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1.0. Research Questions Similarity-based interference (Lewis 1996)

Effects of Syntactic & Phonological Similarity in Korean Center-embedding Constructions Sun-Hee Lee & Mineharu Nakayama The Ohio State University 16 th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Cambridge, MA, March 2003

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1.0. Research Questions Similarity-based interference (Lewis 1996)

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  1. Effects of Syntactic & Phonological Similarity in Korean Center-embedding Constructions Sun-Hee Lee & Mineharu Nakayama The Ohio State University 16th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Cambridge, MA, March 2003 E-mail: shlee@ling.ohio-state.edu/nakayama.1@osu.edu

  2. 1.0. Research Questions • Similarity-based interference (Lewis 1996) • Evidence from Japanese (Lewis and Nakayama, 2002): • The serial position of syntactically similar NP arguments affects the difficulty of Japanese center-embeddings. • Q1. Does Korean replicate this effect? • Q2. Does Korean show phonological similarity interference contra Uehara and • Bradley (1996) ? • Korean is structurally similar to Japanese, but has two phonologically distinct nominative markers. • -ka with nouns that end in vowels • -i with nouns that end in consonants. • e.g. Mary-ka vs. John-i

  3. 2.0. Test Sentences Markers: topic –nun, nominative –ka, -i, accusative -lul 1a.  [NP1-nun NP2-ka NP3-lul V V] (nun-ka type) 은주-는 영애-가 교수-를 찾아왔다고 기억했다. (Korean) Euncwu-nun Youngay-ka kyoswu-lul chacawasstako kiekhayssta. Euncwu-top Youngay-nom professor-acc visited remembered ‘Euncwu remembered that Youngay had visited the professor.’ 1b.  [NP1-nun NP2-i NP3-lul V V] (nun-i type)      Euncwu-nun Huisen-i  kyoswu-lul  chacawasstako kiekhayssta. Euncwu-top Huisen-nom professor-acc visited remembered    ‘Euncwu remembered that Huisen had visited the professor.’ 1c.  [NP1-ka NP2-ka NP3-lul V V] (ka-ka type)    Euncwu-ka   Youngay-ka kyoswu-lul chacawasstako kiekhayssta. Euncwu-nom Youngay-nom professor-acc visited remembered ‘Euncwu remembered that Youngay had visited the professor.’

  4. 1d.  [NP1-ka NP2-i NP3-lul V V] (ka-i type)    Euncwu-ka   Huisen-i kyoswu-lul chacawasstako kiekhayssta. Euncwu-nom Huisen-nom professor-acc visited remembered ‘Euncwu remembered that Huisen had visited the professor.’ 1e.  [NP1-i NP2-ka NP3-lul V V] (i-ka type)      Huisen-i  Euncwu-ka  kyoswu-lul  chacawasstako kiekhayssta. Huisen-nom Euncwu-nom professor-acc visited remembered ‘Huisen remembered that Euncwu had visited the professor.’ 1f.  [NP1-i NP2-i NP3-lul V V] (i-i type)      Huisen-i   Swuceng-i kyoswu-lul  chacawasstako kiekhayssta. Huisen-nom Swuceng-i professor-acc visited remembered ‘Huisen remembered that Swuceng had visited the professor.’

  5. 2.1. Predictions • If Korean is like Japanese, • the nominative -ka/-i sentences (1c-f) will be harder than the topic -nun • sentences (1a, b) because of syntactic and phonological similarity. • If there is an phonological similarity, • ka-i/i-ka sentences (1d, e) will be harder than the ka-ka/i-i (1c, f) sentences.

