Agent prominence in symmetrical voice languages

Riesberg, Sonja; Primus, Beatrice

doi:10.1515/stuf-2015-0023

Cited by 15 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…In this article, we follow Foley (1998), Himmelmann (2005a), and Riesberg (2014), who categorize Tagalog as a symmetrical voice language, which means that the language has multiple basic transitive constructions, which are considered symmetrical because the verb bears a specific marker in all of the voice alternations. Furthermore, there is no demotion of an argument to an oblique sentence element across the voice alternations, which is different from the active–passive alternation in other languages like English or German (Riesberg & Primus, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Word order preferences of Tagalog-speaking adults and children

et al. 2018

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Word order preferences of Tagalog-speaking adults and children

et al. 2018

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“…also Schachter, 1976 ; Foley and Van Valin, 1984 ). Riesberg and Primus ( 2015 ) argue that even in Tagalog's symmetrical voice system, where verbs are morphologically marked for agent as well as patient pivots, agents have a special grammatical status. For example, agents are always binders of reflexives, independently of their syntactic status (Schachter, 1977 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Verbal Semantics Drives Early Anticipatory Eye Movements during the Comprehension of Verb-Initial Sentences

Sauppe

2016

Front. Psychol.

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Studies on anticipatory processes during sentence comprehension often focus on the prediction of postverbal direct objects. In subject-initial languages (the target of most studies so far), however, the position in the sentence, the syntactic function, and the semantic role of arguments are often conflated. For example, in the sentence “The frog will eat the fly” the syntactic object (“fly”) is at the same time also the last word and the patient argument of the verb. It is therefore not apparent which kind of information listeners orient to for predictive processing during sentence comprehension. A visual world eye tracking study on the verb-initial language Tagalog (Austronesian) tested what kind of information listeners use to anticipate upcoming postverbal linguistic input. The grammatical structure of Tagalog allows to test whether listeners' anticipatory gaze behavior is guided by predictions of the linear order of words, by syntactic functions (e.g., subject/object), or by semantic roles (agent/patient). Participants heard sentences of the type “Eat frog fly” or “Eat fly frog” (both meaning “The frog will eat the fly”) while looking at displays containing an agent referent (“frog”), a patient referent (“fly”) and a distractor. The verb carried morphological marking that allowed the order and syntactic function of agent and patient to be inferred. After having heard the verb, listeners fixated on the agent irrespective of its syntactic function or position in the sentence. While hearing the first-mentioned argument, listeners fixated on the corresponding referent in the display accordingly and then initiated saccades to the last-mentioned referent before it was encountered. The results indicate that listeners used verbal semantics to identify referents and their semantic roles early; information about word order or syntactic functions did not influence anticipatory gaze behavior directly after the verb was heard. In this verb-initial language, event semantics takes early precedence during the comprehension of sentences, while arguments are anticipated temporally more local to when they are encountered. The current experiment thus helps to better understand anticipation during language processing by employing linguistic structures not available in previously studied subject-initial languages.

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“…Interestingly, Riesberg and Primus (2015) show that although there are no grammatical preferences for linking agents to the pivot function in symmetrical voice languages, there is still some degree of agent prominence (e.g. in parts of the paradigms of voice affixes).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Symmetrical and asymmetrical voice systems and processing load: Pupillometric evidence from sentence production in Tagalog and German

Sauppe¹

2017

Language

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The voice system of Tagalog has been proposed to be symmetrical in the sense that there are no morphologically unmarked voice forms. This stands in contrast to asymmetrical voice systems which exhibit unmarked and marked voices (e.g., active and passive in German). This paper investigates the psycholinguistic processing consequences of the symmetrical and asymmetrical nature of the Tagalog and German voice systems by analyzing changes in cognitive load during sentence production. Tagalog and German native speakers' pupil diameters were recorded while they produced sentences with different voice markings. Growth curve analyses of the shape of task-evoked pupillary responses revealed that processing load changes were similar for different voices in the symmetrical voice system of Tagalog. By contrast, actives and passives in the asymmetrical voice system of German exhibited different patterns of processing load changes during sentence production. This is interpreted as supporting the notion of symmetry in the Tagalog voice system. Mental effort during sentence planning changes in different ways in the two languages because the grammatical architecture of their voice systems is different. Additionally, an anti-Patient bias in sentence production was found in Tagalog: cognitive load increased at the same time and at the same rate but was maintained for a longer time when the patient argument was the subject, as compared to agent subjects. This indicates that while both voices in Tagalog afford similar planning operations, linking patients to the subject function is more effortful. This anti-Patient bias in production adds converging evidence to “subject preferences” reported in the sentence comprehension literature

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Agent prominence in symmetrical voice languages

Cited by 15 publications

References 17 publications

Word order preferences of Tagalog-speaking adults and children

Word order preferences of Tagalog-speaking adults and children

Verbal Semantics Drives Early Anticipatory Eye Movements during the Comprehension of Verb-Initial Sentences

Symmetrical and asymmetrical voice systems and processing load: Pupillometric evidence from sentence production in Tagalog and German

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