@article{HavasRodriguezFornellsClahsen2012, author = {Havas, Viktoria and Rodriguez-Fornells, Antoni and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Brain potentials for derivational morphology an ERP study of deadjectival nominalizations in Spanish}, series = {Brain \& language : a journal of the neurobiology of language}, volume = {120}, journal = {Brain \& language : a journal of the neurobiology of language}, number = {3}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {San Diego}, issn = {0093-934X}, doi = {10.1016/j.bandl.2011.10.008}, pages = {332 -- 344}, year = {2012}, abstract = {This study investigates brain potentials to derived word forms in Spanish. Two experiments were performed on derived nominals that differ in terms of their productivity and semantic properties but are otherwise similar, an acceptability judgment task and a reading experiment using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in which correctly and incorrectly formed derived words were presented in sentence contexts. The first experiment indicated productivity differences between the different nominalization processes in Spanish. The second experiment yielded a pattern of ERP responses that differed from both the familiar lexical-semantic and grammatical ERP effects. Violations of derivational morphology elicited an increased N400 component plus a late positivity (P600), unlike gender-agreement violations, which produced the biphasic LAN/P600 ERP pattern known from previous studies of morpho-syntactic violations. We conclude that the recognition of derived word forms engages both word-level (lexical-semantic) and decompositional (morpheme-based) processes.}, language = {en} } @article{LagoShalomSigmanetal.2015, author = {Lago, Sol and Shalom, Diego E. and Sigman, Mariano and Lau, Ellen F. and Phillips, Colin}, title = {Agreement attraction in Spanish comprehension}, series = {Journal of memory and language}, volume = {82}, journal = {Journal of memory and language}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {San Diego}, issn = {0749-596X}, doi = {10.1016/j.jml.2015.02.002}, pages = {133 -- 149}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Previous studies have found that English speakers experience attraction effects when comprehending subject-verb agreement, showing eased processing of ungrammatical sentences that contain a syntactically unlicensed but number-matching noun. In four self-paced reading experiments we examine whether attraction effects also occur in Spanish, a language where agreement morphology is richer and functionally more significant. We find that despite having a richer morphology, Spanish speakers show reliable attraction effects in comprehension, and that these effects are strikingly similar to those previously found in English in their magnitude and distributional profile. Further, we use distributional analyses to argue that cue-based memory retrieval is used as an error-driven mechanism in comprehension. We suggest that cross-linguistic similarities in agreement attraction result from speakers deploying repair or error-driven mechanisms uniformly across languages. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.}, language = {en} } @article{MartinezFerreiroReyesBastiaanse2017, author = {Martinez-Ferreiro, Silvia and Reyes, Andres Felipe and Bastiaanse, Roelien}, title = {Overcoming discourse-linking difficulties in aphasia}, series = {Clinical linguistics \& phonetics}, volume = {31}, journal = {Clinical linguistics \& phonetics}, number = {6}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {Philadelphia}, issn = {0269-9206}, doi = {10.1080/02699206.2017.1308015}, pages = {459 -- 477}, year = {2017}, abstract = {The present study aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the impact of discourse-linking deficits on the performance of individuals with aphasia by providing new data from a set of rarely investigated constructions: sentences in which a clitic pronoun coexists alongside with the full DP it agrees with. To do so, we use data of individuals with non-fluent aphasias who need to overcome the difficulties in direct object (accusative) clitic production. This results in overproduction of non-target clitic right dislocations (RDs) and clitic doubling (CD). Data from 15 individual's native speakers of Spanish and Catalan are discussed. Data complement the results of previous investigations on discourse-linking effects in these languages, allowing the interpretation of results across constructions.}, language = {en} } @article{NicenboimVasishthGatteietal.2015, author = {Nicenboim, Bruno and Vasishth, Shravan and Gattei, Carolina and Sigman, Mariano and Kliegl, Reinhold}, title = {Working memory differences in long-distance dependency resolution}, series = {Frontiers in psychology}, volume = {6}, journal = {Frontiers in psychology}, publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00312}, pages = {16}, year = {2015}, abstract = {There is a wealth of evidence showing that increasing the distance between an argument and its head leads to more processing effort, namely, locality effects: these are usually associated with constraints in working memory (DLT: Gibson, 2000: activation-based model: Lewis and Vasishth, 2005). In SOV languages, however, the opposite effect has been found: antilocality (see discussion in Levy et al., 2013). Antilocality effects can be explained by the expectation based approach as proposed by Levy (2008) or by the activation-based model of sentence processing as proposed by Lewis and Vasishth (2005). We report an eye-tracking and a self-paced reading study with sentences in Spanish together with measures of individual differences to examine the distinction between expectation- and memory based accounts, and within memory-based accounts the further distinction between DLT and the activation-based model. The experiments show that (i) antilocality effects as predicted by the expectation account appear only for high-capacity readers; (ii) increasing dependency length by interposing material that modifies the head of the dependency (the verb) produces stronger facilitation than increasing dependency length with material that does not modify the head; this is in agreement with the activation-based model but not with the expectation account; and (iii) a possible outcome of memory load on low-capacity readers is the increase in regressive saccades (locality effects as predicted by memory-based accounts) or, surprisingly, a speedup in the self-paced reading task; the latter consistent with good-enough parsing (Ferreira et al., 2002). In sum, the study suggests that individual differences in working memory capacity play a role in dependency resolution, and that some of the aspects of dependency resolution can be best explained with the activation-based model together with a prediction component.