scholarly journals How abstract is syntax? Evidence from structural priming

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jayden Ziegler ◽  
Giulia Bencini ◽  
Adele Eva Goldberg ◽  
Jesse Snedeker
Keyword(s):  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Present Experiment ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Event Structure ◽  
Structural Priming ◽  
Abstract Syntax ◽  
Semantic Roles ◽  
Abstract Content ◽  
Semantic Event ◽  
Lexical Content

In 1990, Bock and Loebell found that passives (e.g., The 747 was radioed by the airport’s control tower) can be primed by intransitive locatives (e.g., The 747 was landing by the airport’s control tower). This finding is often taken as strong evidence that structural priming occurs on the basis of a syntactic phrase structure that abstracts across lexical content, including prepositions, and is uninfluenced by the semantic roles of the arguments. However, all of the intransitive locative primes in Bock and Loebell contained the preposition by (by-locatives), just like the passive targets. Therefore, the locative-to-passive priming may have been due to the adjunct headed by by, rather than being a result of purely abstract syntax. The present experiment investigates this possibility. We find that passives and intransitive by-locatives are equivalent primes, but intransitive locatives with other prepositions (e.g., The 747 has landed near the airport control tower) do not prime passives. We conclude that a shared abstract, content-less tree structure is not sufficient for passive priming to occur. We then review the prior results that have been offered in favor of abstract tree priming, and note the range of evidence can be considerably narrowed—and possibly eliminated—once effects of animacy, semantic event structure, shared morphology, information structure, and rhythm are taken into account.

scholarly journals "A TOT PEROVSKOJ NE DAL VSLAST' POSPAT'": PROSODY AND GRAMMAR OF ANAPHORIC TOT THROUGH THE LENS OF CORPUS DATA

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. I. Podlesskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Anaphora Resolution ◽  
Prosodic Features ◽  
Semantic Roles ◽  
Actual Distribution ◽  
Spoken Discourse ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Actual Use ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
National Corpus

Based on data from the Russian National Corpus and the General InternetCorpus of Russian, the paper addresses syntactic, sematic and prosodic features of constructions with the demonstrative TOT used as an anaphor. These constructions have gained some attention in earlier studies [Paducheva 2016], [Berger, Weiss 1987], [Kibrik 2011], [Podlesskaya 2001], but their analysis (a) covered primarily their prototypical uses; and (b) was based on written data. The data from informal, esp. from spoken discourse show however that the actual use of these constructions may deviate considerably from the known prototype. The paper aims at bridging this gap. I claim (i) that the function of TOT is to temporary promote a referent from a less privileged discourse status to a more privileged one; and (ii) that TOT can be analyzed on a par with switch reference devices in the languages where the latter are grammatically marked (e.g. on verb forms). The following parameters of TOT-constructions are discussed: syntactic and semantic roles of TOT and of its antecedent in their respective clauses, linear and structural distances between TOT and its antecedent, animacy of the maintained referent. Special attention is payed to the information structure of the TOT construction: I give structural and prosodic evidence that TOT never has a rhematic status. The revealed actual distribution of TOT (a) adds to our understanding of cross-linguistic variation of anaphoric functions of demonstratives; and, hopefully, (b) may contribute to further developing computational approaches to coreference and anaphora resolution for Russian, e.g. by improving datasets necessary for this task.

A frame-analysis of the interplay of grammar and cognition in emission verbs

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Fleischhauer ◽  
Thomas Gamerschlag ◽  
Wiebke Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Structural Properties ◽  
Frame Analysis ◽  
Event Structure ◽  
Lexical Decomposition ◽  
Lexical Content

AbstractMost decompositional approaches are confined to representing event structural properties whereas the idiosyncratic lexical content is often reduced to an unanalyzed atomic root. While approaches of this type are successfully applied to argument linking and some additional grammatical phenomena, we argue that other grammatically relevant aspects of verb behavior cannot be accounted for in this way. In order to illustrate the limits of ‘traditional’ decompositional accounts, we focus on the class of verbs of emission. Verbs of this class exhibit some grammatical asymmetries whose analysis requires lexical decomposition beyond traditional event structure templates. We argue that frames are a suitable format for extending event structure templates and provide an analysis of the phenomena at issue.

scholarly journals An experimental approach to linguistic representation

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly P. Branigan ◽  
Martin J. Pickering
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Experimental Approach ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Structural Priming ◽  
Substantial Evidence ◽  
Semantic Level ◽  
Thematic Relations ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
Acceptability Judgments ◽  
Do So

