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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.
Coordinated subjects often show variable number agreement with the finite verb, but linguistic approaches to this phenomenon have rarely been informed by systematically collected data. We report the results from three experiments investigating German speakers' agreement preferences with complex subjects joined by the correlative conjunctions sowohl horizontal ellipsis als auch ('both horizontal ellipsis and'), weder horizontal ellipsis noch ('neither horizontal ellipsis nor') or entweder horizontal ellipsis oder ('either horizontal ellipsis or'). We examine to what extent conjunction type and a conjunct's relative proximity to the verb affect the acceptability and processibility of singular vs. plural agreement. Experiment 1 was an untimed acceptability rating task, Experiment 2 a timed sentence completion task, and Experiment 3 was a self-paced reading task. Taken together, our results show that number agreement with correlative coordination in German is primarily determined by a default constraint triggering plural agreement, which interacts with linear order and semantic factors. Semantic differences between conjunctions only affected speakers' agreement preferences in the absence of processing pressure but not their initial agreement computation. The combined results from our offline and online experimental measures of German speakers' agreement preferences suggest that the constraints under investigation do not only differ in their relative weighting but also in their relative timing during agreement computation.
This study investigates the comprehension of wh-questions in individuals with aphasia (IWA) speaking Turkish, a non-wh-movement language, and German, a wh-movement language. We examined six German-speaking and 11 Turkish-speaking IWA using picture-pointing tasks. Findings from our experiments show that the Turkish IWA responded more accurately to both object who and object which questions than to subject questions, while the German IWA performed better for subject which questions than in all other conditions. Using random forest models, a machine learning technique used in tree-structured classification, on the individual data revealed that both the Turkish and German IWA’s response accuracy is largely predicted by the presence of overt and unambiguous case marking. We discuss our results with regard to different theoretical approaches to the comprehension of wh-questions in aphasia.
We examined native and non-native English speakers’ processing of indirect object wh-dependencies using a filled-gap paradigm while recording event-related potentials (ERPs). The non-native group was comprised of native German-speaking, proficient non-native speakers of English. Both participant groups showed evidence of linking fronted indirect objects to the subcategorizing verb when this was encountered, reflected in an N400 component. Evidence for continued filler activation beyond the verb was seen only in the non-native group, in the shape of a prolonged left-anterior negativity. Both participant groups showed sensitivity to filled indirect object gaps reflected in a P600 response, which was more pronounced and more globally distributed in our non-native group. Taken together, our results indicate that resolving indirect object dependencies is a two-step process in both native and non-native sentence comprehension, with greater processing cost incurred in non-native compared to native comprehension.
The aim of our study was to examine the extent to which linguistic approaches to sentence comprehension deficits in aphasia can account for differential impairment patterns in the comprehension of wh-questions in bilingual persons with aphasia (PWA). We investigated the comprehension of subject and object wh-questions in both Turkish, a wh-in-situ language, and German, a wh-fronting language, in two bilingual PWA using a sentence-to-picture matching task. Both PWA showed differential impairment patterns in their two languages. SK, an early bilingual PWA, had particular difficulty comprehending subject which-questions in Turkish but performed normal across all conditions in German. CT, a late bilingual PWA, performed more poorly for object which-questions in German than in all other conditions, whilst in Turkish his accuracy was at chance level across all conditions. We conclude that the observed patterns of selective cross-linguistic impairments cannot solely be attributed either to difficulty with wh-movement or to problems with the integration of discourse-level information. Instead our results suggest that differences between our PWA’s individual bilingualism profiles (e.g. onset of bilingualism, premorbid language dominance) considerably affected the nature and extent of their impairments.
We report the results from two experiments examining native and non-native German speakers’ sensitivity to crossover constraints on pronoun resolution. Our critical stimuli sentences contained personal pronouns in either strong (SCO) or weak crossover (WCO) configurations. Using eye-movement monitoring during reading and a gender-mismatch paradigm, Experiment 1 investigated whether a fronted wh-phrase would be considered as a potential antecedent for a pronoun intervening between the wh-phrase and its canonical position. Both native and non-native readers initially attempted coreference in WCO but not in SCO configurations, as evidenced by early gender-mismatch effects in our WCO conditions. Experiment 2 was an offline antecedent judgement task whose results mirrored the SCO/WCO asymmetry observed in our reading-time data. Taken together, our results show that the SCO constraint immediately restricts pronoun interpretation in both native and non-native comprehension, and further suggest that SCO and WCO constraints derive from different sources.
