A Neurolinguistic Model of Grammatical Construction Processing
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Regular and Irregular Aspects of Grammatical Constructions Konrad Szcześniak, Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic University of Silesia, Sosnowiec, Poland
Regular and Irregular Aspects of Grammatical Constructions Konrad Szcześniak, Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic University of Silesia, Sosnowiec, Poland This study focuses on two grammatical forms, the Incredulity Response Construction and the je vidět / vidieť construction. By analyzing their form and usage, I intend to weigh in on the debate concerning the importance of regularity and unpredictability inherent in grammatical constructions. The debate, initiated by Chomsky’s dismissal of idiosyncratic forms as peripheral, has gained momentum especially in recent years, with cognitive linguists uncovering more unpredictable aspects of language forms and claiming that language is primarily idiosyncratic, not regular. As a result, current cognitive linguistic descriptions of constructions highlight what is unpredictable and all but dismiss the regular aspects of constructions. The present study argues that the two sides—the predictable and the form-specific—coexist and thus have obvious implications for models of mental representations of language forms. By extrapolation, a recognition of a balance of the regular and irregular properties is relevant to our theorizing on how speakers learn and use constructions: just as the presence of idiosyncratic properties makes it necessary to memorize special cases of forms, the presence of regular properties can be assumed to ease the learning burden. An accurate description of any construction should attempt to detail both those aspects that can be predicted by rule and those that are endemic to a given construction and must be memorized. Keywords: grammatical construction, idiosyncrasy, regularity, IRC, je vidět / vidieť construction 1. Introduction The notions of irregularity, idiosyncrasy and unpredictability have received widely different treatments in major theoretical frameworks. -
The ERP Technique in Children's Sentence Processing: a Review a Técnica De ERP No Processamento De Sentenças De Crianças: U
Revista de Estudos da Linguagem, Belo Horizonte, v.25, n.3, p.1537-1566, 2017 The ERP technique in children’s sentence processing: a review A técnica de ERP no processamento de sentenças de crianças: uma revisão Marília Uchôa Cavalcanti Lott de Moraes Costa Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro / Brasil [email protected] Resumo: A medição da ativação cerebral por meio da técnica de potenciais relacionados a eventos (ERP) tem sido valiosa para lançar luz sobre diversas cognições humanas. A linguagem é uma das cognições que têm sido estudadas com essa técnica de grande resolução temporal entre o estímulo apresentado e a ativação observada decorrente desse estímulo. A área de aquisição da linguagem tem se beneficiado especialmente dessa técnica, dado que é possível investigar relações entre dados linguísticos e a ativação cerebral sem a necessidade de uma resposta explícita, como apertar um botão ou apontar para uma imagem. O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar o estado da arte sobre o processamento de frases em crianças utilizando a técnica de ERP. Palavras-chave: ERP/EEG; processamento de frases; aquisição da linguagem; N400; P600. Abstract: The measurement of brain activation through the technique of event related potentials (ERP) has been valuable in shedding light on various human cognitions. Language is one of those cognitions that has been studied using this technique, which allows for a more accurate temporal resolution between the stimulus presented and the time in which we observe an activation resulting from this stimulus. The area of eISSN: 2237-2083 DOI: 10.17851/2237-2083.25.3.1537-1566 1538 Revista de Estudos da Linguagem, Belo Horizonte, v.25, n.3, p.1537-1566, 2017 language acquisition has especially benefited from this technique since it is possible to investigate relationships between linguistic data and brain activation without the need for an explicit response. -
An Introduction to Cognitive Grammar
COGNITIVE SCIENCE 10, l-40 (1986) An Introduction to Cognitive Grammar RONALD W. LANGACKER University of California, San Diego Cognitive grammar takes a nonstandard view of linguistic semantics and grammatical structure. Meaning is equated with conceptualization. Semantic structures are characterized relative to cognitive domains, and derive their value by construing the content of these domains in a specific fashion. Gram- mar is not a distinct level of linguistic representation, but reduces instead to the structuring and symbolization of conceptual content. All grammatical units are symbolic: Basic categories (e.g., noun ond verb) are held to be notionally definable, and grammatical rules are analyzed as symbolic units that are both complex ond schematic. These concepts permit a revealing account of gram- maticol composition with notable descriptive advantages. Despite the diversity of contemporary linguistic theory, certain fundamental views enjoy a rough consensus and are widely accepted without serious question. Points of general agreement include the following: (a) language is a self-contained system amenable to algorithmic characterization, with suf- ficient autonomy to be studied in essential isolation from broader cognitive concerns; (b) grammar (syntax in particular) is an independent aspect of lin- guistic structure distinct from both lexicon and semantics; and (c) if mean- ing falls within the purview of linguistic analysis, it is properly described by some type of formal logic based on truth conditions. Individual theorists would doubtlessly qualify their assent in various ways, but (a)-(c) certainly come much closer than their denials to representing majority opinion. What follows is a minority report. Since 1976, I have been developing a linguistic theory that departs quite radically from the assumptions of the currently predominant paradigm. -