AbstractWithin the cognitive sciences, most researchers assume that it is the job of linguists to investigate how language is represented, and that they do so largely by building theories based on explicit judgments about patterns of acceptability – whereas it is the task of psychologists to determine how language is processed, and that in doing so, they do not typically question the linguists' representational assumptions. We challenge this division of labor by arguing that structural priming provides an implicit method of investigating linguistic representations that should end the current reliance on acceptability judgments. Moreover, structural priming has now reached sufficient methodological maturity to provide substantial evidence about such representations. We argue that evidence from speakers' tendency to repeat their own and others' structural choices supports a linguistic architecture involving a single shallow level of syntax connected to a semantic level containing information about quantification, thematic relations, and information structure, as well as to a phonological level. Many of the linguistic distinctions often used to support complex (or multilevel) syntactic structure are instead captured by semantics; however, the syntactic level includes some specification of “missing” elements that are not realized at the phonological level. We also show that structural priming provides evidence about the consistency of representations across languages and about language development. In sum, we propose that structural priming provides a new basis for understanding the nature of language.

scholarly journals Thematic Roles Are Not Semantic Roles

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 245-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan G. van Voorst
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Theory ◽  
Event Structure ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Semantic Roles ◽  
Principal Role ◽  
Subject Selection

Abstract This article discusses the value of thematic roles for the description of phenomena of grammar. Notions like agent, patient, etc. do not have any explanatory value in the grammar. For instance, there is no relationship between the middle, subject selection in English and the impersonal passive in Dutch and these roles. This makes it impossible for the language learner to distil them from the grammatical system. The notion of Event Structure creates a more explanatory link between the grammar and semantics. This notion explains the functioning of impersonal passive in Dutch. It is notions like this one that should play a principal role in a more explanatory semantic theory.

scholarly journals Zu der Ereignis- und Argumentstruktur der ein- und dreistelligen Verben in polnischen Präteritum-Formen vs. „neueren“ Formen mit mieć

2018 ◽  
Vol 143 ◽  
pp. 103-118
Author(s):  
Piotr Bartelik
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Event Structure ◽  
Semantic Roles ◽  
Grammatical Analysis

Der Beitrag fokussiert auf die Ereignis- und Argument-Struktur in polnischen Formen mit mieć und Partizipien der ein- und dreistelligen Verben. In der bisherigen Forschung wurde die Herausbildung derartiger „neuer“ Tempus- und ggf. Diathese-Formen im Kontext diverser grammatischer Parameter entweder postuliert oder entscheidend in Frage gestellt. Die hier vorgeschlagene Herangehensweise baut zum einen auf rollensemantischen und ereignisstrukturellen Theorien der Dekomposition auf, zum anderen werden anschließend die anscheinend konstruktionstypischen Ambiguitäten erwogen. On the event and argument structure of one- and three-place verbs in Polish preterite tense forms vs. “new” periphrastic forms with miećThis paper aims at analyzing the argument and event structure of the constructions with the verb mieć and partially reanalyzed participles, which are described as the “new perfect” in contemporary Polish. These forms are most frequently analyzed in terms of transitivity, aspect and other overt grammatical criteria so that the limits of their grammatical analysis seem to be reached. This paper offers a model that is oriented on the decomposition concepts event and argument structure, concepts of generalized semantic roles and that accordingly allows to evaluate the elaborated limits of grammatical analysis.

Shared syntactic representations in bilinguals

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoonsang Song ◽  
Ryan K. Y. Lai
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Structural Priming ◽  
Thematic Role ◽  
Functional Level ◽  
Constituent Structure ◽  
Syntactic Information ◽  
Share Information

Abstract The current study explores the nature of constituent-structure-independent structural priming across the two languages of bilinguals. Specifically, this study tests whether such cross-linguistic priming involves the priming of functional-level syntactic representations shared between the languages, which can be distinguished from the priming of mainly non-syntactic information (e.g., information structure, thematic-role order). Critical prime sentences consisted of Cantonese actives in the Object-Subject-Verb (OSV) order and passives where the patient was grammatically topicalized with the same topic particle. Target responses were produced in English actives or passives. The results show that robust priming from Cantonese Topic-Passives to English passives occurred, but no cross-linguistic priming was observed for Cantonese Topic-OSV active primes. The Topic-OSV active and Topic-Passive constructions share information structure, and are formed in different constituent structures from English actives and passives. Therefore, the robust cross-linguistic passive priming by Topic-Passive primes should in large part be ascribed to functional-level syntactic representations of passive constructions shared by Cantonese and English.

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