TY - JOUR A1 - Heyer, Vera A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Late bilinguals see a scan in scanner AND in scandal: dissecting formal overlap from morphological priming in the processing of derived words JF - Bilingualism : language and cognition. N2 - Masked priming research with late (non-native) bilinguals has reported facilitation effects following morphologically derived prime words (scanner - scan). However, unlike for native speakers, there are suggestions that purely orthographic prime-target overlap (scandal - scan) also produces priming in non-native visual word recognition. Our study directly compares orthographically related and derived prime-target pairs. While native readers showed morphological but not formal overlap priming, the two prime types yielded the same magnitudes of facilitation for non-natives. We argue that early word recognition processes in a non-native language are more influenced by surface-form properties than in one's native language. KW - Masked priming KW - late bilinguals KW - derivation KW - orthographic overlap Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728914000662 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 18 IS - 3 SP - 543 EP - 550 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Spalek, Katharina A1 - Gotzner, Nicole A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - Not only the apples BT - Focus sensitive particles improve memory for information-structural alternatives JF - Journal of memory and language : JML N2 - Focus sensitive particles highlight the relevance of contextual alternatives for the interpretation of a sentence. Two experiments tested whether this leads to better encoding and therefore, ultimately, better recall of focus alternatives. Participants were presented with auditory stimuli that introduced a set of elements ("context sentence") and continued in three different versions: the critical sentences either contained the exclusive particle nur ("only"), the inclusive particle sogar ("even"), or no particle (control condition). After being exposed to blocks of ten trials, participants were asked to recall the elements in the context sentence. The results show that both particles enhanced memory performance for the alternatives to the focused element, relative to the control condition. The results support the assumption that information-structural alternatives are better encoded in memory in the presence of a focus sensitive particle. KW - Information structure KW - Focus particles KW - Alternative set KW - Delayed recall KW - Memory Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2013.09.001 SN - 0749-596X SN - 1096-0821 VL - 70 SP - 68 EP - 84 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Passow, Susanne A1 - Westerhausen, Rene A1 - Hugdahl, Kenneth A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - Heekeren, Hauke R. A1 - Lindenberger, Ulman A1 - Li, Shu-Chen T1 - Electrophysiological correlates of adult age differences in attentional control of auditory processing JF - Cerebral cortex N2 - In addition to sensory decline, age-related losses in auditory perception also reflect impairments in attentional modulation of perceptual saliency. Using an attention and intensity-modulated dichotic listening paradigm, we investigated electrophysiological correlates of processing conflicts between attentional focus and perceptual saliency in 25 younger and 26 older adults. Participants were instructed to attend to the right or left ear, and perceptual saliency was manipulated by varying the intensities of both ears. Attentional control demand was higher in conditions when attentional focus and perceptual saliency favored opposing ears than in conditions without such conflicts. Relative to younger adults, older adults modulated their attention less flexibly and were more influenced by perceptual saliency. Our results show, for the first time, that in younger adults a late negativity in the event-related potential (ERP) at fronto-central and parietal electrodes was sensitive to perceptual-attentional conflicts during auditory processing (N450 modulation effect). Crucially, the magnitude of the N450 modulation effect correlated positively with task performance. In line with lower attentional flexibility, the ERP waveforms of older adults showed absence of the late negativity and the modulation effect. This suggests that aging compromises the activation of the frontoparietal attentional network when processing the competing and conflicting auditory information. KW - aging KW - attention KW - auditory perception KW - conflict monitoring KW - ERP Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhs306 SN - 1047-3211 SN - 1460-2199 VL - 24 IS - 1 SP - 249 EP - 260 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Cary ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kupetz, Maxi T1 - Empathy displays as interactional achievements-Multimodal and sequential aspects JF - Journal of pragmatics : an interdisciplinary journal of language studies KW - Empathy KW - Understanding KW - Affectivity KW - Conversation Analysis KW - Interactional Linguistics KW - Multimodality Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2013.11.006 SN - 0378-2166 SN - 1879-1387 VL - 61 SP - 4 EP - 34 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Klassert, Annegret A1 - Gagarina, Natalʹja Vladimirovna A1 - Kauschke, Christina T1 - Object and action naming in Russian- and German- speaking monolingual and bilingual children* JF - Bilingualism : language and cognition. N2 - The present study investigates the influence of word category on naming performance in two populations: bilingual and monolingual children. The question is whether and, if so, to what extent monolingual and bilingual children differ with respect to noun and verb naming and whether a noun bias exists in the lexical abilities of bilingual children. Picture naming of objects and actions by Russian-German bilingual children (aged 4-7 years) was compared to age-matched monolingual children. The results clearly demonstrate a naming deficit of bilingual children in comparison to monolingual children that increases with age. Noun learning is more fragile in bilingual contexts than is verb learning. In bilingual language acquisition, nouns do not predominate over verbs as much as is seen in monolingual German and Russian children. The results are discussed with respect to semantic-conceptual aspects and language-specific features of nouns and verbs, and the impact of input on the acquisition of these word categories. KW - lexical abilities KW - word categories KW - bilingual children Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728913000096 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 17 IS - 1 SP - 73 EP - 88 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Groenewold, Rimke A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien A1 - Nickels, Lyndsey A1 - Wieling, Martijn A1 - Huiskes, Mike T1 - The effects of direct and indirect speech on discourse comprehension in Dutch listeners with and without aphasia JF - Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal N2 - Background: Research on language comprehension in aphasia has primarily focused on comprehension of isolated words and sentences. Even though previous studies have provided insights into comprehension abilities of individuals with aphasia at the word and grammatical level, our understanding of the nature and extent of their language comprehension (dis)abilities is not yet complete. In contrast to the highly restricted semantic and syntactic interpretation of sentences, discourse comprehension requires additional pragmatic and non-linguistic skills.Aims: The purpose of this study was to assess language comprehension in individuals with and without aphasia at the discourse level. In particular, it addressed the question of whether the use of direct speech, compared to indirect speech, affects comprehension of narrative discourse in Dutch aphasic and non-brain-damaged (NBD) listeners.Methods & Procedures: The Direct Speech Comprehension (DISCO) test was developed to examine the effects of manipulating direct vs. indirect speech on discourse comprehension. Twenty-three individuals with aphasia and 20 NBD