TY - JOUR A1 - Felser, Claudia A1 - Cunnings, Ian A1 - Batterham, Claire A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - The timing of Island effects in nonnative sentence processing JF - Studies in second language acquisition N2 - Using the eye-movement monitoring technique in two reading comprehension experiments, this study investigated the timing of constraints on wh-dependencies (so-called island constraints) in first- and second-language (L1 and L2) sentence processing. The results show that both L1 and L2 speakers of English are sensitive to extraction islands during processing, suggesting that memory storage limitations affect L1 and L2 comprehenders in essentially the same way. Furthermore, these results show that the timing of island effects in L1 compared to L2 sentence comprehension is affected differently by the type of cue (semantic fit versus filled gaps) signaling whether dependency formation is possible at a potential gap site. Even though L1 English speakers showed immediate sensitivity to filled gaps but not to lack of semantic fit, proficient German-speaking learners of English as a L2 showed the opposite sensitivity pattern. This indicates that initial wh-dependency formation in L2 processing is based on semantic feature matching rather than being structurally mediated as in L1 comprehension. KW - trace positions KW - empty categories KW - garden-paths KW - 2nd-language KW - grammar KW - dependencies KW - plausibility KW - constraints KW - english KW - comprehension Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263111000507 SN - 0272-2631 VL - 34 IS - 1 SP - 67 EP - 98 PB - Cambridge University Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - GEN A1 - Felser, Claudia A1 - Cunnings, Ian A1 - Batterham, Claire A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - The timing of island effects in nonnative sentence processing T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Using the eye-movement monitoring technique in two reading comprehension experiments, this study investigated the timing of constraints on wh-dependencies (so-called island constraints) in first- and second-language (L1 and L2) sentence processing. The results show that both L1 and L2 speakers of English are sensitive to extraction islands during processing, suggesting that memory storage limitations affect L1 and L2 comprehenders in essentially the same way. Furthermore, these results show that the timing of island effects in L1 compared to L2 sentence comprehension is affected differently by the type of cue (semantic fit versus filled gaps) signaling whether dependency formation is possible at a potential gap site. Even though L1 English speakers showed immediate sensitivity to filled gaps but not to lack of semantic fit, proficient German-speaking learners of English as a L2 showed the opposite sensitivity pattern. This indicates that initial wh-dependency formation in L2 processing is based on semantic feature matching rather than being structurally mediated as in L1 comprehension. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 526 KW - trace positions KW - empty categories KW - garden-paths KW - 2nd-language KW - grammar KW - dependencies KW - plausibility KW - constraints KW - english KW - comprehension Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-415179 SN - 1866-8364 EP - 526 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lago, Sol A1 - Garcia, Anna Stutter A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - The role of native and non-native grammars in the comprehension of possessive pronouns JF - Second language research N2 - Previous studies have shown that multilingual speakers are influenced by their native (L1) and non-native (L2) grammars when learning a new language. But, so far, these studies have mostly used untimed metalinguistic tasks. Here we examine whether multilinguals’ prior grammars also affect their sensitivity to morphosyntactic constraints during processing. We use speeded judgment and self-paced reading tasks to examine the comprehension of German possessive pronouns. To investigate whether native and non-native grammars differentially affect participants’ performance, we compare two groups of non-native German speakers with inverse L1–L2 distributions: a group with L1 Spanish – L2 English, and a group with L1 English – L2 Spanish. We show that the reading profiles of both groups are modulated by their L1 grammar, with L2 proficiency selectively affecting participants’ judgment accuracy but not their reading times. We propose that reading comprehension is mainly influenced by multilinguals’ native grammar, but that knowledge of an L2 grammar can further increase sensitivity to morphosyntactic violations in an additional language. KW - comprehension KW - English KW - gender agreement KW - German KW - multilingualism KW - Spanish Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658318770491 SN - 0267-6583 SN - 1477-0326 VL - 35 IS - 3 SP - 319 EP - 349 PB - Sage Publ. CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stone, Kate A1 - von der Malsburg, Titus Raban