scholarly journals Coreference and antecedent representation across languages

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sol Lago ◽  
Shayne Sloggett ◽  
Zoe Schlueter ◽  
Wing Yee Chow ◽  
Alexander Williams ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Lexical Entry ◽  
Lexical Retrieval ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Phonological Features

Previous studies have shown that speakers of languages such as German, Spanish, and French reactivate the syntactic gender of the antecedent of a pronoun to license gender agreement. As syntactic gender is assumed to be stored in the lexicon, this has motivated the claim that pronouns in these languages reactivate the lexical entry of their antecedent noun. In contrast, in languages without syntactic gender such as English, lexical retrieval might be unnecessary. We used eye-tracking while reading to examine whether antecedent retrieval involves rapid semantic and phonological reactivation. We compared German and English. In German, we found early sensitivity to the semantic but not to the phonological features of the pronoun’s antecedent. In English, readers did not immediately show either semantic or phonological effects specific to coreference. We propose that early semantic facilitation arises due to syntactic gender reactivation, and that antecedent retrieval varies cross-linguistically depending on the type of information relevant to the grammar of each language.

scholarly journals Influence of L1 Properties and Proficiency on the Acquisition of Gender Agreement

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre-Luc Paquet
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Explicit Knowledge ◽  
Implicit Knowledge ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
Proficiency Level ◽  
French And English ◽  
Advanced Proficiency

This research investigates the influence of L1 properties and proficiency level on the acquisition of the Spanish gender agreement system. French and English-speaking learners of Spanish participated in the study. Subjects were divided into four different groups considering their L1 (French and English) and their proficiency level (intermediate and advanced). Subjects completed three different tasks: an untimed grammaticality judgment (UGJT) to measure learners’ explicit knowledge, an elicited oral imitation (EOI) and an eye-tracking to assess their implicit knowledge of the Spanish gender agreement system. From this multi-tiered methodology, this research project aimed to examine whether L1 properties and proficiency level influence learners’ explicit and implicit knowledge of the Spanish gender agreement. The results from the UGJT suggest that both French and English learners can notice noun-adjective discord. As for the EOI and eye-tracking tasks, only the French advanced learners clearly demonstrated integrated implicit knowledge of gender agreement. Therefore, based on these results, we can imply that implicit knowledge of gender agreement is acquired later and that L1 properties influence this whole process, even at an advanced proficiency level.

Grammatical gender in adult L2 acquisition: Relations between lexical and syntactic variability

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Hopp
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Lexical Access ◽  
First Language ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
L2 Production ◽  
L1 English

In order to identify the causes of inflectional variability in adult second-language (L2) acquisition, this study investigates lexical and syntactic aspects of gender processing in real-time L2 production and comprehension. Twenty advanced to near-native adult first language (L1) English speakers of L2 German and 20 native controls were tested in a study comprising two experiments. In elicited production, we probe accuracy in lexical gender assignment. In a visual-world eye tracking task, we test the predictive processing of syntactic gender agreement between determiners and nouns. The findings show clear contingencies (1) between overall accuracy in lexical gender assignment in production and target predictive processing of syntactic gender agreement in comprehension and (2) between the speed of lexical access and predictive syntactic gender agreement. These findings support lexical and computational accounts of L2 inflectional variability and argue against models positing representational deficits in morphosyntax in late L2 acquisition and processing.

Facilitative use of grammatical gender in Heritage Spanish

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zuzanna Fuchs
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Lexical Retrieval ◽  
Early Language ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Visual World Paradigm ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Gender Information ◽  
Heritage Speakers Of Spanish

Abstract This paper presents an eye-tracking study using the Visual World Paradigm that tests whether participants are able to access gender information on definite articles and deploy it to facilitate lexical retrieval of subsequent nouns. A comparison of heritage speakers of Spanish with control monolingual speakers of Spanish suggests that the heritage speakers’ performance on this task is qualitatively similar to that of the baseline. This suggests that, despite non-target-like performance in offline tasks targeting gender production and comprehension, heritage speakers of Spanish can use gender in a target-like manner in online tasks. In line with proposals put forth by Grüter et al. (2012) and Montrul et al. (2014), a preliminary comparison with previous work on L2 learners (Lew-Williams & Fernald, 2010; Grüter et al., 2012; Dussias et al., 2013) provides tentative support for the idea that the nature of early language learning is crucial in developing the ability to use grammatical gender to facilitate lexical retrieval (Grüter et al., 2012; Montrul et al., 2014).