participants were presented with spoken narratives that contained either direct or indirect speech reports. The narratives were presented audio-visually on an iPad, and comprehension was assessed with yes/no questions.Outcomes & Results: The performance of the participants with aphasia was significantly poorer than that of the NBD participants. Moreover, a main effect for condition type was found, indicating that narratives with direct speech reports were better understood than narratives with indirect speech reports by listeners with and without aphasia. There was no interaction between group and condition type indicating that this main effect held for both the aphasic and the NBD listeners. However, for the participants with aphasia, there was an interaction between condition and Token Test error score indicating that the positive effect of direct speech constructions diminishes for individuals with poorer comprehension.Conclusions: Direct speech constructions facilitate language comprehension in listeners with and without aphasia. One explanation for this finding is the occurrence of additional layers of communication, such as intonation and facial expression, often accompanying direct speech constructions. An alternative account is the degree of grammatical complexity: In Dutch, the syntactic construction of indirect speech requires embedding, whereas in direct speech the introductory sentence and the quote are both main clauses. The finding that the beneficial effect of direct speech on language comprehension diminishes for individuals with severe aphasia may indicate that the DISCO is too difficult for them to reveal an effect of a subtle manipulation such as that of condition type. KW - Aphasia KW - Discourse comprehension KW - Direct speech KW - Indirect speech Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2014.902916 SN - 0268-7038 SN - 1464-5041 VL - 28 IS - 7 SP - 862 EP - 884 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lorenz, Antje A1 - Heide, Judith A1 - Burchert, Frank T1 - Compound naming in aphasia: effects of complexity, part of speech, and semantic transparency JF - Language, cognition and neuroscience KW - compound production KW - morphology KW - decomposition KW - lemma KW - part of speech KW - semantic transparency KW - aphasia KW - word-finding difficulties Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/01690965.2013.766357 SN - 2327-3798 SN - 2327-3801 VL - 29 IS - 1 SP - 88 EP - 106 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Jaensch, Carol A1 - Heyer, Vera A1 - Gordon, Peter A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - What plurals and compounds reveal about constraints in word formation JF - Language acquisition : a journal of developmental linguistics N2 - Morphological systems are constrained in how they interact with each other. One case that has been widely studied in the psycholinguistic literature is the avoidance of plurals inside compounds (e.g. *rats eater vs. rat eater) in English and other languages, the so-called plurals-in-compounds effect. Several previous studies have shown that both adult and child speakers are sensitive to this contrast, but the question of whether semantic, morphological, or surface-form constraints are responsible for the plurals-in-compounds effect remains controversial. The present study provides new empirical evidence from adult and child English to resolve this controversy. Graded linguistic judgments were obtained from 96 children (age range: 7;06 to 12;08) and 32 adults. In the task, participants were asked to rate compounds containing different kinds of singular or plural modifiers. The results indicated that both children and adults disliked regular plurals inside compounds, whereas irregular plurals were rated as marginal and singulars as fully acceptable. Furthermore, acceptability ratings were found not to be affected by the phonological surface form of a compound-internal modifier. We conclude that semantic and morphological (rather than surface-form) constraints are responsible for the plurals-in-compounds effect, in both children and adults. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2014.892949 SN - 1048-9223 SN - 1532-7817 VL - 21 IS - 4 SP - 319 EP - 338 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bacskai-Atkari, Julia T1 - Cyclical change in Hungarian comparatives JF - Diachronica N2 - This paper examines cyclical changes in comparative subclauses, showing how operators are reanalysed as complementisers via the general mechanism of the relative cycle, and how this is related to whether certain lexical elements have to be deleted at the left periphery. I also show that only operators appearing without a lexical XP can be grammaticalised, which follows from the nature of the formal features associated with the various operator elements. Though the main focus is on Hungarian historical data, the framework can be applied to other languages too, such as German and Italian, since the changes stem from general principles of economy. KW - Comparative Deletion KW - comparative subclause KW - complementiser combinations KW - economy KW - left periphery KW - reanalysis KW - relative cycle KW - reinforcement Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.31.4.01bac SN - 0176-4225 SN - 1569-9714 VL - 31 IS - 4 SP - 465 EP - 505 PB - Benjamins CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Leminen, Alina A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Brain potentials to inflected adjectives: Beyond storage and decomposition JF - Brain research : an international multidisciplinary journal devoted to fundamental research in the brain sciences KW - Inflection KW - Morphology KW - Morpho-syntactic feature KW - Lexical-semantics KW - ERP KW - N400 Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2013.10.038 SN - 0006-8993 SN - 1872-6240 VL - 1543 SP - 223 EP - 234 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Cunnings, Ian A1 - Patterson, Clare A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Variable binding and coreference in sentence comprehension: Evidence from eye movements JF - Journal of memory and language KW - Pronoun resolution KW - Eye movements KW - Reading KW - Memory retrieval Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2013.10.001 SN - 0749-596X SN - 1096-0821 VL - 71 SP - 39 EP - 56 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wattendorf, Elise A1 - Festman, Julia A1 - Westermann, Birgit A1 - Keil, Ursula A1 - Zappatore, Daniela A1 - Franceschini, Rita A1 - Luedi, Georges A1 - Radue, Ernst-Wilhelm A1 - Muente, Thomas F. A1 - Rager, Guenter A1 - Nitsch, Cordula T1 - Early bilingualism influences early and subsequently later acquired languages in cortical regions representing control functions JF - International journal of bilingualism : cross-disciplinary, cross-linguistic studies of language behavior N2 - Early acquisition of a second language influences the development of language abilities and cognitive functions. In the present study, we used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to investigate the impact of early bilingualism on the organization of the cortical language network during sentence production. Two groups of adult multilinguals, proficient in three languages, were tested on a narrative task; early multilinguals acquired the second language before the age of three years, late multilinguals after the age of nine. All participants learned a third language after nine years of age. Comparison of the two groups revealed substantial differences in language-related brain activity for early as well as late acquired languages. Most importantly, early multilinguals preferentially activated a fronto-striatal network in the left hemisphere, whereas the left posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) was activated to a lesser degree than in late multilinguals. The same brain regions were highlighted in previous studies when a non-target language had to be controlled. Hence the engagement of language control in adult early multilinguals appears to be influenced by the specific learning and acquisition conditions during early childhood. Remarkably, our results reveal that the functional control of early and subsequently later acquired