulating a new one and extend previous findings, suggesting an immediate role of prosody in sentence comprehension. Importantly, our study also provides new details on the profile and temporal dynamics of the closure positive shift (CPS), an ERP component assumed to reflect prosodic phrasing in speech and music in real time. We show that the CPS is reliably elicited at the onset of prosodic boundaries in English sentences and is preceded by negative components. Its early onset distinguishes the speech CPS in adults both from prosodic ERP correlates in infants and from the “music CPS” previously reported for trained musicians.

A Study on Late Closure in Spanish: Principle-grounded vs. Frequency-based Accounts of Attachment Preferences

1998 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 561-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
José M. Igoa ◽  
Manuel Carreiras ◽  
Enrique Meseguer
Keyword(s):  
Coarse Grained ◽  
Processing Load ◽  
Garden Path ◽  
Clear Preference ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Universal Principles ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
Attachment Structures ◽  
Late Closure ◽  
On Line

A much-debated issue in current research on sentence parsing concerns the resolution of attachment ambiguities. Parsing theories differ on the procedures used to guide on-line attachment decisions: principle-grounded theories (e.g. garden-path/ construal) propose universal principles that minimize processing load; frequency-based accounts (such as linguistic tuning) claim that attachment decisions are shaped by readers’ previous experience with their particular language; lexically based models, in turn, assert that attachment choices are determined by the properties of individual lexical items in the sentence. This paper reports six studies on late closure in the resolution of attachment ambiguities in Spanish: a questionnaire study on attachment preferences and three self-paced reading experiments where ambiguous PPs could be attached as arguments of two VP-hosts in NP-VP1-NPVP2-PP structures. The results show a clear preference towards low attachment (late closure), thus supporting principle-grounded theories. In addition, two corpus studies were carried out to obtain records of relative frequencies of the attachment choices involved in the experiments. A coarse-grained measure revealed that, in accordance with linguistic tuning, low-attachment structures are more common in Spanish NP-VP1-NP-VP2-PP sentences. However, a fine-grained count showed that low-attachment preferences cannot be explained by arguing that the specific verbs positioned lower on the tree (VP2) are more likely to take an extra argument than those located at a higher position (VP1), as lexical models would assume.

scholarly journals Luminous Blue Variables & Mass Loss near the Eddington Limit

2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (S250) ◽  
pp. 71-82
Author(s):  
Stan Owocki ◽  
Allard Jan van Marle
Keyword(s):  
Mass Loss ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Time Dependent ◽  
Substantial Fraction ◽  
Luminous Blue Variables ◽  
Flow Stagnation ◽  
On Line ◽  
Eddington Limit ◽  
Luminous Blue Variable

AbstractDuring the course of their evolution, massive stars lose a substantial fraction of their initial mass, both through steady winds and through relatively brief eruptions during their Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) phase. This talk reviews the dynamical driving of this mass loss, contrasting the line-driving of steady winds to the potential role of continuum driving for eruptions during LBV episodes when the star exceeds the Eddington limit. A key theme is to emphasize the inherent limits that self-shadowing places on line-driven mass loss rates, whereas continuum driving can in principle drive mass up to the “photon-tiring” limit, for which the energy to lift the wind becomes equal to the stellar luminosity. We review how the “porosity” of a highly clumped atmosphere can regulate continuum-driven mass loss, but also discuss recent time-dependent simulations of how base mass flux that exceeds the tiring limit can lead to flow stagnation and a complex, time-dependent combination of inflow and outflow regions. A general result is thus that porosity-mediated continuum driving in super-Eddington phases can explain the large, near tiring-limit mass loss inferred for LBV giant eruptions.

scholarly journals Hazai és nemzetközi trendek az olvasásnépszerűsítés terén

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krisztina Radics
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Digital Form ◽  
Digital World ◽  
International Trends ◽  
Library Use ◽  
On Line ◽  
Library Profession