An Eye-Tracking Study on Audiovisual Speech Perception Strategies Adopted by Normal-Hearing and Deaf Adults Under Different Language Familiarities

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (7) ◽  
pp. 2245-2254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianrong Wang ◽  
Yumeng Zhu ◽  
Yu Chen ◽  
Abdilbar Mamat ◽  
Mei Yu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Audiovisual Speech ◽  
Audiovisual Speech Perception ◽  
Allocation Pattern ◽  
Deaf Adults ◽  
Bilingual Speaker ◽  
Primary Hypothesis ◽  
Standard Chinese

Purpose The primary purpose of this study was to explore the audiovisual speech perception strategies.80.23.47 adopted by normal-hearing and deaf people in processing familiar and unfamiliar languages. Our primary hypothesis was that they would adopt different perception strategies due to different sensory experiences at an early age, limitations of the physical device, and the developmental gap of language, and others. Method Thirty normal-hearing adults and 33 prelingually deaf adults participated in the study. They were asked to perform judgment and listening tasks while watching videos of a Uygur–Mandarin bilingual speaker in a familiar language (Standard Chinese) or an unfamiliar language (Modern Uygur) while their eye movements were recorded by eye-tracking technology. Results Task had a slight influence on the distribution of selective attention, whereas subject and language had significant influences. To be specific, the normal-hearing and the d10eaf participants mainly gazed at the speaker's eyes and mouth, respectively, in the experiment; moreover, while the normal-hearing participants had to stare longer at the speaker's mouth when they confronted with the unfamiliar language Modern Uygur, the deaf participant did not change their attention allocation pattern when perceiving the two languages. Conclusions Normal-hearing and deaf adults adopt different audiovisual speech perception strategies: Normal-hearing adults mainly look at the eyes, and deaf adults mainly look at the mouth. Additionally, language and task can also modulate the speech perception strategy.

Treatment for Progressive Impairments of Language

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Henry
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Treatment ◽  
Primary Progressive Aphasia ◽  
Sentence Production ◽  
Lexical Retrieval ◽  
Functional Communication ◽  
Language Performance ◽  
Communication Techniques ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
Behavioral Treatments ◽  
Treatment Research

Abstract Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a relatively new diagnostic entity, for which few behavioral treatments have been investigated. Recent work has helped to clarify the nature of distinct PPA variants, including a nonfluent variant (NFV-PPA), a logopenic variant (LV-PPA), and a semantic variant (SV-PPA). This paper reviews treatment research to date in each subtype of PPA, including restitutive, augmentative, and functional approaches. The evidence suggests that restitutive behavioral treatment can result in improved or stabilized language performance within treated domains. Specifically, sentence production and lexical retrieval have been addressed in NFV-PPA, whereas lexical retrieval has been the primary object of treatment in LV and SV-PPA. Use of augmentative communication techniques, as well as implementation of functional communication approaches, also may result in improved communication skills in individuals with PPA. The ideal treatment approach may be one that combines restitutive, augmentative, and functional approaches to treatment, in order to maximize residual cognitive-linguistic skills in patients. Additional research is warranted to determine which modes of treatment are most beneficial in each type of PPA at various stages of severity.

Activation and Persistence of Implicit Causality Information in Spoken Language Comprehension

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pirita Pyykkönen ◽  
Juhani Järvikivi
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Implicit Causality ◽  
Causality Information ◽  
Spoken Language Comprehension

A visual world eye-tracking study investigated the activation and persistence of implicit causality information in spoken language comprehension. We showed that people infer the implicit causality of verbs as soon as they encounter such verbs in discourse, as is predicted by proponents of the immediate focusing account ( Greene & McKoon, 1995 ; Koornneef & Van Berkum, 2006 ; Van Berkum, Koornneef, Otten, & Nieuwland, 2007 ). Interestingly, we observed activation of implicit causality information even before people encountered the causal conjunction. However, while implicit causality information was persistent as the discourse unfolded, it did not have a privileged role as a focusing cue immediately at the ambiguous pronoun when people were resolving its antecedent. Instead, our study indicated that implicit causality does not affect all referents to the same extent, rather it interacts with other cues in the discourse, especially when one of the referents is already prominently in focus.

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