languages is similarly affected, suggesting that language experience has a pervasive influence into adulthood. As such, our findings extend the current understanding of control functions in multilinguals. KW - Multilingual KW - language acquisition KW - narration KW - age of acquisition KW - functional magnetic resonance imaging KW - emergentist framework Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006912456590 SN - 1367-0069 SN - 1756-6878 VL - 18 IS - 1 SP - 48 EP - 66 PB - Sage Publ. CY - London ER - TY - INPR A1 - Reiterer, Susanne Maria A1 - Festman, Julia T1 - Special Issue: multilingual brains: individual differences in bi-and multilinguals T2 - International journal of bilingualism : cross-disciplinary, cross-linguistic studies of language behavior Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006912456624 SN - 1367-0069 SN - 1756-6878 VL - 18 IS - 1 SP - 3 EP - 4 PB - Sage Publ. CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gafos, Adamantios I. A1 - Charlow, Simon A1 - Shaw, Jason A. A1 - Hoole, Philip T1 - Stochastic time analysis of syllable-referential intervals and simplex onsets JF - Journal of phonetics N2 - We pursue an analysis of the relation between qualitative syllable parses and their quantitative phonetic consequences. To do this, we express the statistics of a symbolic organization corresponding to a syllable parse in terms of continuous phonetic parameters which quantify the timing of the consonants and vowels that make up syllables: consonantal plateau durations, vowel durations, and their variances. These parameters can be estimated from continuous phonetic data. This enables analysis of the link between symbolic phonological form and the continuous phonetics in which this form is manifest. Pursuing such an analysis, we illustrate the predictions of the syllabic organization corresponding to simplex onsets and derive a number of previously experimentally observed and simulation results. Specifically, we derive not only the canonical phonetic manifestations of simplex onsets but also the result that, under certain conditions we make precise, the phonetic indices of the simplex onset organization change to a range of values characteristic of the complex onset organization. Finally, we explore the behavior of phonetic indices for syllabic organization over progressively increasing,sizes of lexical samples, thereby concomitantly diversifying the phonetic context over which these indices are taken. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2013.11.007 SN - 0095-4470 VL - 44 SP - 152 EP - 166 PB - Elsevier CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Brandt-Kobele, Oda-Christina A1 - Höhle, Barbara T1 - The detection of subject-verb agreement violations by German-speaking children: An eye-tracking study JF - Lingua : international review of general linguistics N2 - This study examines the processing of sentences with and without subject verb agreement violations in German-speaking children at three and five years of age. An eye-tracking experiment was conducted to measure whether children's looking behavior was influenced by the grammaticality of the test sentences. The older group of children turned their gaze faster towards a target picture and looked longer at it when the object noun referring to the target was presented in a grammatical sentence with subject verb agreement compared to when the object noun was presented in a sentence in which an agreement violation occurred. The younger group of children displayed less conclusive results, with a tendency to look longer but not faster towards the target picture in the grammatical compared to the ungrammatical condition. This is the first experimental evidence that German-speaking five-year old children are sensitive to subject verb agreement and violations thereof. Our results additionally substantiate that the eye-tracking paradigm is suitable to examine children's sensitivity to subtle grammatical violations. KW - Subject-verb agreement KW - Eye-tracking KW - Language acquisition KW - German Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2013.12.008 SN - 0024-3841 SN - 1872-6135 VL - 144 SP - 7 EP - 20 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wittenberg, Eva A1 - Paczynski, Martin A1 - Wiese, Heike A1 - Jackendoff, Ray A1 - Kuperberg, Gina T1 - The difference between "giving a rose" and "giving a kiss": Sustained neural activity to the light verb construction JF - Journal of memory and language N2 - We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms associated with processing light verb constructions such as "give a kiss". These constructions consist of a semantically underspecified light verb ("give") and an event nominal that contributes most of the meaning and also activates an argument structure of its own ("kiss"). This creates a mismatch between the syntactic constituents and the semantic roles of a sentence. Native speakers read German verb-final sentences that contained light verb constructions (e.g., "Julius gave Anne a kiss"), non-light constructions (e.g., "Julius gave Anne a rose"), and semantically anomalous constructions (e.g., 'Julius gave Anne a conversation"). ERPs were measured at the critical verb, which appeared after all its arguments. Compared to non-light constructions, the light verb constructions evoked a widely distributed, frontally focused, sustained negative-going effect between 500 and 900 ms after verb onset. We interpret this effect as reflecting working memory costs associated with complex semantic processes that establish a shared argument structure in the light verb constructions. KW - Event-related potential KW - Sentence processing KW - Light verb constructions KW - Argument structure KW - Syntax-semantics interface KW - Sustained negativity Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2014.02.002 SN - 0749-596X SN - 1096-0821 VL - 73 SP - 31 EP - 42 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bos, Laura S. A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien T1 - Time reference decoupled from tense in agrammatic and fluent aphasia JF - Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal N2 - Aims: The goal of this study is twofold. First, it aims to untangle tense problems from problems with past time reference through verb morphology in people with aphasia. Second, this study aims to compare the production of time reference inflection by people with agrammatic and fluent aphasia. Methods & Procedures: A sentence completion task was used to elicit reference to the non-past and past in Dutch. Reference to the past was tested through (1) a simple verb in past tense and (2) a verb complex with an auxiliary in present tense + participle (the present perfect). Reference to the non-past was tested through a simple verb in present tense. Fourteen agrammatic aphasic speakers, sixteen fluent aphasic speakers, and twenty non-brain-damaged speakers (NBDs) took part in this study. Data were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. Outcomes & Results: NBDs scored at ceiling and significantly higher than the aphasic participants. Agrammatic speakers performed worse than fluent speakers, but the pattern of performance in both aphasic groups was similar. Reference to the past through past tense and [present tense auxiliary + participle] was more impaired than reference to the non-past. An error analysis revealed differences between the two groups. Conclusions: People with agrammatic and fluent aphasia experience problems with expressing reference to the past through verb inflection. This past time reference deficit is irrespective of the tense employed. The error patterns between the two groups reveal different underlying problems. KW - Fluent aphasia KW - Time reference KW - Agrammatic aphasia KW - Tense Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2014.886322 SN - 0268-7038 SN - 1464-5041 VL - 28 IS - 5 SP - 533 EP - 553 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adani, Flavia A1 - Forgiarini, Matteo A1 - Guasti, Maria Teresa A1 - Van der Lely, Heather K. J. T1 - Number dissimilarities facilitate the comprehension of relative clauses in children with (Grammatical) Specific Language Impairment JF - Journal of child language N2 - This study investigates whether number dissimilarities on subject and object DPs facilitate the comprehension of subject-and object-extracted centre-embedded relative clauses in children with Grammatical Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI). We compared the performance of a group of English-speaking children with G-SLI (mean age: 12; 11) with that of two groups of younger typically developing (TD) children, matched on grammar and receptive vocabulary, respectively. All groups were more accurate on subject-extracted relative clauses than object-extracted ones and, crucially, they all showed greater accuracy for sentences with dissimilar number features (i.e., one singular, one plural) on the head noun and the embedded DP. These findings are interpreted in the light of current psycholinguistic models of sentence comprehension in TD children and provide further insight into the linguistic nature of G-SLI. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000913000184 SN - 0305-0009 SN - 1469-7602 VL - 41 IS - 4 SP - 811 EP - 841 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Hoernig, Robin A1 - Weskott, Thomas A1 - Knauf, Selene A1 - Krueger, Agnes T1 - Effects of focus and definiteness on children's word order: evidence from German five-year-olds' reproductions of double object constructions JF - Journal of child language N2 - Two experiments tested how faithfully German children aged 4; 5 to 5; 6 reproduce ditransitive sentences that are unmarked or marked with respect to word order and focus (Exp1) or definiteness (Exp2). Adopting an optimality theory (OT) approach, it is assumed that in the German adult grammar word order is ranked lower than focus and definiteness. Faithfulness of children's reproductions decreased as markedness of inputs increased; unmarked structures were reproduced most faithfully and unfaithful outputs had most often an unmarked form. Consistent with the OT proposal, children were more tolerant against inputs marked for word order than for focus; in conflict with the proposal, children were less tolerant against inputs marked for word order than for definiteness. Our results suggest that the linearization of objects in German double object constructions is affected by focus and definiteness, but that prosodic principles may have an impact on the position of a focused constituent. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000913000196 SN - 0305-0009 SN - 1469-7602 VL - 41 IS - 4 SP - 780 EP - 810 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Husain, Samar A1 - Vasishth, Shravan A1 - Srinivasan, Narayanan T1 - Strong expectations cancel locality effects: Evidence from Hindi JF - PLoS one N2 - Expectation-driven facilitation (Hale, 2001; Levy, 2008) and locality-driven retrieval difficulty (Gibson, 1998, 2000; Lewis & Vasishth, 2005) are widely recognized to be two critical factors in incremental sentence processing; there is accumulating evidence that both can influence processing difficulty. However, it is unclear whether and how expectations and memory interact. We first confirm a key prediction of the expectation account: a Hindi self-paced reading study shows that when an expectation for an upcoming part of speech is dashed, building a rarer structure consumes more processing time than building a less rare structure. This is a strong validation of the expectation-based account. In a second study, we show that when expectation is strong, i.e., when a particular verb is predicted, strong facilitation effects are seen when the appearance of the verb is delayed; however, when expectation is weak, i.e., when only the part of speech "verb' is predicted but a particular verb is not predicted, the facilitation disappears and a tendency towards a locality effect is seen. The interaction seen between expectation strength and distance shows that strong expectations cancel locality effects, and that weak expectations allow locality effects to emerge. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0100986 SN - 1932-6203 VL - 9 IS - 7 PB - PLoS CY - San Fransisco ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Clackson, Kaili A1 - Heyer, Vera T1 - Reflexive anaphor resolution in spoken language comprehension: structural constraints and beyond JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - We report results from an eye-tracking during listening study examining English-speaking adults' online processing of reflexive pronouns, and specifically whether the search for an antecedent is restricted to syntactically appropriate positions. Participants listened to a short story where the recipient of an object was introduced with a reflexive, and were asked to identify the object recipient as quickly as possible. This allowed for the recording of participants' offline interpretation of the reflexive, response times, and eye movements on hearing the reflexive. Whilst our offline results show that the ultimate interpretation for reflexives was constrained by binding principles, the response time, and eye-movement data revealed that during processing participants were temporarily distracted by a structurally inappropriate competitor antecedent when this was prominent in the discourse. These results indicate that in addition to binding principles, online referential decisions are also affected by discourse-level information. KW - binding principle A KW - reflexive resolution KW - discourse prominence KW - sentence processing KW - eye-tracking Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00904 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 5 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Clahsen, Harald A1 - Rothweiler, Monika A1 - Sterner, Franziska A1 - Chilla, Solveig T1 - Linguistic markers of specific language impairment in bilingual children: the case of verb morphology JF - Clinical linguistics & phonetics KW - Bilingualism KW - German KW - morphology KW - SLI KW - Turkish Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3109/02699206.2014.886726 SN - 0269-9206 SN - 1464-5076 VL - 28 IS - 9 SP - 709 EP - 721 PB - Taylor & Francis Group CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bamyaci, Elif A1 - Haeussler, Jana A1 - Kabak, Baris T1 - The interaction of animacy and number agreement: an experimental investigation JF - Lingua : international review of general linguistics N2 - This paper investigates subject verb agreement in Turkish with particular focus on the role the animacy of plural subjects plays in verbal number marking. Previous descriptive grammars of Turkish (e.g., Sezer, 1978) report an asymmetry in number marking for plural subjects: if the plural subject denotes an animate entity, both plural and singular verbs are possible, whereas only singular verbs are possible when the plural subject denotes an inanimate entity. Using the magnitude estimation method, we measured the well-formedness of simple Turkish sentences consisting of a plural subject and a verb in two groups of participants that differ only in age (mean: 28 years old and 43 years old). The overall results provide an empirical validation of the proposed split between animate and inanimate subjects and suggest that the acceptability of plural agreement is sensitive to even more fine-grained distinctions of animacy. In particular, the plural dispreference was reduced for inanimates with a teleological capacity (in the sense of Folli and Harley, 2008) and for body parts, in comparison to true inanimates (e.g., furniture and clothes). Accordingly, we propose an animacy hierarchy for Turkish that is in line with typological observations (e.g., Corbett, 2000, 2006) and augment it with a further distinction between quasi-animates and inanimates. Although less pronounced in sentences with animate subjects, we observed a higher preference for singular verbs over plural verbs across all conditions. This suggests that the singular marking on the verb, which is zero marked in Turkish, is the default. Furthermore, we find a significant effect of age: in the older group, the singular preference is less pronounced across the conditions and almost absent in sentences with an animate subject. Moreover, the older participants made finer distinctions in the animacy hierarchy, further differentiating between two types of quasi-animates (teleologically capable entities vs. entities with inherited animacy). The two generations in our study share the animate inanimate split as well as the sharp contrast between singular and plural agreement in sentences with inanimate subjects; they differ, however, in degree of optionality. Altogether, these results suggest a decrease in the degree of optionality across generations. As in research on language attrition and bilingualism (Hulk and Muller, 2000; Muller and Hulk, 2001; Sorace, 2011), the results accord with the idea that interface phenomena are vulnerable to change; however, non-convergence between generations in our study stemmed from areas that yield gradient rather than categorical results. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. KW - Subject verb agreement in Turkish KW - Number marking KW - Animacy KW - Optionality KW - Gradience KW - Semantics morphosyntax interface KW - Language change Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2014.06.005 SN - 0024-3841 SN - 1872-6135 VL - 148 SP - 254 EP - 277 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie A1 - Kager, Rene T1 - OCP-Place in speech segmentation JF - Language and speech N2 - OCP-Place, a cross-linguistically well-attested constraint against pairs of consonants with shared [place], is psychologically real. Studies have shown that the processing of words violating OCP-Place is inhibited. Functionalists assume that OCP arises as a consequence of low-level perception: a consonant following another with the same [place] cannot be faithfully perceived as an independent unit. If functionalist theories were correct, then lexical access would be inhibited if two homorganic consonants conjoin at word boundaries-a problem that can only be solved with lexical feedback. Here, we experimentally challenge the functional account by showing that OCP-Place can be used as a speech segmentation cue during pre-lexical processing without lexical feedback, and that the use relates to distributions in the input. In Experiment 1, native listeners of Dutch located word boundaries between two labials when segmenting an artificial language. This indicates a use of OCP-Labial as a segmentation cue, implying a full perception of both labials. Experiment 2 shows that segmentation performance cannot solely be explained by well-formedness intuitions. Experiment 3 shows that knowledge of OCP-Place depends on language-specific input: in Dutch, co-occurrences of labials are under-represented, but co-occurrences of coronals are not. Accordingly, Dutch listeners fail to use OCP-Coronal for segmentation. KW - Artificial language learning KW - OCP-Place KW - phonotactics KW - speech segmentation KW - pre-lexical processing Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830913508074 SN - 0023-8309 SN - 1756-6053 VL - 57 IS - 3 SP - 394 EP - 421 PB - Sage Publ. CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Arslan, Seçkin A1 - Aksu-Koc, Ayhan A1 - Mavis, Ilknur A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien T1 - Finite verb inflections for evidential categories and source JF - Journal of pragmatics : an interdisciplinary journal of language studies KW - Agrammatic aphasia KW - Evidentiality KW - Source identification KW - Discourse-linking KW - Time reference KW - Tense and aspect Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2014.07.002 SN - 0378-2166 SN - 1879-1387 VL - 70 SP - 165 EP - 181 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Verissimo, Joao Marques A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Variables and similarity in linguistic generalization: Evidence from inflectional classes in Portuguese JF - Journal of memory and language N2 - Two opposing viewpoints have been advanced to account for morphological productivity, one according to which some knowledge is couched in the form of operations over variables, and another in which morphological generalization is primarily determined by similarity. We investigated this controversy by examining the generalization of Portuguese verb stems, which fall into one of three conjugation classes. In Study 1, an elicited production task revealed that the generalization of 2nd and 3rd conjugation stems is influenced by the degree of phonological similarity between novel roots and existing verbs, whereas the 1st conjugation generalizes beyond similarity. In Study 2, we directly contrasted two distinct computational implementations of conjugation class assignment in how well they matched the human data: a similarity-driven model that captures phonological similarities, and a dual-mechanism model that implements an explicit distinction between context-free and similarity-based generalizations. The similarity-driven model consistently underestimated 1st conjugation responses and overestimated proportions of 2nd and 3rd conjugation responses, especially for novel verbs that are highly similar to existing verbs of those classes. In contrast, the expected proportions produced by the dual-mechanism model were statistically indistinguishable from human responses. We conclude that both context-free and context-sensitive processes determine the generalization of conjugations in Portuguese, and that similarity-based algorithms of morphological acquisition are insufficient to exhibit default-like generalization. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. KW - Variables KW - Similarity KW - Rules KW - Morphological generalization KW - Productivity KW - Computational modeling Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2014.06.001 SN - 0749-596X SN - 1096-0821 VL - 76 SP - 61 EP - 79 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Burmester, Juliane A1 - Spalek, Katharina A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - Context updating during sentence comprehension: The effect of aboutness topic JF - Brain & language : a journal of the neurobiology of language KW - Information structure KW - Discourse context KW - Aboutness topic KW - Sentence processing KW - Word order variation KW - ERP KW - Late positivity KW - Syntax-Discourse Model Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2014.08.001 SN - 0093-934X SN - 1090-2155 VL - 137 SP - 62 EP - 76 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bacskai-Atkari, Julia T1 - Structural case and ambiguity in reduced comparative subclauses in English and German JF - Acta linguistica Hungarica : an international journal of linguistics N2 - The paper argues that structural case assignment properties of English and German reduced comparative subclauses arise from syntactic requirements as well as processes holding at the syntax-phonology interface. I show that constructions involving both an adjectival and a verbal predicate require the subject remnant of the adjectival predicate to be marked for the accusative case both in English and German, which cannot be explained by the notion of default accusative case, especially because German has no default accusative case. I argue that a phonologically defective subclause is reanalysed as part of the matrix clausal object, and hence receives accusative morphological case. KW - case syncretism KW - comparative subclause KW - ellipsis KW - structural ambiguity KW - structural case Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1556/ALing.61.2014.4.1 SN - 1216-8076 SN - 1588-2624 VL - 61 IS - 4 SP - 363 EP - 378 PB - Akadémiai Kiadó CY - Budapest ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Yue, Jinxing A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien A1 - Alter, Kai T1 - Cortical plasticity induced by rapid Hebbian learning of novel tonal word-forms: Evidence from mismatch negativity JF - Brain & language : a journal of the neurobiology of language N2 - Although several experiments reported rapid cortical plasticity induced by passive exposure to novel segmental patterns, few studies have devoted attention to the neural dynamics during the rapid learning of novel tonal word-forms in tonal languages, such as Chinese. In the current study, native speakers of Mandarin Chinese were exposed to acoustically matched real and novel segment-tone patterns. By recording their Mismatch Negativity (MMN) responses (an ERP indicator of