Reading, either in the traditional or digital form is a concern, whose importance today’s youth must be aware of. The representative national reading surveys of 2017 and 2019 of reading and library use habits carried out within the framework of the My library project demonstrated the declining popularity of reading. Furthermore, results of international reading comprehension surveys, especially the PISA tests pertaining to the specific ability of Hungarian students confirm this tendency. What can be done? What methods can we use to promote reading for the youth of the digital world? Programs popularizing reading can give potential answers. Since libraries play a significant role and they are perhaps the most influential in popularizing reading the opinion of the library profession related to these programs should be explored. In my presentation I compare domestic and international trends related to the popularization of reading. I will also introduce the results of an on-line questionnaire-based survey concerning the library profession’s views on the efficiency of such programs along with discussing the potential role of libraries and the expectations for the future.

scholarly journals Emerging Applications of Bacteriocins as Antimicrobials, Anticancer Drugs, and Modulators of The Gastrointestinal Microbiota

2021 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-159
Author(s):  
CATHERINE CESA-LUNACESA-LUNA ◽  
JULIA-MARÍA ALATORRE-CRUZ ◽  
RICARDO CARREÑO-LÓPEZ ◽  
VERÓNICA QUINTERO-HERNÁNDEZ ◽  
ANTONINO BAEZ
Keyword(s):  
Potential Role ◽  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Medical Industry ◽  
Therapeutic Agents ◽  
Great Promise ◽  
Research Groups ◽  
Health Food ◽  
Gastrointestinal Microbiota ◽  
Food Preservatives

The use of bacteriocins holds great promise in different areas such as health, food, nutrition, veterinary, nanotechnology, among others. Many research groups worldwide continue to advance the knowledge to unravel a novel range of therapeutic agents and food preservatives. This review addresses the advances of bacteriocins and their producer organisms as biocontrol agents for applications in the medical industry and agriculture. Furthermore, the bacteriocin mechanism of action and structural characteristics will be reviewed. Finally, the potential role of bacteriocins to modulate the signaling in host-associated microbial communities will be discussed.

POPDC proteins and cardiac function

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 1393-1404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Brand
Keyword(s):  
Potential Role ◽  
Striated Muscle ◽  
Short Review ◽  
Effector Proteins ◽  
Muscle Disease ◽  
Disease Genes ◽  
Protein Protein Interaction ◽  
Interaction Partners ◽  
And Function

Abstract The Popeye domain-containing gene family encodes a novel class of cAMP effector proteins in striated muscle tissue. In this short review, we first introduce the protein family and discuss their structure and function with an emphasis on their role in cyclic AMP signalling. Another focus of this review is the recently discovered role of POPDC genes as striated muscle disease genes, which have been associated with cardiac arrhythmia and muscular dystrophy. The pathological phenotypes observed in patients will be compared with phenotypes present in null and knockin mutations in zebrafish and mouse. A number of protein–protein interaction partners have been discovered and the potential role of POPDC proteins to control the subcellular localization and function of these interacting proteins will be discussed. Finally, we outline several areas, where research is urgently needed.

The Effect of Path Length and Display Size on Memory for Spatial Information

2012 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 147-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Guérard ◽  
Sébastien Tremblay
Keyword(s):  
Path Length ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Recall Performance ◽  
Minor Role ◽  
Length Effect ◽  
Serial Memory ◽  
Fixed Reference ◽  
A Minor

In serial memory for spatial information, some studies showed that recall performance suffers when the distance between successive locations increases relatively to the size of the display in which they are presented (the path length effect; e.g., Parmentier et al., 2005) but not when distance is increased by enlarging the size of the display (e.g., Smyth & Scholey, 1994). In the present study, we examined the effect of varying the absolute and relative distance between to-be-remembered items on memory for spatial information. We manipulated path length using small (15″) and large (64″) screens within the same design. In two experiments, we showed that distance was disruptive mainly when it is varied relatively to a fixed reference frame, though increasing the size of the display also had a small deleterious effect on recall. The insertion of a retention interval did not influence these effects, suggesting that rehearsal plays a minor role in mediating the effects of distance on serial spatial memory. We discuss the potential role of perceptual organization in light of the pattern of results.

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