Psy1302 Psychology of Language

1. Psy1302 Psychology of Language Lecture 12Sentence Comprehension II

2. Today • Revisit lexical and syntactic ambiguity connection • Critiques of F&C • Remaining time – Review (Q & A)

3. Equi-bias and Non-Equibias Nouns Do you remember this experiment? Supportive Context No Supportive Context Equibias + supportive context pitcher Non-Equibias port + supportive context

4. New View • Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution is like Lexical Ambiguity Resolution • Lexicalist Based Constraint Satisfaction View

5. Lexicalist Based Constraint Satisfaction View • Lexical entries have information about the syntax • Lexical information of verbs include e.g.: • what kind of arguments it takes • (e.g., “put” takes NP, PP) • thematic role between the verb and its argument • (e.g., patient/theme, goal, etc.) • syntactic structures & the frequency of occurrence

6. Classic Ambiguous Sentence • The horse raced past the barn fell.

7. Ambiguous Sentences Which one seems more difficult? 1. The horse raced past the barn fell. 2. The horse carried past the barn fell.

8. Verbs and Structural Frequencies Table from MacDonald, Pearlmutter, & Seidenberg Paper

9. Equi-bias and Non-Equibias Structures Syntactic Structures • Verbs differ in preferences (frequencies) for structures • Which verb you choose for your studies will matter . . Past Participle (Reduced Relative) Past Tense (Main Clause)

10. Table from MacDonald, Pearlmutter, & Seidenberg Paper

11. Past Participle (RR) Past Tense (MC) Syntactic Structures • Various contextual information can influence the levels of activation. “The defendant/evidence examined….” Non-Equibias Structures examined -- Thickness of the line indicates amount of activation.

12. Thematic Influence on Equi-bias and Non-Equibias Structures Good Agent Past Participle (RR) Past Tense (MC) Past Tense (MC) Syntactic Structures • Thematic information: Can X do the examining? • Good agent  reinforce Past Tense (Main Verb) reading “The defendant/evidence examined….” Non-Equibias Structures examined

13. Thematic Influence on Equi-bias and Non-Equibias Structures Poor Agent Past Participle (RR) Past Participle (RR) Past Tense (MC) Syntactic Structures • Thematic information: Can X do the examining? • Poor agent  reinforce Past Participle (Reduced Relative) reading “The defendant/evidence examined….” Non-Equibias Structures examined

14. Thematic Influence on Equi-bias and Non-Equibias Structures Poor Agent & Good Theme. Past Participle (RR) Past Participle (RR) Past Tense (MC) Syntactic Structures • Thematic information: Can X be examined? • Poor agent & Good theme  even more strongly reinforce Past Participle (Reduced Relative) reading “The defendant/evidence examined….” Non-Equibias Structures examined

15. Thematic Influence on Equi-bias and Non-Equibias Structures 2 Referents. Past Participle (RR) Past Participle (RR) Past Tense (MC) Syntactic Structures • Discourse and referential context • E.g. 2 defendants, one who was examined by the lawyer, and one who was not. “The defendant/evidence examined….” Non-Equibias Structures examined

16. Critiques of F&C • Experiment 1 • Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Garnsey (1994) • Thematic (Semantic) Information and Reduced Relative Reading • Experiment 2 & 3 • Tabossi, Spivey-Knowlton, McRae, & Tanenhaus (1994) • Britt, Perfetti, Garrod, & Rayner (1992) • Main Clause vs. Reduced Relative • VP-attached vs. NP-attached

17. Ferreira & Clifton (1986) Q: Is the initial syntactic processing stage influenced by: 1. thematic/semantic information (Exp. 1) 2. pragmatic or contextual information (Exp. 2 & 3)

18. DISAMBIGUATING REGION Ferreira & Clifton (1986)Experiment 1 4 Sentence Types: • Reduced, Animate The defendant examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable. • Reduced, Inanimate The evidence examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable. • Unreduced, Animate The defendant that was examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable. • Unreduced, Inanimate The evidence that was examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable.

19. C+1 C+2 C-2 C-1 C FAST OR SLOW PREDICTIONS MODULAR INTERACTIVE SLOW FAST FAST FAST SLOW FAST SLOW FAST Animate Reduced Animate Unreduced Inanimate Reduced Inanimate Unreduced The evidence examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable. ACTUAL RESULTS

20. Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Garnsey (1994) • Critique of Ferreira & Clifton • 8 out of 16 of Ferreira & Clifton’s INANIMATE items had possible main clause continuations.

21. Examples from F&CContinue with non-relative clause reading? the truck. • The car towed… • The ship sighted… • The message recorded… • The skin felt… • The trash smelled… • The car sold… Cape Cod on November 19, 1620 Baldwin screaming at his child. soft. nasty. for a million dollars

22. Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Garnsey (1994) Experiment 1 Stimuli Experimenter made sure inanimate sentences were poor agents Table 1 from paper

23. Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Garnsey (1994) Experiment 1 First Pass Reading

24. Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Garnsey (1994) Experiment 1 Second Pass Reading

25. Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Garnsey (1994) Experiment 2 Manipulations • Used normed N-V stimuli • Animates had 100% Main Clause sentence completion • Inanimates had under 30% Main Clause sentence completion • Decreased the number of relative clause sentences tested • Decrease chance of sentence structure becoming expected or priming other RR sentences • Used mixed case instead of all upper case. • Increased naturalness and ease of text read • Reduce reading time  reduce processing/ambiguity resolution time

26. Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Garnsey (1994)

27. Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Garnsey (1994)

28. Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Garnsey (1994) • Inanimate stimuli were “bad agents” • Were the stimuli “good patient/theme”? • Rating Task: • “How typical is it for the evidence to examine something?” • “How typical is it for the evidence to be examined by someone?” 1 = not typical, 7 = typical

29. Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Garnsey (1994) p < .05 = statistically significant High Rating (good theme/patient) = Short Reading time (easier processing)

30. Weak fit Inanimates Strong Fit Inanimates Unambiguous (e.g. drawn) Weak fit Animates examined examined by the lawyer by the lawyer Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Garnsey (1994) Strong Semantic fit defined as: Agent rating < 2.0, and Patient rating > 5.0 Weak Semantic Fit: remaining items. Y-axis Reading Time Difference = Reduced minus Unreduced Relative Clause

31. PP (RR) PT (MC) F&C’s Inanimates Syntactic Structures “The defendant/evidence examined….” • Thematic information: Can X do the examining? + Good agent  reinforce Past Tense (Main Verb) reading + Poor agent  reinforce Past Participle (Reduced Relative) reading + Poor agent & Good theme  even more strongly reinforce Past Participle (Reduced Relative) reading Non-Equibias Structures examined Past Participle (RR) Past Tense (MC)

32. Animate Reduced Animate Unreduced Inanimate Reduced 45 25 Inanimate Unreduced 40 20 Reading Time Animate Reduced 35 15 Animate Unreduced 30 Inanimate Reduced 10 Inanimate Unreduced 25 5 20 0 examined by the turned out examined by the turned out lawyer lawyer F&C: Exp. 1 Data Revisited

33. Ferreira & Clifton (1986) Q: Is the initial syntactic processing stage influenced by: 1. thematic/semantic information (Exp. 1) 2. pragmatic or contextual information (Exp. 2 & 3) • What was tested? • Critiques?

34. Main Clause vs. Reduced Relative • Main Clause frequency is 12x that of Reduced Relative Past Participle (Reduced Relative) Past Tense (Main Clause) • Context has to be really strong to overcome Main Clause reading!

35. Tally up homework survey Complete the sentence #1 John worked as a reporter for a big city newspaper. He sensed that a major story was brewing over the city hall scandal, and he obtained some evidence that he believed pretty much established the mayor’s guilt. He went to his editors with a tape and some photos because he needed their approval before he could go ahead with the story. He ran a tape for one of his editors, and he showed some photos to the other. The editor played the tape…

36. S S NP VP NP VP CONJ VP VP S NP VP V NP NP NP V NP V NP V and liked it The editor played the tape t played the tape liked it The man Complete the sentence #1how did your friend complete the sentence/paragraph? “played the tape”… • Main Clause • Reduced Relative Clause • Other MAIN CLAUSE REDUCED RELATIVE CLAUSE

37. Main Clause vs. Reduced Relative • F&C’s context is weak • Context is weak as determined by other researchers using sentence completion at point of ambiguity. • Context is insufficient to overcome preference for reduced relative clause reading • Context might just be enough to make relative clause in competition with the dominant main verb reading  Increased reading times • (F&C Exp 3)

38. F&C: Experiment 2 & 3Referential Context Information Support + NMA Support + MA No Support + NMA No Support + MA

39. F&C: Experiment 3 Slower With context. Context x Attachment Effect!!! Faster With context.

40. PP (RR) PP (RR) PP (RR) PP (RR) PT (MC) PT (MC) PT (MC) PT (MC) F&C: Experiment 3Replication of Experiment 2 with another method • Context supporting Minimal Attachment Reduces Reading Time • Context supporting Non-Minimal Attachment Increases Reading Time • Why? MA sentence NMA sentence +NMA supportive context +MA supportive context

41. VP-attached vs. NP-attached • Last lecture, we saw a case where referential context affects VP vs. NP attachment preference. • What’s going on in F&C’s study?

42. Tally up homework survey Complete the sentence #2 Sam worked at a factory warehouse. His job was to make sure that boxes of merchandise were ready to be delivered. Sam had to fill up a van so it could go out. He had a pile of boxes on a cart and another pile on the floor. He knew some guys from another department needed the cart. Sam loaded the boxes on the cart…

43. S S VP NP NP VP PP NP PP NP V PP NP PP V Sam loaded onto the van the boxes on the cart before lunch Sam loaded on the cart the boxes Complete the sentence #2 “on the cart”: • VP-attached • NP-attached • Other VP-attached NP-attached

44. PUT (V): NP, PP PP NP-Attached PP VP-Attached VP-attached vs. NP-attached

45. VP-attached vs. NP-attached • Lexical Biases of Verbs in F&C • Verbs highly supportive of VP-attached reading over NP-attached reading • E.g. “load”, “place” expect PP. • “Sam loaded the boxes on the cart.” • VP-attached frequent

46. VP-attached vs. NP-attached • What if we used other verbs? (Britt et al. 1992) Peter read the books on the chair instead of lying in bed (VP-attachment) Peter read the books on the chair instead of the other books (NP-attachment) Peter read the books on the war instead of the other books (NP-attachment) 1. 2. 3. 1 vs. 3 in neutral context. VP-attachment is read faster 1 vs. 3 in supportive context. Both equally fast. 1 vs. 2 in neutral context. VP-attachment is faster. 1 vs. 2 in supportive context. Both equally fast. Think about analogy to lexical ambiguities!

47. Models of Sentence Processing • Garden-Path Model • Autonomous • Late closure • Minimal attachment • Constraint-Based Model • Interactive • Lexical Biases • Referential Contexts • Structural Biases } Cues from multiple sources constrain interpretation

48. Final Word of Caution (a quote from MacDonald, Pearlmutter, & Seidenberg, 1994) • [A]lthough the architecture… affords the possibility of continuous interaction between contextual information and the lexicon, the effects of contexts tend to be more retroactive than proactive…. • [L]ess information is needed to discriminate between two alternatives than to preselect one of them.