scholarly journals Preverbal syntactic complexity leads to local coherence effects in Hindi

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sakshi Bhatia ◽  
Samar Husain
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Linguistic Cues ◽  
Poor Comprehension ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
Robust Prediction ◽  
Comprehension Accuracy

The effective use of preverbal linguistic cues to make successful clause-final verbal prediction as well as robust prediction maintenance has been argued to be a cross-linguistic generalization for SOV languages such as German and Japanese. In this paper, we show that native speakers of Hindi (an SOV language) falter in maintaining clause-final verbal predictions in the presence of a center-embedded relative clause with a non-canonical word order. The fallibility of the parser is illustrated by the formation of a grammatically illicit locally coherent parse as well as by poor comprehension accuracy. Our investigations suggest that while plausibility is essential, presence of overt agreement features might not be necessary for forming a locally coherent parse in Hindi. The work highlights how top-down processing and bottom-up information interact during sentence comprehension in SOV languages – comprehension suffers with increased complexity of the preverbal linguistic environment.

scholarly journals Parsing-error-Hindi

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samar Husain
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
The Face ◽  
Case Markers ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
Verbal Relations ◽  
Memory Constraints

The role of prediction during sentence comprehension is widely acknowledged to be very critical in SOV languages. Robust clause-fi?nal verbal prediction and its maintenance have been invoked to explain eff?ects such as anti-locality and lack of structural forgetting. At the same time, there is evidence that these languages avoid increased preverbal phrase complexity due to working-memory constraints. Given the critical role of prediction in processing of SOV languages, in this work, we study verbal predictions in Hindi (an SOV language) to investigate its robustness and fallibility using a series of completion studies. Analyses of verbal completions based on grammaticality (grammatical vs ungrammatical) as well as their syntactic property (in terms of verb class) show, as expected, frequent grammatical completions based on effective use of preverbal nouns and case-markers. However, there were also high instances of ungrammatical completions. In particular, consistent errors were made in conditions with 3 animate nouns with unique/similar case-markers. These errors increased in the face of adjuncts of di?ffering complexity following the preverbal nouns. The grammatical and ungrammatical completions show that native speakers of Hindi posit structures with at most 2 verbal heads and 5 core verbal relations, thus highlighting an upper bound to verbal prediction and its maintenance in such con?figurations. A rating study con?firmed that certain errors found in completion tasks can lead to grammatical illusions. Further, a detailed analysis of the completion errors in such cases revealed that the parser ignores the complete preverbal nominal features of the input and instead selectively reconstructs the input based on their frequency in the language to form illicit parses at the expense of globally consistent parses. Together, the results show that while preverbal cues are eff?ectively employed by the parser to make clause ?final structural predictions, the parsing system breaks down when the number of predicted verbs/relations exceeds beyond a certain threshold. In effect, the results suggests that processing in SOV languages is susceptible to center-embeddings similar to that in SVO languages. This highlights the over-arching influence of working-memory constraints during sentence comprehension and thereby on the parser to posit less complex structures.

scholarly journals Resumptive pronouns facilitate processing of long-distance relative clause dependencies in second language English

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 325
Author(s):  
Fred Zenker ◽  
Bonnie D. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Test Group ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Resumptive Pronouns

This study provides evidence that resumptive pronouns (RPs) can facilitate the processing of long-distance subject relative clause (RC) dependencies during second language (L2) sentence comprehension, even where they are disallowed in both the first language (L1) and the target language. A test group of 29 L1-Korean L2 learners (L2ers) of English and a control group of 25 native English speakers completed an online self-paced reading task (SPRT) and an offline acceptability judgment task (AJT) designed to test whether RPs reflect Interlanguage grammar representations and/or a strategy to alleviate processing overload. Analysis of the SPRT data from both response times and comprehension question accuracy indicates that RPs assisted the L2ers, but not the native speakers, with dependency resolution in long-distance RCs. For the AJT data, a proficiency effect was observed whereby some lower-proficiency L2ers, but not the higher-proficiency ones or the native speakers, tended to prefer RPs over gaps in long-distance RCs. The implications of these findings and plans for future research are discussed.