A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - The effect of decay and lexical uncertainty on processing long-distance dependencies in reading JF - PeerJ N2 - To make sense of a sentence, a reader must keep track of dependent relationships between words, such as between a verb and its particle (e.g. turn the music down). In languages such as German, verb-particle dependencies often span long distances, with the particle only appearing at the end of the clause. This means that it may be necessary to process a large amount of intervening sentence material before the full verb of the sentence is known. To facilitate processing, previous studies have shown that readers can preactivate the lexical information of neighbouring upcoming words, but less is known about whether such preactivation can be sustained over longer distances. We asked the question, do readers preactivate lexical information about long-distance verb particles? In one self-paced reading and one eye tracking experiment, we delayed the appearance of an obligatory verb particle that varied only in the predictability of its lexical identity. We additionally manipulated the length of the delay in order to test two contrasting accounts of dependency processing: that increased distance between dependent elements may sharpen expectation of the distant word and facilitate its processing (an antilocality effect), or that it may slow processing via temporal activation decay (a locality effect). We isolated decay by delaying the particle with a neutral noun modifier containing no information about the identity of the upcoming particle, and no known sources of interference or working memory load. Under the assumption that readers would preactivate the lexical representations of plausible verb particles, we hypothesised that a smaller number of plausible particles would lead to stronger preactivation of each particle, and thus higher predictability of the target. This in turn should have made predictable target particles more resistant to the effects of decay than less predictable target particles. The eye tracking experiment provided evidence that higher predictability did facilitate reading times, but found evidence against any effect of decay or its interaction with predictability. The self-paced reading study provided evidence against any effect of predictability or temporal decay, or their interaction. In sum, we provide evidence from eye movements that readers preactivate long-distance lexical content and that adding neutral sentence information does not induce detectable decay of this activation. The findings are consistent with accounts suggesting that delaying dependency resolution may only affect processing if the intervening information either confirms expectations or adds to working memory load, and that temporal activation decay alone may not be a major predictor of processing time. KW - reading KW - comprehension KW - temporal decay KW - preactivation KW - long distance KW - dependencies KW - entropy KW - psycholinguistics KW - locality KW - antilocality Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10438 SN - 2167-8359 VL - 8 PB - PeerJ Inc. CY - London ER - TY - THES A1 - Jovanovic, Nenad T1 - The comprehension of the passive voice by different populations and the effects of structural priming on this process N2 - This thesis investigates the comprehension of the passive voice in three distinct populations. First, the comprehension of passives by adult German speakers was studied, followed by an examination of how German-speaking children comprehend the structure. Finally, bilingual Mandarin-English speakers were tested on their comprehension of the passive voice in English, which is their L2. An integral part of testing the comprehension in all three populations is the use of structural priming. In each of the three distinct parts of the research, structural priming was used for a specific reason. In the study involving adult German speakers, productive and receptive structural priming was directly compared. The goal was to see the effect the two priming modalities have on language comprehension. In the study on German-acquiring children, structural priming was an important tool in answering the question regarding the delayed acquisition of the passive voice. Finally, in the study on the bilingual population, cross-linguistic priming was used to investigate the importance of word order in the priming effect, since Mandarin and English have different word orders in passive voice sentences. N2 - Diese Doktorarbeit untersucht das Verständnis von Passivsätzen in drei spezifischen Populationen. Zunächst wurde das Passivverständnis von erwachsenen deutschen Muttersprachlern erforscht, gefolgt von einer Untersuchung des Verständnisses von Passivsätzen deutschsprachiger Kinder. Schließlich wurden bilinguale Mandarin-Sprecher hinsichtlich ihres Verständnisses von Passivsätzen in der englischen Sprache, welche ihre Zweitsprache darstellt, getestet. Ein wesentlicher Bestandteil der Untersuchung des Sprachverständnisses in allen drei Populationen ist der Gebrauch des Structural Priming. In jedem der drei