The Effects of Parallelism and Prosody in the Processing of Gapping Structures

Carlson, Katy

doi:10.1177/00238309010440010101

Cited by 95 publications

(115 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…The interrogative context may have introduced a set of alternatives, that could substitute for the interrogative wh-phrase (e.g., Hamblin, 1973), and the availability of this set may provide a natural contrast for the remnant. The preference may also result from prosodic parallelism between the contextually-focused constituent and the remnant element (e.g., Carlson, 2001;Carlson et al, 2009a on auditory processing). If readers computed an implicit prosodic focus structure during reading (Bader, 1998;Fodor, 1998Fodor, , 2002Stolterfoht et al 2007), the remnant and the focused constituent were both discourse-new (and thus accented) while the lexically-focused element was discoursegiven (and possibly deaccented).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous research has shown that sentence processing is disrupted when a remnant element supplies a contrast that is incongruous with the focused constituent (Carlson, 2001;Paterson et al, 2007; but see Carlson et al, 2009a). Therefore, if prior interrogative context influences the focus structure of the double object sentences, processing should be disrupted when the remnant is incongruous with the constituent that is contextually-focused (5b vs. 5a and 5d vs. 5c).…”

Section: D Focus On Direct Object (Do-context) Incongruous Remnantmentioning

confidence: 96%

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Processing contextual and lexical cues to focus: Evidence from eye movements in reading

Sauermann

Filik

Paterson

2013

Language and Cognitive Processes

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Three eye movement experiments investigated the interaction between contextual and lexical focus cues during reading. Context was used to focus on either the indirect or direct object of a double object construction, which was followed by a remnant continuation that formed either a congruous or incongruous contrast with the contextually-focused object. Experiment 1 demonstrated that remnants were more difficult to process when incongruous with the contextually-focused constituent, indicating that context was effective in specifying focus. Experiments 2 and 3 investigated the interaction between context and lexical focus arising from the particle only which specifies focus on the subsequent adjacent element. When only preceded both objects (Experiment 2), the conflict between lexical and contextual focus cues disrupted processing of the remnant element and was resolved in favor of the contextually-focused element. However, when only was placed between both objects (Experiment 3), cue-conflict disrupted processing earlier in the sentence, but did not appear to be fully resolved during on-line sentence processing. These findings reveal that the interplay between contextual and lexical cues to focus is important for establishing focus structure during on-line sentence processing.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: D Focus On Direct Object (Do-context) Incongruous Remnantmentioning

confidence: 96%

Processing contextual and lexical cues to focus: Evidence from eye movements in reading

Sauermann

Filik

Paterson

2013

Language and Cognitive Processes

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“…Frazier and Clifton (2001) originally intended copy-α to apply in a highly restricted range of contexts, particularly in cases where the scope of the left conjunct is unambiguously marked. An example are gapping structures, where parallelism effects are well documented (Carlson, 2002). However, it is clear that a mechanism like copy-α could potentially provide an account for parallelism phenomena if allowed to apply to coordination more generally.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A probabilistic corpus-based model of syntactic parallelism

Dubey

Keller²,

Sturt

2008

Cognition

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Work in experimental psycholinguistics has shown that the processing of coordinate structures is facilitated when the two conjuncts share the same syntactic structure (Frazier, Munn, & Clifton, 2000). In the present paper, we argue that this parallelism effect is a specific case of the more general phenomenon of syntactic priming-the tendency to repeat recently used syntactic structures. We show that there is a significant tendency for structural repetition in corpora, and that this tendency is not limited to syntactic environments involving coordination, though it is greater in these environments. We present two different implementations of a syntactic priming mechanism in a probabilistic parsing model and test their predictions against experimental data on NP parallelism in English. Based on these results, we argue that a general purpose priming mechanism is preferred over a special mechanism limited to coordination. Finally, we show how notions of activation and decay from ACT-R can be incorporated in the model, enabling it to account for a set of experimental data on sentential parallelism in German.

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“…Thus, pronouns tend to be interpreted as coreferential with an antecedent in the same grammatical role (e.g., "William hit Oliver and Rod slapped him" is interpreted as Rod slapping Oliver; Sheldon 1974;Smyth 1994). Likewise, the likelihood of a gapping interpretation of an ambiguous sentence is greater if the relevant arguments are parallel (e.g., "Bill took chips to the party and Susan to the game" is often given an interpretation where Susan took chips to the game; Carlson 2001). Finally, Gagné and Shoben (2002;cf.…”

Section: Alignment At One Level Leads To Alignment At Anothermentioning

confidence: 99%

Some notes on priming, alignment, and self-monitoring

Schiller

Ruiter

2004

Behav. Brain Sci.

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Traditional mechanistic accounts of language processing derive almost entirely from the study of monologue. Yet, the most natural and basic form of language use is dialogue. As a result, these accounts may only offer limited theories of the mechanisms that underlie language processing in general. We propose a mechanistic account of dialogue, the interactive alignment account, and use it to derive a number of predictions about basic language processes. The account assumes that, in dialogue, the linguistic representations employed by the interlocutors become aligned at many levels, as a result of a largely automatic process. This process greatly simplifies production and comprehension in dialogue. After considering the evidence for the interactive alignment model, we concentrate on three aspects of processing that follow from it. It makes use of a simple interactive inference mechanism, enables the development of local dialogue routines that greatly simplify language processing, and explains the origins of self-monitoring in production. We consider the need for a grammatical framework that is designed to deal with language in dialogue rather than monologue, and discuss a range of implications of the account.Keywords: common ground; dialogue; dialogue routines; language comprehension; language production; monitoring; perception-behavior link leagues (e.g., Brennan & Clark 1996;Wilkes-Gibbs & Clark 1992; also Brennan & Schober 2001;Horton & Keysar 1996). Well-controlled studies of language production in dialogue may require some ingenuity, but such experimental ingenuity has always been a strength of psychology.The theoretical reason why psycholinguistics has ignored dialogue is that psycholinguistics has derived most of its predictions from generative linguistics, and generative linguistics has developed theories of isolated, decontextualized sentences that are used in texts or speeches, that is, in monologue. In contrast, dialogue is inherently interactive and contextualized: Each interlocutor both speaks and comprehends during the course of the interaction; each interrupts both others and himself; on occasion two or more speakers collaborate in producing the same sentence (Coates 1990). So it is not surprising that generative linguists commonly view dialogue as being of marginal grammaticality, contaminated by theoretically uninteresting complexities. Dialogue sits ill with the competence/performance distinction assumed by most generative linguistics (Chomsky 1965), because it is hard to determine whether a particular utterance is "well-formed" or not (or even whether that notion is relevant to dialogue). Thus, linguistics has tended to concentrate on developing generative grammars and related theories for isolated sentences; and psycholinguistics has tended to develop processing theories that draw upon the rules and representations assumed by generative linguistics. So far as most psycholinguists have thought about dialogue, they have tended to assume that the results of experiments on monologue can be...

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The Effects of Parallelism and Prosody in the Processing of Gapping Structures

Cited by 95 publications

References 28 publications

Processing contextual and lexical cues to focus: Evidence from eye movements in reading

Processing contextual and lexical cues to focus: Evidence from eye movements in reading

A probabilistic corpus-based model of syntactic parallelism

Some notes on priming, alignment, and self-monitoring

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