}, language = {en} } @article{NicenboimVasishthGatteietal.2015, author = {Nicenboim, Bruno and Vasishth, Shravan and Gattei, Carolina and Sigman, Mariano and Kliegl, Reinhold}, title = {Working memory differences in long-distance dependency resolution}, series = {Frontiers in psychology}, volume = {6}, journal = {Frontiers in psychology}, number = {312}, publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00312}, pages = {16}, year = {2015}, abstract = {There is a wealth of evidence showing that increasing the distance between an argument and its head leads to more processing effort, namely, locality effects; these are usually associated with constraints in working memory (DLT: Gibson, 2000; activation-based model: Lewis and Vasishth, 2005). In SOV languages, however, the opposite effect has been found: antilocality (see discussion in Levy et al., 2013). Antilocality effects can be explained by the expectation-based approach as proposed by Levy (2008) or by the activation-based model of sentence processing as proposed by Lewis and Vasishth (2005). We report an eye-tracking and a self-paced reading study with sentences in Spanish together with measures of individual differences to examine the distinction between expectation- and memory-based accounts, and within memory-based accounts the further distinction between DLT and the activation-based model. The experiments show that (i) antilocality effects as predicted by the expectation account appear only for high-capacity readers; (ii) increasing dependency length by interposing material that modifies the head of the dependency (the verb) produces stronger facilitation than increasing dependency length with material that does not modify the head; this is in agreement with the activation-based model but not with the expectation account; and (iii) a possible outcome of memory load on low-capacity readers is the increase in regressive saccades (locality effects as predicted by memory-based accounts) or, surprisingly, a speedup in the self-paced reading task; the latter consistent with good-enough parsing (Ferreira et al., 2002). In sum, the study suggests that individual differences in working memory capacity play a role in dependency resolution, and that some of the aspects of dependency resolution can be best explained with the activation-based model together with a prediction component.}, language = {en} } @misc{NicenboimVasishthGatteietal.2015, author = {Nicenboim, Bruno and Vasishth, Shravan and Gattei, Carolina and Sigman, Mariano and Kliegl, Reinhold}, title = {Working memory differences in long-distance dependency resolution}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-75694}, pages = {16}, year = {2015}, abstract = {There is a wealth of evidence showing that increasing the distance between an argument and its head leads to more processing effort, namely, locality effects; these are usually associated with constraints in working memory (DLT: Gibson, 2000; activation-based model: Lewis and Vasishth, 2005). In SOV languages, however, the opposite effect has been found: antilocality (see discussion in Levy et al., 2013). Antilocality effects can be explained by the expectation-based approach as proposed by Levy (2008) or by the activation-based model of sentence processing as proposed by Lewis and Vasishth (2005). We report an eye-tracking and a self-paced reading study with sentences in Spanish together with measures of individual differences to examine the distinction between expectation- and memory-based accounts, and within memory-based accounts the further distinction between DLT and the activation-based model. The experiments show that (i) antilocality effects as predicted by the expectation account appear only for high-capacity readers; (ii) increasing dependency length by interposing material that modifies the head of the dependency (the verb) produces stronger facilitation than increasing dependency length with material that does not modify the head; this is in agreement with the activation-based model but not with the expectation account; and (iii) a possible outcome of memory load on low-capacity readers is the increase in regressive saccades (locality effects as predicted by memory-based accounts) or, surprisingly, a speedup in the self-paced reading task; the latter consistent with good-enough parsing (Ferreira et al., 2002). In sum, the study suggests that individual differences in working memory capacity play a role in dependency resolution, and that some of the aspects of dependency resolution can be best explained with the activation-based model together with a prediction component.}, language = {en} } @article{PanedaLagoVaresetal.2020, author = {Pa{\~n}eda, Claudia and Lago, Sol and Vares, Elena and Ver{\´i}ssimo, Jo{\~a}o Marques and Felser, Claudia}, title = {Island effects in Spanish comprehension}, series = {Glossa : a journal of general linguistics}, volume = {5}, journal = {Glossa : a journal of general linguistics}, number = {1}, publisher = {Open Library of Humanities}, address = {London}, issn = {2397-1835}, doi = {10.5334/gjgl.1058}, pages = {30}, year = {2020}, abstract = {A growing body of experimental syntactic research has revealed substantial variation in the magnitude of island effects, not only across languages but also across different grammatical constructions. Adopting a well-established experimental design, the present study examines island effects in Spanish using a speeded acceptability judgment task. To quantify variation across grammatical constructions, we tested extraction from four different types of structure (subjects, complex noun phrases, adjuncts and interrogative clauses). The results of Bayesian mixed effects modelling showed that the size of island effects varied between constructions, such that there was clear evidence of subject, adjunct and interrogative island effects, but not of complex noun phrase island effects. We also failed to find evidence that island effects were modulated by participants' working memory capacity as measured by an operation span task. To account for our results, we suggest that variability in island effects across constructions may be due to the interaction of syntactic, semantic-pragmatic and processing factors, which may affect island types differentially due to their idiosyncratic properties.}, language = {en} }