verschiedenen Teile der Untersuchung gab es spezifische Gründe, die Methode des Structural Priming anzuwenden. So wurden in der Studie mit deutschen erwachsenen Muttersprachlern Productive und Receptive Structural Priming unmittelbar mit einander verglichen. Das Ziel war es, die Wirkung von zwei verschiedenen Priming-Modalitäten auf das Sprachverständnis herauszufinden. In der Studie mit deutschsprachigen Kindern war Structural Priming ein wichtiges Hilfsmittel, um die Frage nach dem verzögerten Erwerb des Passivverständnisses zu beantworten. In der Studie der bilingualen Population schließlich wurde Cross-Linguistik (sprachübergreifendes) Priming genutzt um die Bedeutung des Satzbaus auf den Priming-Effekt zu untersuchen, da Mandarin und Englisch in Passivsätzen einen unterschiedlichen Satzbau verwenden. T2 - Das Verständnis von Passivkonstruktionen in verschiedenen Populationen unter Einfluss von strukturellem Priming KW - priming KW - eye-tracing KW - syntax KW - comprehension KW - cross-linguistic KW - passive voice KW - acquisition KW - children KW - bilingual KW - Erwerb KW - cross-linguistisch KW - Augenblickmessung KW - Passive KW - Priming KW - Syntax KW - Verständnis KW - Kinder KW - bilingual Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-475900 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Laurinavichyute, Anna A1 - Jager, Lena Ann A1 - Akinina, Yulia A1 - Roß, Jennifer A1 - Dragoy, Olga V. T1 - Retrieval and Encoding Interference: Cross-Linguistic Evidence from Anaphor Processing JF - Frontiers in psychology KW - encoding interference KW - retrieval interference KW - German KW - Russian KW - comprehension KW - reflexive processing KW - anaphor Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00965 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 8 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - GEN A1 - Berger, Frauke A1 - Höhle, Barbara T1 - Restrictions on addition BT - children’s interpretation of the focus particles auch ‘ also ’ and nur ‘ only ’ in German T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Children up to school age have been reported to perform poorly when interpreting sentences containing restrictive and additive focus particles by treating sentences with a focus particle in the same way as sentences without it. Careful comparisons between results of previous studies indicate that this phenomenon is less pronounced for restrictive than for additive particles. We argue that this asymmetry is an effect of the presuppositional status of the proposition triggered by the additive particle. We tested this in two experiments with German-learning three-and four-year-olds using a method that made the exploitation of the information provided by the particles highly relevant for completing the task. Three-year-olds already performed remarkably well with sentences both with auch 'also' and with nur 'only'. Thus, children can consider the presuppositional contribution of the additive particle in their sentence interpretation and can exploit the restrictive particle as a marker of exhaustivity. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 509 KW - presupposition KW - comprehension KW - implicature KW - acquisition KW - semantics KW - asymmetry KW - tolerance KW - mandarin Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-414911 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 509 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Or-Bach, Rachel T1 - Programming for Non-Programmers BT - Fostering Comprehension Capabilities by Employing a PRS JF - KEYCIT 2014 - Key Competencies in Informatics and ICT N2 - The study reported in this paper involved the employment of specific in-class exercises using a Personal Response System (PRS). These exercises were designed with two goals: to enhance students’ capabilities of tracing a given code and of explaining a given code in natural language with some abstraction. The paper presents evidence from the actual use of the PRS along with students’ subjective impressions regarding both the use of the PRS and the special exercises. The conclusions from the findings are followed with a short discussion on benefits of PRS-based mental processing exercises for learning programming and beyond. KW - Novice programmers KW - comprehension KW - tracing KW - personal response systems Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-82875 SN - 1868-0844 SN - 2191-1940 IS - 7 SP - 335 EP - 342 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - THES A1 - Huttenlauch, Clara T1 - Individual variability in production and comprehension of prosodically disambiguated structural ambiguities T1 - Individuelle Variabilität in Produktion und Verständnis prosodisch disambiguierter struktureller Ambiguitäten N2 - Strings of words can correspond to more than one interpretation or underlying structure, which makes them ambiguous. Prosody can be used to resolve this structural ambiguity. This dissertation investigates the use of prosodic cues in the domains of fundamental frequency (f0) and duration to disambiguate between two interpretations of ambiguous structures when speakers