Dropping Beans or Spilling Secrets: How Idiomatic Context Bias Affects Prediction

Idioms can have both a literal interpretation and a figurative interpretation (e.g., to “kick the bucket”). Which interpretation should be activated can be disambiguated by a preceding context (e.g., “The old man was sick. He kicked the bucket.”). We investigated whether the idiomatic and literal uses of idioms have different predictive properties when the idiom has been biased toward a literal or figurative sentence interpretation. EEG was recorded as participants performed a lexical decision task on idiom-final words in biased idioms and literal (compositional) sentences. Targets in idioms were identified faster in both figuratively and literally used idioms than in compositional sentences. Time–frequency analysis of a prestimulus interval revealed relatively more alpha–beta power decreases in literally than figuratively used idiomatic sequences and compositional sentences. We argue that lexico-semantic retrieval plays a larger role in literally than figuratively biased idioms, as retrieval of the word meaning is less relevant in the latter and the word form has to be matched to a template. The results are interpreted in terms of context integration and word retrieval and have implications for models of language processing and predictive processing in general.

Added Alternatives in Spoken Interaction: A Corpus Study on German Auch

Particles such as German auch (‘also’) establish an additive relation between expressions in their scope (added constituent, AC) and context alternatives against the background of shared information (common denominator). In spoken interaction, however, explicit alternatives are not necessarily present and expressions can be construed as alternatives against different variants of a common denominator. It is the aim of the present paper to investigate to what extent the presence of alternatives influences the construction of utterances containing an additive particle. This is particularly relevant for German, where speakers can choose between an unstressed and stressed version of auch. We ask whether properties of the alternatives and their common denominators influence the choice to use stressed or unstressed auch. In a corpus study on spoken language, we classified the versions of auch, the particles AC, the alternatives in the preceding context and their common denominator. The results show that the speaker’s choice is influenced by the relation of the utterance to context alternatives. Specifically, the degree of explicitness of alternatives, the number of alternatives, and the degree of abstractness of the common denominator influence the continuation of the discourse, measured by the preference for one of the two variants of the particle auch.

Ambiguous Word Processing among Second Language Learners

This study investigated second language learners’ processing of ambiguous words (e.g., bank: [1] a financial institution, [2] an edge of a river/lake) and whether these learners are able to activate the secondary meaning as quickly as they do with the dominant meaning. English L2 and L1 participants used a window paradigm to perform a self-paced reading task, in which all sentences were biased for the secondary meaning (i.e., bank as an edge of a river/lake). The results showed that L1 participants activated both the dominant and the secondary meanings of an ambiguous word even when it is embedded within a secondary-biasing context. However, L2 participants had some difficulty in activating the L2 secondary meaning even when the preceding context was biased for it. The results of the L1 participants were compatible with the autonomous access model in that all meanings of an ambiguous [L1] word are accessed even when the context is biasing for a specific meaning. However, the results of the L2 participants, although they knew both meanings of each ambiguous word in this study based on their post-experiment questionnaire, showed that the more dominant meaning of an L2 ambiguous word is activated first, even when the context is biasing for a secondary meaning.

EXPRESS: Predictability effects and parafoveal processing of compound words in natural Chinese reading

We report a boundary paradigm eye movement experiment to investigate whether the predictability of the second character of a two-character compound word affects how it is processed prior to direct fixation during reading. The boundary was positioned immediately prior to the second character of the target word, which itself was either predictable or unpredictable. The preview was either a pseudocharacter (nonsense preview), or an identity preview. We obtained clear preview effects in all conditions, but more importantly, skipping probability for the second character of the target word and the whole target word from pretarget was greater when it was predictable than when it was not predictable from the preceding context. Interactive effects for later measures on the whole target word (gaze duration and go-past time) were also obtained. These results demonstrate that predictability information from preceding sentential context and information regarding the likely identity of upcoming characters are used concurrently to constrain the nature of lexical processing during natural Chinese reading.

Context-Based Facilitation of Semantic Access Follows Both Logarithmic and Linear Functions of Stimulus Probability

Stimuli are easier to process when the preceding context (e.g., a sentence, in the case of a word) makes them predictable. However, it remains unclear whether context-based facilitation arises due to predictive preactivation of a limited set of relatively probable upcoming stimuli (with facilitation then linearly related to probability) or, instead, arises because the system maintains and updates a probability distribution across all items, as posited by accounts (e.g., surprisal theory) assuming a logarithmic function between predictability and processing effort. To adjudicate between these accounts, we measured the N400 component, an index of semantic access, evoked by sentence-final words of varying probability, including unpredictable words, which are never generated in human production norms. Word predictability was measured using both cloze probabilities and a state-of-the-art machine learning language model (GPT-2). We reanalyzed five datasets (n=138) to first demonstrate and then replicate that context-based facilitation on the N400 is graded and dissociates even among words with cloze probabilities at or near 0, as a function of very small differences in model-estimated predictability. Furthermore, we established that the relationship between word predictability and context-based facilitation on the N400 is neither purely linear nor purely logarithmic but instead combines both functions. We argue that such a composite function reveals properties of the mapping between words and semantic features and how feature- and word- related information is activated during on-line processing. Overall, the results provide powerful evidence for the role of internal models in shaping how the brain apprehends incoming stimulus information.