Relative clause processing in L1 and L2 English

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Witzel ◽  
Naoko Witzel
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Second Language Processing ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
Chinese Learners ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
Processing Difficulty

Abstract This study investigates the locus of processing difficulty in English object-extracted relative clauses during both native and non-native sentence comprehension. Two L-maze experiments were conducted – one with English native speakers (n = 48) and another with highly proficient Chinese learners of English (n = 20) – to compare the processing of object-extracted relative clauses (ORCs) with that of subject-extracted relative clauses (SRCs). Both participants groups revealed clear processing costs for ORC sentences. In both cases, this processing difficulty was localized at the beginning of the ORC, and specifically at the article that introduced the ORC subject (The soldier who the sailor roughly pushed….). These findings are taken to indicate that structural expectations play a central role in the first- and second-language processing of English relative clauses and of complex sentences more generally.

scholarly journals Syntax and processing in Seediq: an event-related potential study

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masataka Yano ◽  
Keiyu Niikuni ◽  
Hajime Ono ◽  
Manami Sato ◽  
Apay Ai-yu Tang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Processing Load ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Austronesian Language ◽  
Basic Word ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Processing Difficulty

AbstractIn many languages with subject-before-object as a syntactically basic word order, transitive sentences in which the subject precedes the object have been reported to have a processing advantage over those in which the subject follows the object in sentence comprehension. Three sources can be considered to account for this advantage, namely, syntactic complexity (filler-gap dependency), conceptual accessibility (the order of thematic roles), and pragmatic requirement. To examine the effect of these factors on the processing of simple transitive sentences, the present study conducted two event-related potential experiments in Seediq, an Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan, by manipulating word orders (basic VOS vs. non-basic SVO), the order of thematic roles (actor vs. goal voice), and discourse factors (presence/absence of visual context). The results showed that, compared to VOS, SVO incurred a greater processing load (reflected by a P600) when there was no supportive context, irrespective of voice alternation; however, SVO did not incur a greater processing load when there was supportive context and the discourse requirement was satisfied. We interpreted these results as evidence that the processing difficulty of the non-basic word order in Seediq is associated with a discourse-level processing difficulty.

Canonical word order and interference-based integration costs during sentence comprehension: The case of Spanish subject- and object-relative clauses

2012 ◽  
Vol 65 (11) ◽  
pp. 2108-2128 ◽  
Author(s):  
David del Río ◽  
Ramón López-Higes ◽  
MaríaTeresa Martín-Aragoneses
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Noncanonical Form ◽  
Object Relative

Object-relative clauses are generally harder to process than subject-relative clauses. Increased processing costs for object-relatives have been attributed either to working memory demands for the establishment of long-distance dependencies or to difficulties processing unexpected, noncanonical structures. The current study uses self-paced reading to contrast the impact of both kinds of factors in Spanish object-relative clauses, manipulating the interposition of the subject of the relative clause between object and verb. In addition, object-relatives were unambiguously marked at their onset with the Spanish preposition “ a”. Reading times increased at the onset and final regions of object-relative clauses, regardless of interference-based working memory costs, although interference costs may affect the processing of post-relative-clause regions. These results suggest that, beyond interference-related working memory costs, end-of-clause integration processes may be affected by a preference for canonical structures, thus increasing processing difficulties when confronted with a noncanonical form.

Sentence comprehension in heritage language: Isomorphism, word order, and language transfer

2021 ◽  
pp. 026765832199790
Author(s):  
Anna Chrabaszcz ◽  
Elena Onischik ◽  
Olga Dragoy
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Language Transfer ◽  
Processing Strategy ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Dominant Language ◽  
Sequence Of Events ◽  
Linguistic Transfer

This study examines the role of cross-linguistic transfer versus general processing strategy in two groups of heritage speakers ( n = 28 per group) with the same heritage language – Russian – and typologically different dominant languages: English and Estonian. A group of homeland Russian speakers ( n = 36) is tested to provide baseline comparison. Within the framework of the Competition model (MacWhinney, 2012), cross-linguistic transfer is defined as reliance on the processing cue prevalent in the heritage speaker’s dominant language (e.g. word order in English) for comprehension of heritage language. In accordance with the Isomorphic Mapping Hypothesis (O’Grady and Lee, 2005), the general processing strategy is defined in terms of isomorphism as a linear alignment between the order of the sentence constituents and the temporal sequence of events. Participants were asked to match pictures on the computer screen with auditorily presented sentences. Sentences included locative or instrumental constructions, in which two cues – word order (basic vs. inverted) and isomorphism mapping (isomorphic vs. nonisomorphic) – were fully crossed. The results revealed that (1) Russian native speakers are sensitive to isomorphism in sentence processing; (2) English-dominant heritage speakers experience dominant language transfer, as evidenced by their reliance primarily on the word order cue; (3) Estonian-dominant heritage speakers do not show significant effects of isomorphism or word order but experience significant processing costs in all conditions.