addressed different interlocutors. The dissertation comprises of three production studies and one comprehension study. Prosodic disambiguation was studied with a focus on German name sequences of three names (coordinates) in two conditions: without (Name1 and Name2 and Name3) and with internal grouping of the first two names ([Name1 and Name2] and Name3). The study of coordinates was complemented with production data of locally ambiguous sentences with a case-ambiguous first noun phrase. Variability was studied in a controlled setting: Productions were elicited with a within-subject manipulation of context in a referential communication task in order to evoke prosodic adaptations to different conversational contexts. Context had five levels and involved interlocutors in three age groups (child, young adult, elderly adult) with German as L1 in the absence of background white noise, the young adult with background white noise, and a young adult without German as L1. Variability was explored at different levels: within a group of young individuals (intra-group level), within and between young individuals (intra-individual level and inter-individual level, respectively), and comparing between the group of young and a group of older speakers (inter-group level). Our data replicate the use of the three prosodic cues (f0-movement, final lengthening, and pause) in productions of young adult speakers and extend their use to productions of older adult speakers. Both age groups distinguished consistently between the two coordinate conditions. Prosodic grouping in production was evident not only on the group-final Name2 but also at earlier stages in the utterance, on the group-internal Name1 (early cues). For some speakers, some listeners were able to decode these early cues effectively as they were able to reliably predict the upcoming structure after listening to Name1 only. Thus, prosodic grouping appears as a globally marked phenomenon building up along the utterance. The internal structure of coordinates was disambiguated irrespective of the conversational context. In our data, speakers only slightly modified the prosodic cues marking the disambiguation in the different contexts. Listeners were unable to identify to which interlocutor the sequence had been produced. We interpret this intra-individual consistency in the production of disambiguating prosodic cues as support for a strong link between prosody and syntax. The findings support models in favour of situational independence of disambiguating prosody. All speakers reliably marked the distinction between the grouping conditions with at least one of the three prosodic cues investigated and most of the speakers used at least two of these cues. Further, individual differences in prosodic grouping did not lead to difficulties in recovering the grouping in comprehension. Taken together, these findings support the existence of a phonological category of prosodic grouping. N2 - Wortfolgen können mehr als einer Interpretation oder einer zugrunde liegenden Struktur entsprechen, was sie mehrdeutig macht. Prosodie kann verwendet werden, um diese strukturelle Mehrdeutigkeit aufzulösen. Diese Dissertation untersucht die Verwendung prosodischer Hinweise in den Bereichen Grundfrequenz (f0) und Dauer zur Unterscheidung zwischen zwei Interpretationen mehrdeutiger Strukturen durch Sprecher:innen, die verschiedene Gesprächspartnerinnen ansprechen. Die Dissertation besteht aus drei Produktionsstudien und einer Verständnisstudie. Prosodische Disambiguierung wurde mit dem Fokus auf deutsche Namenssequenzen aus drei Namen (coordinates – koordinierte Strukturen) in zwei Bedingungen untersucht: ohne (Name1 und Name2 und Name3) und mit interner Gruppierung der ersten beiden Namen ([Name1 und Name2] und Name3). Die Untersuchung der koordinierten Strukturen wurde durch Produktionsdaten mit lokal mehrdeutigen Sätzen mit einer kasus-ambigen ersten Nominalphrase ergänzt. Variabilität wurde in einer kontrollierten Umgebung untersucht: In einer referentiellen Kommunikationsaufgabe wurden Produktionen mit einer Kontextmanipulation innerhalb der Versuchspersonen erhoben, um prosodische Anpassungen an unterschiedliche Gesprächskontexte hervorzurufen. Kontext hatte fünf Ebenen und umfasste Gesprächspartnerinnen in drei Altersgruppen (Kind, junge Erwachsene, ältere Erwachsene) mit Deutsch als L1 in Abwesenheit von weißem Hintergrundrauschen, die junge Erwachsene mit weißem Hintergrundrauschen und eine junge Erwachsene ohne Deutsch als L1. Variabilität wurde auf verschiedenen Ebenen untersucht: innerhalb einer Gruppe junger Personen (intra-Gruppen-Ebene), innerhalb und zwischen jungen Personen (intra-individuelle Ebene bzw. inter-individuelle Ebene) und im Vergleich zwischen der Gruppe junger und einer Gruppe älterer Sprecher:innen (inter-Gruppen-Ebene). Unsere Daten replizieren die Verwendung der drei prosodischen Hinweise (f0-Bewegung, finale Längung und Pause) in Produktionen junger Erwachsener und dehnen ihre Verwendung auf Produktionen älterer Erwachsener aus. Beide Altersgruppen unterschieden konsistent zwischen den beiden Bedingungen der