Exploring individual differences in recognizing idiomatic expressions in context

Written language comprehension requires readers to integrate incoming information with stored mental knowledge to construct meaning. Literally plausible idiomatic expressions can activate both figurative and literal interpretations, which convey different meanings. Previous research has shown that contexts biasing the figurative or literal interpretation of an idiom can facilitate its processing. Moreover, there is evidence that processing of idiomatic expressions is subject to individual differences in linguistic knowledge and cognitive-linguistic skills. It is therefore conceivable that individuals vary in the extent to which they experience context-induced facilitation in processing idiomatic expressions. To explore the interplay between reader-related variables and contextual facilitation, we conducted a self-paced reading experiment. We recruited participants who had recently completed a battery of 33 behavioural tests measuring individual differences in linguistic knowledge, general cognitive skills and linguistic processing skills. In the present experiment, a subset of these participants read idiomatic expressions that were either presented in isolation or preceded by a figuratively or literally biasing context. We conducted analyses on the reading times of idiom-final nouns and the word thereafter (spill-over region) across the three conditions, including participants’ scores from the individual differences battery. Our results showed no main effect of the preceding context, but substantial variation in contextual facilitation between readers. We observed main effects of participants’ word reading ability and non-verbal intelligence on reading times as well as an interaction between condition and linguistic knowledge. We encourage interested researchers to exploit the present dataset for follow-up studies on individual differences in idiom processing.

Steady state-evoked potentials of subjective beat perception in musical rhythms

Synchronization of movement to music is a seemingly universal human capacity that depends on sustained beat perception. Previous research shows that the frequency of the beat can be observed in the neural activity of the listener. However, the extent to which these neural responses reflect concurrent, conscious perception of musical beat versus stimulus-driven activity is a matter of debate. We investigated whether this kind of periodic brain activity, measured using electroencephalography (EEG), reflects perception of beat, by holding the stimulus constant while manipulating the listener’s perception. Listeners with minimal music training heard a musical excerpt that strongly supported one of two beat patterns (context), followed by a rhythm consistent with either beat pattern (ambiguous phase). During the final phase, listeners indicated whether or not a superimposed drum matched the perceived beat (probe phase). Participants were more likely to indicate that the probe matched the music when that probe matched the original context, suggesting an ability to maintain the beat percept through the ambiguous phase. Likewise, we observed that the spectral amplitude during the ambiguous phase was higher at frequencies corresponding to the beat of the preceding context, and the EEG amplitude at the beat-related frequency predicted performance on the beat induction task on a single-trial basis. Together, these findings provide evidence that auditory cortical activity reflects conscious perception of musical beat and not just stimulus features or effortful attention.

Discourse expectations: explaining the implicit causality biases of verbs

This article presents a linguistic account explaining particular mechanisms underlying the generation of expectations at the discourse level. We further develop a linguistic theory – the Empty Slot Theory – explaining the phenomenon of implicit verb causality. According to our proposal, implicit causality (IC) verbs introduce lexically determined slots for causal content of specific types. If the required information is not derivable from the current or preceding context, IC verbs generate the expectation that these slots will be filled in the upcoming discourse. The cognitive mechanism underlying the bias is grounded in the general processing strategy of avoiding accommodation. Empirical evidence for the proposed theory is provided in three continuation experiments in German with comprehensive semantic annotation of the continuations provided by the participants. The reported experiments consistently show that IC bias can be manipulated in systematic ways. Experiment 1 demonstrates important ontological constraints on causal content crucial for our theory. Experiments 2 and 3 show how IC biases can be manipulated in predictable ways by filling the hypothesized slots in the prompt. Experiment 2 illustrates that stimulus-experiencer (experiencer-object) verbs in contrast to causative agent-patient verbs can be manipulated with respect to coherence and coreference by employing adverbial modification. Filling the lexically determined slot of psychological verbs resulted in predictable changes in coherence relations and types of explanations, resulting in the predicted effects on coreference. Experiment 3 extends the empirical investigations to so-called “agent-evocator” verbs. Again, filling the semantic slot as part of the prompt resulted in predictable shifts in coherence relations and explanation types with transparent effects on coreference. The reported experiments shed further light on the close correspondence between coherence and coreference as a hallmark of natural language discourse.

The Finnish tail construction as a first mention

This article examines the Finnish tail construction (right dislocation) used as a first mention of a referent and the variation of the demonstrative pronouns tämä ‘this’, tuo ‘that’, and se ‘it’ in the construction. Many previous studies have suggested that tail construction (TC) referents are highly active and thus already mentioned and salient in a conversation. However, in Finnish, the TC may introduce new referents into a conversation, and this article provides an empirical analysis of how and why this is done. First-mention TCs are often evaluations or questions in which the proposition links the utterance to the preceding context. When presenting new information, the TC allows the speaker to present a potentially lengthy lexical definition of a new referent at the end of the utterance, avoiding the additional emphatic meanings or unwanted implications a simply inverted word order might create.

Decoding the Real-Time Neurobiological Properties of Incremental Semantic Interpretation

Communication through spoken language is a central human capacity, involving a wide range of complex computations that incrementally interpret each word into meaningful sentences. However, surprisingly little is known about the spatiotemporal properties of the complex neurobiological systems that support these dynamic predictive and integrative computations. Here, we focus on prediction, a core incremental processing operation guiding the interpretation of each upcoming word with respect to its preceding context. To investigate the neurobiological basis of how semantic constraints change and evolve as each word in a sentence accumulates over time, in a spoken sentence comprehension study, we analyzed the multivariate patterns of neural activity recorded by source-localized electro/magnetoencephalography (EMEG), using computational models capturing semantic constraints derived from the prior context on each upcoming word. Our results provide insights into predictive operations subserved by different regions within a bi-hemispheric system, which over time generate, refine, and evaluate constraints on each word as it is heard.