The Potentials for Basic Sentence Processing: Differentiating
The Potentials for Basic Sentence 20 Processing: Differentiating Integrative Processes Marta Kutas and Jonathan W. King ABSTRACT We show that analyzing voltage fluctuations known as "event-related brain potentials," or ERPs, recorded from the human scalp can be an effective way of tracking integrative processes in language on-line. This is essential if we are to choose among alternative psychological accounts of language comprehension. We briefly review the data implicating the N400 as an index of semantic integration and describe its use in psycholinguistic research. We then introduce a cognitive neuroscience approach to normal sentence processing, which capitalizes on the ERP's fine temporal resolution as well as its potential linkage to both psychological constructs and activated brain areas. We conclude by describing several reliable ERP effects with different temporal courses, spatial extents, and hypothesized relations to comprehension skill during the reading of simple transitive sentences; these include (1) occipital potentials related to fairly low-level, early visual processing, (2) very slow frontal positive shifts related to high-level integration during construction of a mental model, and (3) various frontotemporal potentials associated with thematic role assignment, clause endings, and manipulating items that are in working memories. In it comes out it goes and in between nobody knows how flashes of vision and snippets of sound get bound to meaning. From percepts to concepts seemingly effortless integration of highly segregated -
Psych150/ Ling155 Spring 2015 Review Questions: Speech Perception, Word Recognition, Sentence Processing, and Speech Production
Psych150/ Ling155 Spring 2015 Review Questions: Speech perception, word recognition, sentence processing, and speech production Terms/concepts to know: mondegreen, lack of invariance problem, Motor Theory of Speech Perception, McGurk effect, Ganong effect, priming, lexical decision, facilitation, inhibition, neighborhood density, homophone, homograph, Cohort model, TRACE model, Dual Route model, graphemes, developmental dyslexia, acquired dyslexia, parsing, incrementality, garden path sentence, global ambiguity, garden path theory, constraint-based approach, thematic relation, intransitive, transitive, ditransitive, sentential complement, slip of the tongue, tip of the tongue state, serial model, cascaded model, bidirectional cascaded model 1. The lack of invariance problem led to the development of the Motor Theory of Speech Perception (MToSP). What is the lack of invariance problem? How did the MToSP propose to solve that problem? 2. How does the McGurk effect differ from the Ganong effect? 3. Can priming occur without conscious awareness of the prime? What paradigm do researchers use to assess this possibility? 4. How does a lexical decision task work? Can lexical decision be used for both visual (written) and auditory (spoken) experiments? What is the dependent measure in lexical decision tasks? 5. Priming can cause facilitation or inhibition. How would these processes be reflected in reaction times? 6. How do homophones and homographs differ? 7. According to the Cohort model of auditory word recognition, what happens as the beginning of a word is detected? 8. What does the TRACE model predict about possibility of “speaker” and “beaker” being activated at the same time during word recognition? Why? 9. Writing systems differ in terms of the primary level of linguistic representations that they tap into, i.e., that symbols refer to (phonemes, syllables, morphemes). -
Toward Collaboration Between the Fields of Signal and Sentence Processing
Cortical Tracking of Speech: Toward Collaboration between the Fields of Signal and Sentence Processing Eleonora J. Beier1, Suphasiree Chantavarin1,2, Gwendolyn Rehrig1, Fernanda Ferreira1, and Lee M. Miller1 Abstract ■ In recent years, a growing number of studies have used corti- between the two fields could be mutually beneficial. Specifically, cal tracking methods to investigate auditory language processing. we argue that the use of cortical tracking methods may help re- Although most studies that employ cortical tracking stem from solve long-standing debates in the field of sentence processing that the field of auditory signal processing, this approach should also commonly used behavioral and neural measures (e.g., ERPs) have be of interest to psycholinguistics—particularly the subfield of failed to adjudicate. Similarly, signal processing researchers who sentence processing—given its potential to provide insight into usecorticaltrackingmaybeabletoreducenoiseintheneuraldata dynamic language comprehension processes. However, there and broaden the impact of their results by controlling for linguis- has been limited collaboration between these fields, which we tic features of their stimuli and by using simple comprehension suggest is partly because of differences in theoretical background tasks. Overall, we argue that a balance between the methodolog- and methodological constraints, some mutually exclusive. In this ical constraints of the two fields will lead to an overall improved paper, we first review the theories and methodological con- understanding of language processing as well as greater clarity on straints that have historically been prioritized in each field and what mechanisms cortical tracking of speech reflects. Increased provide concrete examples of how some of these constraints collaboration will help resolve debates in both fields and will lead may be reconciled. -