koordinierten Strukturen. Prosodische Gruppierung in der Produktion zeigte sich nicht nur beim gruppenfinalen Name2, sondern auch an früheren Stellen der Äußerung, beim gruppeninternen Name1 (frühe Hinweise). Für die Produktionen einiger Sprecher:innen waren einige Hörer:innen in der Lage, diese frühen Hinweise effektiv zu dekodieren, sie konnten die kommende Struktur zuverlässig vorherzusagen, nachdem sie nur Name1 gehört hatten. Die prosodische Gruppierung erscheint also als ein global ausgeprägtes Phänomen, das sich während der Äußerung aufbaut. Die interne Struktur der koordinierten Strukturen wurde unabhängig vom Gesprächskontext disambiguiert. In unseren Daten veränderten die Sprecher:innen die prosodischen Hinweise zur Disambiguierung in den verschiedenen Kontexten nur geringfügig. Unabhängige Hörer:innen waren nicht in der Lage zu erkennen, zu welcher Gesprächspartnerin die Sequenz produziert worden war. Wir interpretieren diese intra-individuelle Konsistenz in der Produktion von disambiguierenden prosodischen Hinweisen als Unterstützung für eine starke Verbindung zwischen Prosodie und Syntax. Die Ergebnisse unterstützen Modelle, die eine situative/kontextuelle Unabhängigkeit der disambiguierenden Prosodie befürworten. Alle Sprecher:innen markierten die Unterscheidung zwischen den Gruppierungsbedingungen zuverlässig mit mindestens einem der drei untersuchten prosodischen Hinweise, und die meisten Sprecher:innen verwendeten mindestens zwei dieser Hinweise. Außerdem führten individuelle Unterschiede in der prosodischen Gruppierung nicht zu Schwierigkeiten bei der Erkennung der Gruppierung beim Verstehen. Zusammengenommen unterstützen diese Ergebnisse die Existenz einer phonologischen Kategorie prosodischer Gruppierung. KW - prosodic disambiguation KW - prosodische Disambiguierung KW - prosodic cues KW - prosodische Hinweise KW - speech production KW - Sprachproduktion KW - comprehension KW - Sprachverständnis KW - coordinate name structures KW - koordinierte Namensstrukturen KW - locally ambiguous sentences KW - lokal ambige Sätze KW - individual variability KW - individuelle Variabilität KW - age effects KW - Alterseffekte KW - varying interlocutors KW - verschiedene Gesprächspartner:innen KW - structural ambiguities KW - strukturelle Ambiguitäten KW - F0 KW - F0 KW - final lengthening KW - finale Längung KW - duration KW - Dauer KW - gating paradigm KW - Gating Paradigma KW - pause KW - Pause KW - german KW - Deutsch Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-619262 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mattis, Toni A1 - Beckmann, Tom A1 - Rein, Patrick A1 - Hirschfeld, Robert T1 - First-class concepts BT - Reified architectural knowledge beyond dominant decompositions JF - Journal of object technology : JOT / ETH Zürich, Department of Computer Science N2 - Ideally, programs are partitioned into independently maintainable and understandable modules. As a system grows, its architecture gradually loses the capability to accommodate new concepts in a modular way. While refactoring is expensive and not always possible, and the programming language might lack dedicated primary language constructs to express certain cross-cutting concerns, programmers are still able to explain and delineate convoluted concepts through secondary means: code comments, use of whitespace and arrangement of code, documentation, or communicating tacit knowledge.
Secondary constructs are easy to change and provide high flexibility in communicating cross-cutting concerns and other concepts among programmers. However, such secondary constructs usually have no reified representation that can be explored and manipulated as first-class entities through the programming environment.
In this exploratory work, we discuss novel ways to express a wide range of concepts, including cross-cutting concerns, patterns, and lifecycle artifacts independently of the dominant decomposition imposed by an existing architecture. We propose the representation of concepts as first-class objects inside the programming environment that retain the capability to change as easily as code comments. We explore new tools that allow programmers to view, navigate, and change programs based on conceptual perspectives. In a small case study, we demonstrate how such views can be created and how the programming experience changes from draining programmers' attention by stretching it across multiple modules toward focusing it on cohesively presented concepts. Our designs are geared toward facilitating multiple secondary perspectives on a system to co-exist in symbiosis with the original architecture, hence making it easier to explore, understand, and explain complex contexts and narratives that are hard or impossible to express using primary modularity constructs. KW - software engineering KW - modularity KW - exploratory programming KW - program KW - comprehension KW - remodularization KW - architecture recovery Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5381/jot.2022.21.2.a6 SN - 1660-1769 VL - 21 IS - 2 SP - 1 EP - 15 PB - ETH Zürich, Department of Computer Science CY - Zürich ER -