  6. 2.2. Methodology • Non-cumulative moving window study implemented in Psyscope • (Cohen, MacWhinney, Flatt, and Provost 1993) • Magnitude estimation task (Bard et al 1996) • 2.3. Design • Three two-syllable nouns (i.e., two characters) and two verbs. • NP1, NP2 = proper nouns NP3 = a common noun • Controlled for familiarity of nouns & plausibility of test sentences • Total 80 Sentences: 24 test sentences (1 type with 4 tokens) + 56 fillers • Subject: 48 Korean native speakers (ages 19-36, mean=28.2)

  7. 3.0. Results • [1] Effects of Syntactic and Phonological Similarity • The nominative sentences (1c-f) were significantly harder than the topic sentences (1a, b). (F1(1,47)=33.209, p<.0001; F2(1,46)=38.285, p<.001) • i. The nominative sentences with ka-ka/i-i (1c, f) were significantly harder than the topic sentences with nun-ka/nun-i (1a, b). (F1(1,47)=34.481, p<.0001; F2(1,46)=45.736, p<.0001) • ii. The nominative sentences with ka-i/i-ka (1d, e) were also significantly harder than the topic sentences with nun-ka/nun-i (1a, b). (F1(1,47)=27.359, p<.0001; F2(1,46)=21.197, p<.0001) • [2] Effects of Phonological Similarity • Among the nominative sentences, the same phonological sequences • ka-ka/i-i (1c, f) were significantly harder than ka-i/i-ka (1d, e). • (F1(1, 47)=14.259, p<.0001; F2(1,46)=4.554, p<.038)

  8. Figure 1. Magnitude Estimation- All 6 Conditions -

  9. Figure 2. Magnitude Estimation - Topic Sentences vs. Nominative Sentences -

  10. Figure 3. Magnitude Estimation- 2 Types of Nominative Sentences -

  11. 4.0. Discussion 1. Korean shows effects of syntactic similarity. - Results replicate findings in Japanese. - Babyonyshev and Gibson (1999), Gibson (2000), Lewis and Nakayama (2002), Uehara and Bradley (2002), Vasishth (2002) 2. Korean shows effects of phonological similarity. - Results are different from Uehara and Bradley’s (1996) null result, which neither included topic sentences nor controlled noun types as in this study. - Vasishth (2002)

  12. 3. Due to the finding [1] ii above, effects of Japanese syntactic similarity • discussed in Lewis and Nakayama (2002) were actually effects of • syntactic and phonological (morphophonemic) similarity. • - Lewis (2002) and Vasishth (2002) : “feature bundles” • 4. Evidence for similarity interference in working memory • - See Gordon et al. (2001) and Gordon et al. (2002) among others.

  13. References Bard, E. G., D. Robertson, and A. Sorace (1996) Magnitude estimation of linguistic acceptability. Language 72.1, 32-68. Cohen, J. D., B. MacWhinney, M. Flatt, and J. Provost (1993) PsyScope: A New graphic Interactive Environment for Designing Psychology Experiments. Behavioral Research Methods, Instruments & Computers 25.2, 257-271. Babyonyshev, M. and E. Gibson (1999) The complexity of nested structures in Japanese. Language 75.3, 423-450. Gibson, E. (2000) Dependency locality theory: A distance-based theory of linguistic complexity. In Marantz et al. (eds.), Image, Language, Brain: Papers from the first mind articulation project symposium. MIT Press. Gordon, P., C. Hendrick, and M. Johnson (2001) Memory interference during language processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition 27.6, 1411-1423. Lewis, R. L. (1996) Interference in short-term memory: The magical number two (or three) in sentence processing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 25.1, 93-115. Lewis, R.L. (2002) Parsing as cue-based memory retrieval:Toward computational models of the moment processes of sentence comprehension. (Talk presented at the Institue for Research in University of Pennsylvania. Lewis, R. L. and M. Nakayama (2002) Syntactic similarity effects of embeddings in Japanese. In M. Nakayama (ed.), Sentence Processing in East Asian Languages. 85-110.  CSLI. Uehara, K. and D. Bradley (1996). The effect of -ga sequences on processing Japanese multiply center-embedded sentences. In Park and Kim (eds.), Language, Information and Computation. Kyung Hee University. Vasishth, S. (2002) Working Memory in Sentence Comprehension: Processing Hindi center - embeddings. Ph.D. dissertation. Ohio State University.

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