Introducing Sign-Based Construction Grammar IVA N A
September 4, 2012 1 Introducing Sign-Based Construction Grammar IVA N A. SAG,HANS C. BOAS, AND PAUL KAY 1 Background Modern grammatical research,1 at least in the realms of morphosyntax, in- cludes a number of largely nonoverlapping communities that have surpris- ingly little to do with one another. One – the Universal Grammar (UG) camp – is mainly concerned with a particular view of human languages as instantia- tions of a single grammar that is fixed in its general shape. UG researchers put forth highly abstract hypotheses making use of a complex system of repre- sentations, operations, and constraints that are offered as a theory of the rich biological capacity that humans have for language.2 This community eschews writing explicit grammars of individual languages in favor of offering conjec- tures about the ‘parameters of variation’ that modulate the general grammat- ical scheme. These proposals are motivated by small data sets from a variety of languages. A second community, which we will refer to as the Typological (TYP) camp, is concerned with descriptive observations of individual languages, with particular concern for idiosyncrasies and complexities. Many TYP re- searchers eschew formal models (or leave their development to others), while others in this community refer to the theory they embrace as ‘Construction Grammar’ (CxG). 1For comments and valuable discussions, we are grateful to Bill Croft, Chuck Fillmore, Adele Goldberg, Stefan Müller, and Steve Wechsler. We also thank the people mentioned in footnote 8 below. 2The nature of these representations has changed considerably over the years. Seminal works include Chomsky 1965, 1973, 1977, 1981, and 1995. -
Cognitive Grammar with Reference to Passive Construction in Arabic
International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Culture (LLC) March 2017 edition Vol.4 No.1 ISSN 2410-6577 Cognitive Grammar with Reference to Passive Construction in Arabic Dr. Bahaa-eddin Hassan Faculty of Arts, Sohag University, Egypt Abstract The purpose of this study is to examine Cognitive Grammar (CG) theory with reference to the active and the passive voice construction in Arabic. It shows how the cognitive approach to linguistics and construction grammar work together to explain motivation beyond the use of this syntactic construction; therefore, formal structures of language are combined with the cognitive dimension. CG characterizations reveal the limitations of the view that grammatical constructions are autonomous categories. They are interrelated with conceptualization in the framework of cognitive grammar. The study also accounts for the verbs which have active form and passive meaning, and the verbs which have passive form and active meaning. Keywords: Cognitive Grammar, Voice, Arabic, Theme-oriented. 1. Introduction In his Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Chomsky represented each sentence in a language as having a surface structure and a deep structure. The deep structure represents the semantic component and the surface structure represents the phonological approach. He explained that languages’ deep structures share universal properties which surface structures do not reveal. He proposed transformational grammar to map the deep structure (semantic relations of a sentence) on to the surface structure. Individual languages use different grammatical patterns for their particular set of expressed meanings. Chomsky, then, in Language and Mind, proposed that language relates to mind. Later, in an interview, he emphasized that language represents a state of mind. -
EEG Theta and Gamma Responses to Semantic Violations in Online Sentence Processing
Brain and Language 96 (2006) 90–105 www.elsevier.com/locate/b&l EEG theta and gamma responses to semantic violations in online sentence processing Lea A. Hald a,c, Marcel C.M. Bastiaansen a,b,¤, Peter Hagoort a,b a Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, P.O. Box 310, 6500 AH Nijmegen, The Netherlands b F. C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radbout Universiteit Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9101, 6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands c Center for Research in Language, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr., Dept. 0526, La Jolla, CA 92093-0526, USA Accepted 18 June 2005 Available online 3 August 2005 Abstract We explore the nature of the oscillatory dynamics in the EEG of subjects reading sentences that contain a semantic violation. More speciWcally, we examine whether increases in theta (t3–7 Hz) and gamma (around 40 Hz) band power occur in response to sen- tences that were either semantically correct or contained a semantically incongruent word (semantic violation). ERP results indicated a classical N400 eVect. A wavelet-based time-frequency analysis revealed a theta band power increase during an interval of 300– 800 ms after critical word onset, at temporal electrodes bilaterally for both sentence conditions, and over midfrontal areas for the semantic violations only. In the gamma frequency band, a predominantly frontal power increase was observed during the processing of correct sentences. This eVect was absent following semantic violations. These results provide a characterization of the oscillatory brain dynamics, and notably of both theta and gamma oscillations, that occur during language comprehension. 2005 Elsevier Inc. -
Sentence Processing What Makes up Psycholinguistics?