long-term memory traces for spoken words), we found enhanced MMNs to the novel word-forms over the left-hemispheric region in the late exposure phase relative to the early exposure phase. In contrast, no significant changes were identified in MMN responses to the real word during familiarisation. Our results suggest a rapid Hebbian learning mechanism in the human neocortex which develops long-term memory traces for a novel segment-tone pattern by establishing new associations between the segmental and tonal representations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. KW - Language KW - Rapid learning KW - Hebbian learning KW - Event-related potential KW - Novel word KW - Mismatch Negativity (MMN) KW - Oddball paradigm KW - Lexical tone KW - Mandarin Chinese Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2014.09.007 SN - 0093-934X SN - 1090-2155 VL - 139 SP - 10 EP - 22 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bos, Laura S. A1 - Hanne, Sandra A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien T1 - Losing track of time? Processing of time reference inflection in agrammatic and healthy speakers of German JF - Neuropsychologia : an international journal in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience N2 - Background: Individuals with agrammatic aphasia (IWAs) have problems with grammatical decoding of tense inflection. However, these difficulties depend on the time frame that the tense refers to. Verb morphology with reference to the past is more difficult than with reference to the non-past, because a link needs to be made to the past event in discourse, as captured in the PAst Discourse Linking Hypothesis (PADILIH; Bastiaanse, R., Bamyaci, E., Hsu, C., Lee, J., Yarbay Duman, T., Thompson, C. K., 2011. Time reference in agrammatic aphasia: A cross-linguistic study. J. Neurolinguist. 24, 652-673). With respect to reference to the (non-discourse-linked) future, data so far indicate that IWAs experience less difficulties as compared to past time reference (Bastiaanse, R., Bamyaci, E., Hsu, C., Lee, J., Yarbay Duman, T., Thompson, C. K., 2011. Time reference in agrammatic aphasia: A cross-linguistic study. J. Neurolinguist. 24, 652-673), supporting the assumptions of the PADILIH. Previous online studies of time reference in aphasia used methods such as reaction times analysis (e.g., Faroqi-Shah, Y., Dickey, M. W., 2009. On-line processing of tense and temporality in agrammatic aphasia. Brain Lang. 108, 97-111). So far, no such study used eye-tracking, even though this technique can bring additional insights (Burchert, F., Hanne, S., Vasishth, S., 2013. Sentence comprehension disorders in aphasia: the concept of chance performance revisited. Aphasiology 27, 112-125, doi:10.1080/02687038.2012.730603). Aims: This study investigated (1) whether processing of future and past time reference inflection differs between non-brain-damaged individuals (NBDs) and IWAs, and (2) underlying mechanisms of time reference comprehension failure by IWAs. Results and discussion: NBDs scored at ceiling and significantly higher than the IWAs. IWAs had below-ceiling performance on the future condition, and both participant groups were faster to respond to the past than to the future condition. These differences are attributed to a pre-existing preference to look at a past picture, which has to be overcome. Eye movement patterns suggest that both groups interpret future time reference similarly, while IWAs show a delay relative to NBDs in interpreting past time reference inflection. The eye tracking results support the PADILIH, because processing reference to the past in discourse syntax requires additional resources and thus, is problematic and delayed for people with aphasia. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. KW - Visual-world paradigm KW - Spoken language comprehension KW - Time reference KW - Morphology KW - Agrammatism KW - Eye-tracking KW - Aphasia KW - Discourse linking Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.10.026 SN - 0028-3932 SN - 1873-3514 VL - 65 SP - 180 EP - 190 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Roon, Kevin T1 - Vorlesung 2013-01-14 : A dynamical computational model of phonological planning Y1 - 2014 UR - http://info.ub.uni-potsdam.de/multimedia/show_multimediafile.php?mediafile_id=500 PB - Univ.-Bibl. CY - Potsdam ER - TY - THES A1 - Logačev, Pavel T1 - Underspecification and parallel processing in sentence comprehension T1 - Unterspezifikation und parallele Verarbeitung im Satzverständnis N2 - The aim of the present thesis is to answer the question to what degree the processes involved in sentence comprehension are sensitive to task demands. A central phenomenon in this regard is the so-called ambiguity advantage, which is the finding that ambiguous sentences can be easier to process than unambiguous sentences. This finding may appear counterintuitive, because more meanings should be associated with a higher computational effort. Currently, two theories exist that can explain this finding. The Unrestricted Race Model (URM) by van Gompel et al. (2001) assumes that several sentence interpretations are computed in parallel, whenever possible, and that the first interpretation to be computed is assigned to the sentence. Because the duration of each structure-building process varies from trial to trial, the parallelism in structure-building predicts that ambiguous sentences should be processed faster. This is because when two structures are permissible, the chances that some interpretation will be computed quickly are higher than when only one specific structure is permissible. Importantly, the URM is not sensitive to task demands such as the type of comprehension questions being asked. A radically different proposal is the strategic underspecification model by Swets et al. (2008). It assumes that readers do not attempt to resolve ambiguities unless it is absolutely necessary. In other words, they underspecify. According the strategic underspecification hypothesis, all attested replications of the ambiguity advantage are due to the fact that in those experiments, readers were not required to fully understand the sentence. In this thesis, these two models of the parser’s actions at choice-points in the sentence are presented and evaluated. First, it is argued that the Swets et al.’s (2008) evidence against the URM and in favor of underspecification is inconclusive. Next, the precise predictions of the URM as well as the underspecification model are refined. Subsequently, a self-paced reading experiment involving the attachment of pre-nominal relative clauses in Turkish is presented, which provides evidence against strategical underspecification. A further experiment is presented which investigated relative clause attachment in German using the speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) paradigm. The experiment provides evidence against strategic underspecification and in favor of the URM. Furthermore the results of the experiment are used to argue that human sentence comprehension is fallible, and that theories of parsing should be able to account for that fact. Finally, a third experiment is presented, which provides evidence for the sensitivity to task demands in the treatment of ambiguities. Because this finding is incompatible with the URM, and because the strategic underspecification model has been ruled out, a new model of ambiguity resolution is proposed: the stochastic multiple-channel model of ambiguity resolution (SMCM). It is further shown that the quantitative predictions of the SMCM are in agreement with experimental data. In conclusion, it is argued that the human sentence comprehension system is parallel and fallible, and that it is sensitive to task-demands. N2 - Das Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist es zu untersuchen zu welchem Grad Satzverständnis kontextabhängig ist. In anderen Worten, werden die mentalen Prozesse die zum Satzverständnis beitragen davon beeinflusst mit welchem Ziel ein Satz gelesen wird? Ein in diesem Hinblick zentrales Phänomen ist die sogenannte ambiguity advantage, wonach ambige Sätze schneller gelesen werden als eindeutige. Dies erscheint zunächst kontraintuitiv, denn die Erstellung mehrerer Bedeutungen