This study provides a synthesis of corpus-based and experimental investigations of word-order preferences in German infinitival complementation. We carried out a systematic analysis of present-day German corpora to establish frequency distributions of different word-order options: extraposition, intraposition, and 'third construction'. We then examined, firstly, whether and to what extent corpus frequencies and processing economy constraints can predict the acceptability of these three word-order variants, and whether subject raising and subject control verbs form clearly distinguishable subclasses of infinitive-embedding verbs in terms of their word-order behaviour. Secondly, our study looks into the issue of coherence by comparing acceptability ratings for monoclausal coherent and biclausal incoherent construals of intraposed infinitives, and by examining whether a biclausal incoherent analysis gives rise to local and/or global processing difficulty. Taken together, our results revealed that (i) whilst the extraposition pattern consistently wins out over all other word-order variants for control verbs, neither frequency nor processing-based approaches to word-order variation can account for the acceptability of low-frequency variants, (ii) there is considerable verb-specific variation regarding word-order preferences both between and within the two sets of raising and control verbs under investigation, and (iii) although monoclausal coherent intraposition is rated above biclausal incoherent intraposition, the latter is not any more difficult to process than the former. Our findings indicate that frequency of occurrence and processing-related constraints interact with idiosyncratic lexical properties of individual verbs in determining German speakers' structural preferences.
We report the results from an eye-movement monitoring study investigating native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers’ real-time processing of antecedent-contained deletion (ACD), a type of verb phrase ellipsis in which the ellipsis gap forms part of its own antecedent. The resulting interpretation problem is traditionally thought to be solved by quantifier raising, a covert scope-shifting operation that serves to remove the gap from within its antecedent. Our L2 group comprised advanced, native German-speaking L2 learners of English. The analysis of the eye-movement data showed that both L1 and L2 English speakers tried to recover the missing verb phrase after encountering the gap. Only the native speakers showed evidence of ellipsis resolution being affected by quantification, however. No effects of quantification following gap detection were found in the L2 group, by contrast, indicating that recovery of the elided material was accomplished independently from the object’s quantificational status in this group.
While much attention has been devoted to the cognition of aging multilingual individuals, little is known about how age affects their grammatical processing. We assessed subject-verb number-agreement processing in sixty native (L1) and sixty non-native (L2) speakers of German (age: 18-84) using a binary-choice sentence-completion task, along with various individual-differences tests. Our results revealed differential effects of age on L1 and L2 speakers' accuracy and reaction times (RTs). L1 speakers' RTs increased with age, and they became more susceptible to attraction errors. In contrast, L2 speakers' RTs decreased, once age-related slowing was controlled for, and their overall accuracy increased. We interpret this as resulting from increased L2 exposure. Moreover, L2 speakers' accuracy/RT patterns were more strongly affected by cognitive variables (working memory, interference control) than L1 speakers'. Our findings show that as regards bilinguals' grammatical processing ability, aging is associated with both gains (in experience) and losses (in cognitive abilities).
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of healthy aging on the ability to suppress grammatically illicit antecedents during pronoun resolution. Method: In 2 reading-based acceptability-judgment experiments, younger and older speakers of German read sentences containing an object pronoun and 2 potential antecedent noun phrases, only 1 of which was a grammatically licit antecedent. Using a gender-mismatch paradigm, we compared to what extent younger and older speakers were sensitive to feature (mis)matches between the pronoun and either of the 2 antecedents. All participants were fluent readers of German and had finished at least secondary education. Results: Experiment 1 used a self-paced reading paradigm. Older speakers showed greater sensitivity than younger ones to mismatching licit antecedents, but no group showed any evidence of interference from an intervening competitor antecedent. In Experiment 2, we increased the processing demand by using paced word-by-word stimulus presentation and longer sentences. Here, older participants showed reduced sensitivity, in comparison with younger people, to mismatching licit antecedents. Unlike our younger participants, they showed signs of distraction by the presence of a linearly closer but grammatically inappropriate antecedent when no appropriate antecedent was available.
Aims and objectives: Our study addresses the following research questions: To what extent is L2 comprehenders’ online sensitivity to morphosyntactic disambiguation cues affected by L1 background? Does noticing the error signal trigger successful reanalysis in both L1 and L2 comprehension? Can previous findings suggesting that case is a better reanalysis cue than agreement be replicated and extended to L2 processing when using closely matched materials? Design/methodology/approach: We carried out a self-paced reading study using temporarily ambiguous object-initial sentences in German. These were disambiguated either by number marking on the verb or by nominative case marking on the subject. End-of-trial comprehension questions probed whether or not our participants ultimately succeeded in computing the correct interpretation. Data and analysis: We tested a total of 121 participants (25 Italian, 32 Russian, 32 Korean and 32 native German speakers), measuring their word-by-word reading times and comprehension accuracy. The data were analysed using linear mixed-effects and logistic regression modelling. Findings/conclusions: All three learner groups showed online sensitivity to both case and agreement disambiguation cues. Noticing case disambiguations did not necessarily lead to a correct interpretation, whereas noticing agreement disambiguations did. We conclude that intermediate to advanced learners are sensitive to morphosyntactic interpretation cues during online processing regardless of whether or not corresponding grammatical distinctions exist in their L1. Our results also suggest that case is not generally a better reanalysis cue than agreement. Significance/implications: L1 influence on L2 processing is more limited than might be expected. Contra previous findings, even intermediate learners show sensitivity to both agreement and case information during processing.
Sensitivity to parasitic gaps inside subject islands in native and non-native sentence processing
(2017)
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.