Familiarity of Speaker Accent on Irish Children’s Performance on a Sentence Comprehension Task

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Claire O’Connor ◽  
Fiona E. Gibbon
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Clinical Implications ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Older Children ◽  
School Aged Children ◽  
Comprehension Task ◽  
Computer Based

Objective: This study sought to determine whether children’s performance on a sentence comprehension task is affected when sentences are spoken in an unfamiliar native accent. Method: Fifty typically developing school-aged children living in Southern Ireland (Cork) participated; 25 in a younger group (mean 7;08 years) and 25 in an older group (mean 9;09 years). The children completed a computer-based comprehension task during which 20 sentences were spoken in a Cork accent (familiar) and 20 in a Tyrone accent (unfamiliar). The sentences were matched for syllable length and syntactic complexity. Main results: The younger children made significantly more errors when sentences were spoken in an unfamiliar accent. The older children made a similar number of incorrect responses to both familiar and unfamiliar accents. Conclusion: Younger children’s performance on comprehension tasks may be reduced when sentences are spoken in an unfamiliar accent. Possible explanations and the clinical implications are discussed.

The processing of case in near-native Spanish

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Jegerski
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Case Marker ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
Case Markers ◽  
Ditransitive Constructions

This article reports a study that sought to determine whether non-native sentence comprehension can show sensitivity to two different types of Spanish case marking. Sensitivity to case violations was generally more robust with indirect objects in ditransitive constructions than with differential object marking of animate direct objects, even among native speakers of Spanish, which probably reflects linguistic differences in the two types of case. In addition, the overall outcome of two experiments shows that second language (L2) processing can integrate case information, but that, unlike with native processing, attention to a case marker may depend on the presence of a preverbal clitic as an additional cue to the types of postverbal arguments that might occur in a stimulus. Specifically, L2 readers showed no sensitivity to differential object marking with a in the absence of clitics in the first experiment, with stimuli such as Verónica visita al/el presidente todos los meses ‘Veronica visits the[ACC/NOM]president every month’, but the L2 readers in the second experiment showed native-like sensitivity to the same marker when the object it marked was doubled by the clitic lo, as in Verónica lo visita al/el presidente todos los meses. With indirect objects, on the other hand, sensitivity to case markers was native-like in both experiments, although indirect objects were also always doubled by the preverbal clitic le. The apparent first language / second language contrast suggests differences in processing strategy, whereby non-native processing of morphosyntax may rely more on the predictability of forms than does native processing.

scholarly journals Honorifics: A sociocultural verb agreement cue in Japanese sentence processing

2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-569 ◽  
Author(s):  
YUKI YOSHIMURA ◽  
BRIAN MACWHINNEY
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Role Assignment ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
New Type

ABSTRACTCase marking is the major cue to sentence interpretation in Japanese, whereas animacy and word order are much weaker. However, when subjects and their cases markers are omitted, Japanese honorific and humble verbs can provide information that compensates for the missing case role markers. This study examined the usage of honorific and humble verbs as cues to case role assignment by Japanese native speakers and second-language learners of Japanese. The results for native speakers replicated earlier findings regarding the predominant strength of case marking. However, when case marking was missing, native speakers relied more on honorific marking than word order. In these sentences, the processing that relied on the honorific cue was delayed by about 100 ms in comparison to processing that relied on the case-marking cue. Learners made extensive use of the honorific agreement cue, but their use of the cue was much less accurate than that of native speakers. In particular, they failed to systematically invoke the agreement cue when case marking was missing. Overall, the findings support the predictions of the model and extend its coverage to a new type of culturally determined cue.

scholarly journals Cyclicity and Connectivity in Nez Perce Relative Clauses

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Rose Deal
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Intermediate Position ◽  
Nez Perce ◽  
The Core ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Relative Pronouns

This article studies two aspects of movement in relative clauses, focusing on evidence from Nez Perce. First, I argue that relativization involves cyclic Ā-movement, even in monoclausal relatives: the relative operator moves to Spec,CP via an intermediate position in an Ā outer specifier of TP. The core arguments draw on word order, complementizer choice, and a pattern of case attraction for relative pronouns. Ā cyclicity of this type suggests that the TP sister of relative C constitutes a phase—a result whose implications extend to an ill-understood corner of the English that-trace effect. Second, I argue that Nez Perce relativization provides new evidence for an ambiguity thesis for relative clauses, according to which some but not all relatives are derived by head raising. The argument comes from connectivity and anticonnectivity in morphological case. A crucial role is played by a pattern of inverse case attraction, wherein the head noun surfaces in a case determined internal to the relative clause. These new data complement the range of existing arguments concerning head raising, which draw primarily on connectivity effects at the syntax-semantics interface.

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