müsste mit einem höheren Verarbeitungsaufwand verbunden sein. Im Moment existieren zwei Theorien, die diesen Effekt erklären können: Das Unrestricted Race Model (URM; van Gompel, Pickering, and Traxler, 2000) basiert auf der Annahme, daß Leser, wann immer möglich, mehrere Interpretationen eines Satzes gleichzeitig zu erstellen versuchen. Sobald die erste Interpretation erstellt wurde, wird diese als die finale Interpretation des aktuellen Inputs akzeptiert, und die Erstellung weiterer Interpretationen wird terminiert. Weil die Dauer jedes Strukturerstellungsprozesses variiert, führt dieser Interpretationsmechanismus dazu daß Sätze mit mehreren Bedeutungen schneller verarbeitet werden. Wenn zwei Satzstrukturen zulässig sind, ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit höher daß zumindest eine von beiden relativ schnell berechnet wird als wenn nur eine Struktur zulässig ist. Dieses Modell nimmt keine Einflüsse von Verständnisaufgaben auf die Verarbeitungsstrategie an. Einen gänzlich anderen Erklärungsansatz verfolgt das strategische Unterspezifizierungsmodell von Swets et al. (2008). Hier wird angenommen daß Leser Ambiguitäten nur dann auflösen, wenn es unbedingt notwendig ist. Wenn es nicht notwendig ist, unterspezifizieren sie stattdessen. Laut dem Unterspezifizierungsmodell sind alle bisherigen Replikationen der ambiguity advantage der Tatsache geschuldet, daß in diesen Experimenten nur oberflächliche Fragen gestellt wurden, die keine Ambiguitätsauflösung erforderten. Wäre Disambiguierung erforderlich gewesen, wäre die Verarbeitung ambiger Sätze langsamer. In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden diese beiden Modelle der Ambiguitätsauflösung diskutiert und empirisch evaluiert. Zunächst wird diskutiert warum die Daten von Swets et al.'s (2008) Experiment keine Evidenz für Unterspezifikation darstellen. Als nächstes werden die präzisen quantitativen Vorhersagen des URM und des Unterspezifizierungsmodells diskutiert. Es werden die Resultate eines self-paced reading Experiments mit pränominalen Relativsätzen im Türkischen vorgestellt, welche nicht mit dem Unterspezifizierungsmodell kompatibel sind. Als nächstes werden die Resultate eines weiteren Experiments vorgestellt, welches den Prozess der Relativsatzanbindung im Deutschen im Speed-Accuracy Tradeoff Paradigma (SAT) untersucht. Die Resultate sind mit dem URM, aber nicht mit strategischer Unterspezifikation vereinbar. Des weiteren wird ein drittes Experiment vorgestellt, welches zeigt daß Parsingstrategien von den Gesichtspunkten abhängen unter denen Leser einen Satz lesen. Um alle experimentellen Ergebnisse in dieser Arbeit zu erklären, wird ein neues Modell der Disambiguierung vorgestellt: das Stochastic Multiple-Channel Model (SMCM). Es wird des weiteren gezeigt, daß die quantitativen Vorhersagen des SMCM mit den experimentellen Daten übereinstimmen. KW - psycholinguistics KW - sentence processing KW - Psycholinguistik KW - Satzverarbeitung Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-82047 ER - TY - THES A1 - Bacskai-Atkari, Julia T1 - The syntax of comparative constructions : operators, ellipsis phenomena and functional left peripheries T1 - Die Syntax von Vergleichskonstruktionen : Operatoren, Ellipsenphänomene und funktionale linke Peripherien N2 - Adopting a minimalist framework, the dissertation provides an analysis for the syntactic structure of comparatives, with special attention paid to the derivation of the subclause. The proposed account explains how the comparative subclause is connected to the matrix clause, how the subclause is formed in the syntax and what additional processes contribute to its final structure. In addition, it casts light upon these problems in cross-linguistic terms and provides a model that allows for synchronic and diachronic differences. This also enables one to give a more adequate explanation for the phenomena found in English comparatives since the properties of English structures can then be linked to general settings of the language and hence need no longer be considered as idiosyncratic features of the grammar of English. First, the dissertation provides a unified analysis of degree expressions, relating the structure of comparatives to that of other degrees. It is shown that gradable adjectives are located within a degree phrase (DegP), which in turn projects a quantifier phrase (QP) and that these two functional layers are always present, irrespectively of whether there is a phonologically visible element in these layers. Second, the dissertation presents a novel analysis of Comparative Deletion by reducing it to an overtness constraint holding on operators: in this way, it is reduced to morphological differences and cross-linguistic variation is not conditioned by way of postulating an arbitrary parameter. Cross-linguistic differences are ultimately dependent on whether a language has overt operators equipped with the relevant – [+compr] and [+rel] – features. Third, the dissertation provides an adequate explanation for the phenomenon of Attributive Comparative Deletion, as attested in English, by way of relating it to the regular mechanism of Comparative Deletion. I assume that Attributive Comparative Deletion is not a universal phenomenon, and its presence in English can be conditioned by independent, more general rules, while the absence of such restrictions leads to its absence in other languages. Fourth, the dissertation accounts for certain phenomena related to diachronic changes, examining how the changes in the status of comparative operators led to changes in whether Comparative Deletion is attested in a given language: I argue that only operators without a lexical XP can be grammaticalised. The underlying mechanisms underlying are essentially general economy principles and hence the processes are not language-specific or exceptional. Fifth, the dissertation accounts for optional ellipsis processes that play a crucial role in the derivation of typical comparative subclauses. These processes are not directly related to the structure of degree expressions and hence the elimination of the quantified expression from the subclause; nevertheless, they are shown to be in interaction with the mechanisms underlying Comparative Deletion or the absence thereof. N2 - Unter Verwendung eines minimalistischen Frameworks wird in der Dissertation eine Analyse der syntaktischen Struktur von Vergleichskonstruktionen vorgestellt, mit besonderem Augenmerk auf der Ableitung des eingebetteten Satzes. Die vorgeschlagene Analyse erklärt, wie der komparative Nebensatz mit dem Matrixsatz verbunden ist, wie der Nebensatz in der Syntax gebildet wird und welche zusätzlichen Prozesse zu seiner endgültigen Struktur beitragen. Außerdem beleuchtet sie diese Probleme aus cross-linguistischer Sicht und bietet ein Modell, das synchrone und diachrone Unterschiede berücksichtigt. Dies ermöglicht auch eine adäquatere Erklärung der Phänomene in englischen Vergleichskonstruktionen, da die Eigenschaften der englischen Strukturen mit allgemeinen Eigenschaften der Sprache verknüpft werden und es daher nicht mehr nötig ist, sie als idiosynkratrische Merkmale der Grammatik der englischen Sprache zu behandeln. Die Dissertation bietet zum einen eine einheitliche Analyse von Gradphrasen, wobei die Struktur von Vergleichskonstruktionen mit der von anderen Graden verbunden wird. Es wird gezeigt, dass graduierbare Adjektive sich in einer Gradphrase (degree phrase, DegP) befinden, die wiederum eine Quantorenphrase (QP) projiziert, und dass diese beiden Funktionsschichten immer vorhanden sind, unabhängig davon, ob es ein phonologisch sichtbares Element in diesen Schichten gibt. Zweitens präsentiert die Dissertation eine neue Analyse von Komparativ-Tilgung (Comparative Deletion), die auf eine Overtheits-Bedingung für Operatoren reduziert wird: dadurch wird das Phänomen auf morphologische Unterschiede zurückgeführt, und cross-linguistische Variation wird nicht durch die Postulierung eines arbiträren Parameters begründet. Cross-linguistische Unterschiede sind letztlich davon abhängig, ob eine Sprache overte Operatoren mit den relevanten Merkmalen – [+ compr] und [+ rel] – hat. Drittens bietet die Dissertation eine adäquate Erklärung für das Phänomen der