We investigated the comprehension of subject-verb agreement in Turkish-German bilinguals using two tasks. The first task elicited speeded judgments to verb number violations in sentences that contained plural genitive modifiers. We addressed whether these modifiers elicited attraction errors, which have supported the use of a memory retrieval mechanism in monolingual comprehension studies. The second task examined the comprehension of a language-specific constraint of Turkish against plural-marked verbs with overt plural subjects. Bilinguals showed a reduced application of this constraint, as compared to Turkish monolinguals. Critically, both groups showed similar rates of attraction, but the bilingual group accepted ungrammatical sentences more often. We propose that the similarity in attraction rates supports the use of the same retrieval mechanism, but that bilinguals have more problems than monolinguals in the mapping of morphological to abstract agreement features during speeded comprehension, which results in increased acceptability of ungrammatical sentences.
Previous research has shown that during cataphoric pronoun resolution, the predictive search for an antecedent is restricted by a structure-sensitive constraint known as ‘Condition C’, such that an antecedent is only considered when the constraint does not apply. Evidence has mainly come from self-paced reading (SPR), a method which may not be able to pick up on short-lived effects over the timecourse of processing. This study investigates whether or not the active search mechanism is constrained by Condition C at all points in time during cataphoric processing. We carried out one eye-tracking during reading and a parallel SPR experiment, accompanied by offline coreference judgment tasks. Although offline judgments about coreference were constrained by Condition C, the eye-tracking experiment revealed temporary consideration of antecedents that should be ruled out by Condition C. The SPR experiment using exactly the same materials indicated, conversely, that only structurally appropriate antecedents were considered. Taken together, our results suggest that the application of Condition C may be delayed during naturalistic reading.
The present study used event related potentials (ERPs) to investigate how native (L1) German-speaking second-language (L2) learners of English process sentences containing filler-gap dependencies such as Bill liked the house (women) that Bob built some ornaments for __ at his workplace. Using an experimental design which allowed us to dissociate filler integration from reanalysis effects, we found that fillers which were implausible as direct objects of the embedded verb (e.g. built the women) elicited similar brain responses (an N400) in L1 and L2 speakers when the verb was encountered. This confirms findings from behavioral and eye-movement studies indicating that both L1 and L2 speakers immediately try to integrate a filler with a potential lexical licensor. L1/L2 differences were observed when subsequent sentence material signaled that the direct-object analysis was in fact incorrect, however. We found reanalysis effects, in the shape of a P600 for sentences containing fillers that were plausible direct objects only for L2 speakers, but not for the L1 group. This supports previous findings suggesting that L2 comprehenders recover from an initially plausible first analysis less easily than L1 speakers.
Discourse Prominence and Antecedent MisRetrieval during Native and Non-Native Pronoun Resolution
(2022)
Previous studies on non-native (L2) anaphor resolution suggest that L2 comprehenders are guided more strongly by discourse-level cues compared to native (L1) comprehenders. Here we examine whether and how a grammatically inappropriate antecedent’s discourse status affects the likelihood of it being considered during L1 and L2 pronoun resolution. We used an interference paradigm to examine how the extrasentential discourse impacts the resolution of German object pronouns. In an eye-tracking-during-reading experiment we examined whether an elaborated local antecedent ruled out by binding Condition B would be mis-retrieved during pronoun resolution, and whether initially introducing this antecedent as the discourse topic would affect the chances of it being mis-retrieved. While both participant groups rejected the inappropriate antecedent in an offline questionnaire irrespective of its discourse prominence, their real-time processing patterns differed. L1 speakers initially mis-retrieved the inappropriate antecedent regardless of its contextual prominence. L1 Russian/L2 German speakers, in contrast, were affected by the antecedent’s discourse status, considering it only when it was discourse-new but not when it had previously been introduced as the discourse topic. Our findings show that L2 comprehenders are highly sensitive to discourse dynamics such as topic shifts, supporting the claim that discourse-level cues are more strongly weighted during L2 compared to L1 processing.
Second language speakers often struggle to apply grammatical constraints such as subject-verb agreement. One hypothesis for this difficulty is that it results from problems suppressing syntactically unlicensed constituents in working memory. We investigated which properties of these constituents make them more likely to elicit errors: their grammatical distance to the subject head or their linear distance to the verb. We used double modifier constructions (e.g., the smell of the stables of the farmers), where the errors of native speakers are modulated by the linguistic relationships between the nouns in the subject phrase: second plural nouns, which are syntactically and semantically closer to the subject head, elicit more errors than third plural nouns, which are linearly closer to the verb (2nd-3rd-noun asymmetry). In order to dissociate between grammatical and linear distance, we compared embedded and coordinated modifiers, which were linearly identical but differed in grammatical distance. Using an attraction paradigm, we showed that German native speakers and proficient Russian speakers of German exhibited similar attraction rates and that their errors displayed a 2nd-3rd-noun asymmetry, which was more pronounced in embedded than in coordinated constructions. We suggest that both native and second language learners prioritize linguistic structure over linear distance in their agreement computations.