2002 — 2003 |
Bever, Thomas |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Doctoral Dissertation Research: Telicity and Event Structure in Language Comprehension
Doctoral dissertation research: Telicity and event structure in language comprehension ABSTRACT
With NSF support, Ms. Erin O'Bryan will conduct research under the supervision of Professor Tom Bever for a doctoral dissertation in linguistics. Recent research in the area of lexical semantics has shown that the semantic feature telicity (whether or not an event has a specified endpoint in time) is related to argument structure (the arguments that a verb requires or allows) (van Hout 2000, Jackendoff 1996, Sanz 1996). Recent research in the area of sentence processing has investigated differences in the degree of difficulty in understanding garden path sentences (sentences that are structurally misinterpreted and require reanalysis), such as The horse raced past the barn fell. Bever and Sanz have predicted that reduced relative clause garden path sentences with atelic verbs (verbs without a specified endpoint in time, such as race) should be more difficult than those with telic verbs (verb with a specified endpoint, such as arrive or melt). This prediction follows from the fact that intrinsically telic verbs require a verb phrase-internal object, and hence will facilitate the correct analysis of reduced relative sentences. Gibson (1991) and Pritchett (1992) have predicted that reduced relative clause sentences with transitive verbs that can optionally occur intransitively (without a direct object) should be more difficult than those with obligatorily transitive verbs. This prediction follows from the fact that transitive verbs require an overt direct object, and hence will also facilitate the correct analysis of reduced relative sentences. The thrust of the proposed research is to determine which of these explanations is correct, or if they both are.
The predictions made by Bever and Sanz (in preparation), Gibson (1991), and Pritchett (1992) are based on linguistic and psycholinguistic theory, linguistic judgements of acceptability, and computational models. The proposed research will test these predictions with an online sentence comprehension experiment using the speaker change onitoring task (Townsend & Bever 1991). This task has been shown to reflect local processing complexity and has the important virtue of being usable with experimental groups, so that large numbers of participants can be included.
In the proposed experiment, participants will listen to reduced relative clause sentences like those in (a) through (d). The experiment will test whether telicity and subcategorization affect the extent of garden pathing and whether either of these factors has a more immediate effect than the other. The first hypothesis is that reduced relatives with atelic verbs, such as (a) and (b), will result in more processing difficulty than reduced relatives with telic verbs, such as (c) and (d). The second hypothesis is that reduced relatives with potentially intransitive verbs, such as (a) and (c), will result in more processing difficulty than those with obligatorily transitive verbs, such as (b) and (d).
a. The firefighter led by the marshal waved to the crowd. b. The firefighter escorted by the marshal waved to the crowd. c. The firefighter saluted by the marshal waved to the crowd. d. The firefighter sent by the marshal waved to the crowd.
Processing difficulty will be measured as missed detections of speaker-change syllables in the by-phrase, e.g. on marshal, and on the main clause verb, e.g. waved. The speaker-change is a syllable spoken by a different speaker than the rest of the sentence that participants are asked to monitor for. The two speaker-change locations allow the investigation of the question of whether one of the factors has a more immediate effect on comprehension. The expectation is that either telicity or subcategorization will have a relatively larger effect on the early probe position. If telicity has a more immediate effect, it suggests that a verb's lexical semantics, which syntacticians consider to be structural though it also carries meaning, has an earlier and perhaps privileged role in comprehension. If subcategorization has a more immediate effect, it suggests that distributional properties of the verb have an earlier and perhaps more privileged role.
The research will clarify the role of semantic variables in comprehension that have not been controlled for in prior research. It will also increase our understanding of the online use of semantic and distributional verb properties. Additionally, the research will reveal information about the true nature of thematic roles, their relationship with subcategorization frames, and their relationship with event structure.
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