attributiven Komparativ-Tilgung (Attributive Comparative Deletion), wie man sie im Englischen findet, indem sie mit dem regulären Mechanismus der Komparativ-Tilgung in Zusammenhang gebracht wird. Ich gehe davon aus, dass attributive Komparativ-Tilgung kein universelles Phänomen ist, und dass ihr Vorhandensein im Englischen durch unabhängige, allgemeinere Regeln erfasst werden kann, während das Fehlen solcher Regeln zur Abwesenheit des Phänomens in anderen Sprachen führt. Viertens erklärt die Dissertation bestimmte Phänomene in Bezug auf diachronische Veränderungen und untersucht, wie Veränderungen im Status der Komparativoperatoren beeinflussen, ob Komparativ-Tilgung in einer Sprache vorkommt: Ich argumentiere dafür, dass nur Operatoren ohne eine lexikalische XP grammatikalisiert werden können. Die zugrunde liegenden Mechanismen sind im Wesentlichen allgemeine Prinzipien der Ökonomie, und damit sind die Prozesse nicht sprachspezifisch oder Ausnahmen. Fünftens bietet die Dissertation eine Erklärung für optionale Ellipsenprozesse, die bei der Ableitung von typischen komparativen Nebensätzen eine entscheidende Rolle spielen. Diese Prozesse haben nicht direkt mit der Struktur von Gradphrasen und somit mit der Entfernung der quantifizierten Phrase aus dem Nebensatz zu tun; aber es wird gezeigt, dass sie mit den Mechanismen, die Komparativ-Tilgung oder deren Abwesenheit zugrunde liegen, interagieren. KW - komparative Nebensätze KW - Komparativ-Tilgung KW - Gradphrasen KW - linke Peripherie KW - Overtheits-Bedingung KW - comparative subclauses KW - Comparative Deletion KW - degree phrases KW - left periphery KW - overtness requirement Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-71255 SN - 978-3-86956-301-5 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - THES A1 - Brandt-Kobele, Oda-Christina T1 - Comprehension of verb inflection in German-speaking children T1 - Das Verständnis von Verbflexionsendungen bei deutschsprachigen Kindern N2 - Previous studies on the acquisition of verb inflection in normally developing children have revealed an astonishing pattern: children use correctly inflected verbs in their own speech but fail to make use of verb inflections when comprehending sentences uttered by others. Thus, a three-year old might well be able to say something like ‘The cat sleeps on the bed’, but fails to understand that the same sentence, when uttered by another person, refers to only one sleeping cat but not more than one. The previous studies that have examined children's comprehension of verb inflections have employed a variant of a picture selection task in which the child was asked to explicitly indicate (via pointing) what semantic meaning she had inferred from the test sentence. Recent research on other linguistic structures, such as pronouns or focus particles, has indicated that earlier comprehension abilities can be found when methods are used that do not require an explicit reaction, like preferential looking tasks. This dissertation aimed to examine whether children are truly not able to understand the connection the the verb form and the meaning of the sentence subject until the age of five years or whether earlier comprehension can be found when a different measure, preferential looking, is used. Additionally, children's processing of subject-verb agreement violations was examined. The three experiments of this thesis that examined children's comprehension of verb inflections revealed the following: German-speaking three- to four-year old children looked more to a picture showing one actor when hearing a sentence with a singular inflected verb but only when their eye gaze was tracked and they did not have to perform a picture selection task. When they were asked to point to the matching picture, they performed at chance-level. This pattern indicates asymmetries in children's language performance even within the receptive modality. The fourth experiment examined sensitivity to subject-verb agreement violations and did not reveal evidence for sensitivity toward agreement violations in three- and four-year old children, but only found that children's looking patterns were influenced by the grammatical violations at the age of five. The results from these experiments are discussed in relation to the existence of a production-comprehension asymmetry in the use of verb inflections and children's underlying grammatical knowledge. N2 - Experimentelle Studien zum Erwerb der Verbflexion bei sprachunauffälligen Kindern haben ein überraschendes Muster aufgezeigt. Kinder im Alter von drei und vier Jahren verwenden Verbflexionsendungen anscheinend korrekt in ihrer eigenen Sprachproduktion, aber sie scheinen unfähig zu sein, Verbflexionen in den Äußerungen anderer zu verstehen. Ein Kind ist also problemlos in der Lage “Sie schläft auf dem Bett.” zu sagen, wenn es die Position von z. B. einer Katze beschreiben möchte. Gleichzeitig scheint es nicht zu verstehen, dass sich ein Satz wie “Sie schläft auf dem Bett” auf nur eine schlafende Katze und nicht mehrere bezieht. Das Verständnis von Sätzen, in denen der einzige Hinweis auf die Anzahl der Handelnden (den Numerus des Subjekts) die Verbflexion ist, wurde bislang nur mit ‘Zeige-Experimenten’ untersucht. In solchen Sprachtests soll das Kind durch eine Zeigegeste auf eines von zwei vorgegebenen Bildern explizit anzeigen wie es den vorgegebenen Satz verstanden hat. Aktuelle Studien, die das Verständnis von sprachlichen Elementen wie Pronomen und Fokuspartikeln bei Kindern untersucht haben, lassen erkennen, dass die Testmethodik einen erheblichen Einfluss auf die kindlichen Sprachverständnisfähigkeiten zu haben scheint. Wenn man Methoden verwendet, die keine explizite Reaktion von Seiten der Kinder verlangen, findet man korrektes Verständnis schon bei jüngeren Kindern. Das Ziel dieser Dissertation war es zu untersuchen, ob drei- und vierjährige Kinder tatsächlich nicht in der Lage sind die Beziehung zwischen Verbform (Art der Verbflexion) und Subjektbedeutung (Numerus des Subjekts) zu verstehen oder ob man korrektes Sprachverständnis in jüngeren Populationen finden kann, wenn eine alternative Testmethode, die Messung der Augenbewegungen, verwendet wird. Zusätzlich wurde untersucht ob Kinder im gleichen Alter Verletzungen der Subjekt-Verb-Kongruenz in auditiv präsentierten Sätzen entdecken. Drei Experimente dieser Dissertation, die das kindliche Sprachverständnis in Bezug auf Verbflexion untersucht haben bringen folgendes Muster zum Vorschein: Deutsch-sprachige Kinder im Alter von drei bis vier Jahren schauten mehr zu einem Bild, auf dem nur ein Akteur zu sehen war, wenn sie einen Satz mit einem singular flektierten Verb hörten (Sie streichelt eine Katze). Andererseits schauten sie mehr zu einem Bild, auf dem zwei Akteure zu sehen waren, wenn sie einen Satz mit einem plural flektierten Verb hörten (Sie streicheln eine Katze). Wenn sie hingegen gebeten wurden, auf das korrekte Bild zu zeigen, reagierten sie nicht besser als es der Zufall erwartet hätte, d.h.~sie waren nicht in der Lage einen Satz einem entsprechenden Bild zuzuordnen. Dieses Ergebnismuster deutet auf die Existenz von (methoden-abhängigen) Asymmetrien innerhalb einer sprachlichen Modalität, dem Sprach\-verständnis, hin. Das vierte Experiment untersuchte die kindliche Sensitivität gegenüber der Verletzung von Subjekt-Verb-Kongruenz. Hier zeigte sich, dass das Blickverhalten von fünfjährigen Kindern von der Grammatikalität der Testsätze beeinflusst war, während keine Evidenz für das Erkennen von Grammatikalitätsverletzungen bei jüngeren Kindern gefunden werden konnte. Das asymmetrische Performanzmuster innerhalb der rezeptiven Modalität, das in dieser Arbeit gefunden wurde, erlaubt Rückschlüsse auf die Annahme einer Produktions-Verständnis-Aymmetrie und somit auch auf Theorien zur grammatischen Entwicklung bei Kindern. T3 - Spektrum Patholinguistik - Schriften - 6 KW - Spracherwerb KW - Verbflexion KW - Blickbewegungsmessung KW - Methoden KW - Sprachverständnis KW - Language acquisition KW - verb inflection KW - eye-tracking KW - methods KW - language comprehension Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-62046 SN - 978-3-86956-216-2 SN - 1869-3822 SN - 1869-3830 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER -