Constraints on ontology changing complexation processes: Evidence from event-related brain potentials

Abstract

This paper investigates complex anaphoric reference (i.e., when an anaphor refers to a propositionally structured referent). Complex anaphors (e.g., this process, this event) differ in their ontological feature setup, and the ontological type assigned to a referent can change due to the lexical meaning of the complex anaphor. Previous research has proposed that such changes have to comply with an ontological 'abstractness constraint' restricting the direction of ontological change. We present an event-related potential study that provides evidence that violations of the abstractness constraint result in processing costs. The data reveal that violating this constraint by shifting the referent towards a less abstract ontological type elicits an enhanced N400, while reduction of ontological features towards a more abstract type exerts no extra processing demands. The data indicate that the abstractness constraint affects real-time sentence comprehension and that different ontological types are implicationally related.

Linguistic Representation and Processing of Copredication

“…In most approaches to abstract concepts in the semantics literature, there appears to be an agreement that increasing 'abstractness' is defined in terms of boundedness to features of the denoted situation, such as physical features or the degree of boundedness to space, time and agents (Asher 2000, Consten & Knees 2008, Maienborn 2003, Schumacher et al 2010. Propositions, for instance, are typically considered to be the most abstract structures since they are not strictly tied to one particular world or state of affairs (unlike facts).…”

“…In order to explore this topic with greater clarity, I will assume a particular abstractness scale from the literature, where '<' denotes 'less abstract than' (cf. Asher 1993, Gennari & Poeppel 2003, Maisenborn 2003, Schumacher et al 2010 and Poeppel (2003), since stative verbs denoting facts only contain INFORMATION, they should be seen as less semantically complex than eventive verbs denoting causally structured events, and that the latter type of lexical items lead to increased processing times for comprehenders (see also Brennan & Pylkkänen 2010 for evidence that lexicosemantic complexity inherent to a given word is processed independently from, and in distinct neuroanatomical loci, distinct forms of semantic complexity such as coercion). As such, one might use processing effort as an indication of semantic complexity, with informational sources being thereby less complex than eventive concepts.…”

“…If the introduction of a pronominal element into the discourse involves processes equal in cost to introducing a distinct nominal, then the acceptability dynamics between anaphoric copredication and non-copredication should not significantly differ. Processing studies have shown that the ontological type assigned to an entity impacts referential interpretation (e.g Burkhardt 2006, Schumacher et al 2010,. and given that anaphoric copredication also involves a shift in ontological type (e.g.…”

An Event-Related Brain Potential (ERP) Study of Complex Anaphora in Spanish

“…Similarly, other studies have shown that the late positivity is modulated by sentential position or topicality (Schumacher and Hung, 2012). Schumacher et al (2010) carried out an ERP study to explore how processing strategies changed as the complex anaphoric reference varied in degree of abstractness (ontological configuration). For this purpose, sentences as 9a (no change of abstractness between antecedent and anaphora), 9b (increasing abstractness from antecedent to anaphora) and 9c (decreasing abstractness from antecedent to anaphora; a violation of the abstractness constraint) were compared.…”

“…The P200 has previously been shown to be sensitive to physical features (e.g., Luck and Hillyard, 1994 ; Barber et al, 2004 ; Dambacher et al, 2006 ; Evans and Federmeier, 2007 ), as well as other factors beyond perceptual processing, such as if the action of the verb is being completed or not (i.e., telicity see: Malaia et al, 2009 ). In Schumacher et al (2010) , a P200 was reported even after controlling for word length and word frequency. Schumacher and colleagues propose that the P200 was associated with a higher degree of abstractness.…”