Introduction to Psycholinguistics Lecture 3: Sentence Processing Matthew W Crocker Computerlinguistik Universität des Saarlandes What makes up Psycholinguistics? Computational models of the representations, architectures and mechanisms that underlie human language processing. Linguistics: Wow people represent linguistic knowledge Psycholinguistics: How people use this knowledge to produce and understand language Computational Models: Implementations of psycholinguistic theory, using linguistic representations. More complete theory: models and predicts human behaviour Experiments & Data: Descriptive studies of human language processing Off-line: grammaticality judgement, completions, global reading time (?) On-line: “word-by-word”, self-paced reading, eye-tracking, ERP Test prediction of theories and computer models Corpus data: word-frequency, category and sense bias, subcategorization © Matthew W. Crocker Introduction to Psycholinguistics 2 1 Sentence Processing Sentence processing is the means by which the words of an utterance are combined to yield and interpretation All people do it well It is a difficult task: complexity and ambiguity Not simple ‘retrieval’, like lexical access Compositional: interpretation must be built, rapidly, even for novel word/structure input What are the architectures, mechanisms and representations underlying this process? Architectures: modularity vs. interaction Mechanisms: how is input mapped to interpretations using knowledge Representations: How is knowledge encoded © Matthew W. Crocker Introduction to Psycholinguistics 3 A Simple Theory of Grammar The Grammar The Lexicon S NP VP Det = {the, a, every} NP PN N = {man, woman, book, NP Det N hill, telescope} NP NP PP PN = {John, Mary} PP P NP P = {on, with} VP V V = {saw, put, open, VP V NP read, reads} VP V NP PP © Matthew W. Crocker Introduction to Psycholinguistics 4 2 A Generated Sentence the man read every book S ei S NP VP NP VP ty ru NP Det N VP V NP Det N V NP g g g tu NP Det N the man read Det N g g every book © Matthew W. -
Recovery from Misinterpretations During Online Sentence Processing
RECOVERY FROM MISINTERPRETATIONS 1 Recovery from misinterpretations during online sentence processing Lena M Blott1a, Jennifer M Rodd1, Fernanda Ferreira2, and Jane E Warren1 1 Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, UK 2 Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA a Corresponding author: Lena M Blott Chandler House 2 Wakefield Street London WC1N 1PF United Kingdom Email: [email protected] RECOVERY FROM MISINTERPRETATIONS 2 Abstract Misinterpretations during language comprehension are common. The ability to recover from such processing difficulties is therefore crucial for successful day-to-day communication. The present study investigated the outcome of comprehension processes and on-line reading behaviour when misinterpretations occurred. Although group-level effects of reinterpretation on sentence comprehension and on-line processing are of great theoretical interest, individual differences in the recovery from processing difficulty are of particular practical relevance. Even adult readers vary considerably in their “lexical expertise”, their knowledge of word forms and meanings and their experience with written material. We therefore also investigated the effect of individual differences in lexical expertise on processes related to the recovery from misinterpretations. Ninety-six adult participants read “garden-path” sentences in which an ambiguous word was disambiguated towards an unexpected meaning (e.g. The ball was crowded), while their eye movements were monitored. A Meaning Coherence Judgement task additionally required them to decide whether or not each sentence made sense. Results suggested that readers did not always engage in reinterpretation processes but instead followed a “good enough” processing strategy. Successful detection of a violation to sentence coherence and associated reinterpretation processes also required additional processing time compared to sentences that did not induce a misinterpretation. -
Generalizing Beyond the Input: the Functions of the Constructions Matter ⇑ Florent Perek , Adele E
Journal of Memory and Language 84 (2015) 108–127 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Memory and Language journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jml Generalizing beyond the input: The functions of the constructions matter ⇑ Florent Perek , Adele E. Goldberg Princeton University, Department of Psychology, Peretsman-Scully Hall, Princeton, NJ 08540, United States article info abstract Article history: A growing emphasis on statistics in language learning raises the question of whether and Received 4 June 2014 when speakers use language in ways that go beyond the statistical regularities in the input. revision received 27 April 2015 In this study, two groups were exposed to six novel verbs and two novel word order constructions that differed in function: one construction but not the other was exclusively used with pronoun undergoers. The distributional structure of the input was manipulated Keywords: between groups according to whether each verb was used exclusively in one or the other Language acquisition construction (the lexicalist condition), or whether a minority of verbs was witnessed in Artificial language learning both constructions (the alternating condition). Production and judgments results Novel construction learning Statistical learning demonstrate that participants tended to generalize the constructions for use in appropriate Argument structure discourse contexts, ignoring evidence of verb-specific behavior, especially in the alternating Generalization condition. Our results suggest that construction learning