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Animacy Is Mediated by Topicality in the Production of Word Order In

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AnimacyAnimacy isis mediatedmediated byby topicalitytopicality inin thethe productionproduction ofof wordword orderorder inin YucatecYucatec MayaMaya andand SpanishSpanish Lindsay Kay Butler*,1, T. Florian Jaeger1, Jürgen Bohnemeyer2 1University of Rochester, 2University at Buffalo, SUNY *Corresponding author: [email protected] Accessibility, animacy and discourse Results: Spanish Results: Yucatec Maya ● Conceptual accessibility influences sentence production 1 1 ● Referents that are more animate, prototypical, given (vs. new), etc. are more likely to be mentioned early in the sentence[1],[2] ● Cross-linguistic evidence: 0.8 0.8 [1],[2] [12] [4] [7],[11] [6] [10] [5] ● English , German , Greek , Japanese , Odawa , Spanish , Yucatec Maya ● What is driving this effect? [1],[2] 0.6 0.6 ● Do more accessible referents get assigned a prominent functional role (subject)? PVA [4],[7],[8] ● Or does accessibility have a direct effect on positional processing? AVP Conceptual → functional → positional 0.4 0.4 ● Evidence from languages with flexible word order argues that more accessible referents are not always assigned subject function 0.2 0.2 ● E.g. Spanish active left-dislocation A la mujer la atropelló el tren i i 0 0 To the woman her ran over the train Agent General Patient Agent General Patient Agent General Patient Agent General Patient “The train ran over the woman”[10] Inanimate patients Human patients Inanimate patients Human patients ● There is an additive effect of inherent accessibility (animacy) and derived accessibility ● Mixed logit analyses, random intercepts by- ● Effect of animacy was significant [10],[11] (e.g. discourse givenness) ● subjects and items (collinearity <.5) Human patients led to more PVA ● [9] Some languages are subject-prominent, while others are topic-prominent ● No significant effect of animacy (p<.1) (β=2.67,z=3.1,p<.01) ● What is the role of topicality or “aboutness”? How does it relate to the effects of animacy? ● Topicality is significant predictor of word order ● Patient topics also led to more PVA than agent ● Patient topics led to more PVA than agent and general topics (β=1.89,z=5.7,p<.001) and general (β=.93,z=7.9,p<.001) ● Agent topics led to fewer PVA than general topics Experiment ● General topics led to more PVA than agent (β=-1.63,z=-5.5,p<.001) (β=1.19,z=4.6,p<.001) ●In planned comparisons, the effect of animacy was Undergoer Topic Topic statement Video significant for general topics (β=4,z=2.7,p<.01) and animacy marginally for patient topics (β=2,1,z=-1.9,p<.06) Hábleme sobre el carro but not significant for agent topics (p<1) Agent Ta'anen yo'olal le kiisbutso' “Tell me about the car” Discussion Dímme que pasó ● When topicality was controlled for, the effect of animacy on word order in Spanish disappeared Inanimate General A'aten ba'ax uuchi' ● In Yucatec, the effect of animacy is mediated by topicality “Tell me what happened” ● Animacy was only significant for undergoer and general topics but not for agent topics Hábleme sobre la carreta Undergoer Ta'anen yo'olal le seestao' ● Yucatec has a grammaticalized prominence hierarchy that influences word order “Tell me about the cart” (topicality → definiteness → humanness → animacy)[3] Hábleme sobre el carro ● This could explain the difference between Yucatec and Spanish in the effect of animacy Agent Ta'anen yo'olal le kiisbutso' “Tell me about the car” ● Is there a difference between simple previous mention (givenness) and what the sentence is Dímme que pasó about (topicality)? A'aten ba'ax uuchi' [10] Human General ● Prat-Sala and Branigan found an additive effect of derived (givenness) and inherent “Tell me what happened” (animacy) accessibility for Spanish while our Spanish speakers did not show sensitivity to Hábleme sobre el vaquero animacy when topicality was introduced Undergoer Ta'anen yo'olal le kalanwakaxo' “Tell me about the cowboy” ● Is discourse role assignment functionally equivalent to grammatical function assignment? ● If so, then accessibility may always have an indirect effect on positional processing while being References subject to cross-linguistic differences in the use of grammatical vs. discourse role assignment [1] Bock, J. K. and Warren, R. K., 1985. Conceptual accessibility and syntactic structure in sentence formation. Cognition 21, 47-67. [2] Bock, J. K. 1986. Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive Psychology 18, 355—387. [3] Bohnemeyer, J. 2009. Linking without grammatical relations in Yucatec: Alignment, extraction, and control. In Y. Nishina, Y. M. Shin, S. Skopeteas, E. Verhoeven, & J. Helmbrecht (Eds.), Issues in functional-typological linguistics and language theory: A Festschrift for Christian Lehmann on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. [4] Branigan, H. P. and Feleki, E. 1999. Conceptual accessibility and serial order in Greek language production. In Proceedings of the 21st Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Vancouver. [5] Butler, L., T. F. Jaeger, K. Furth, A. Lemieux, C. G. Gallo, J. Bohnemeyer. 2010. Psycholinguistics in the field: Accessibility-based production in Yukatek Maya. Poster presented at CUNY 2010: Conference on Human Sentence Processing, New York, NY. [6] Christianson, K. and Ferreira, F. 2005. Conceptual accessibility and sentence production in a free word order language (Odawa). Cognition 98, 105-135. [7] Ferreira, V. and Yoshita. 2003. Given-new ordering effects on the production of scrambled sentences in Japanese. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 32, 660-692. [8] Ferreira, V. F. and Dell, G. S. 2000. Effect of ambiguity and lexical availability on syntactic and lexical production. Cognitive Psychology 40, 296-340. [9] Li, C. N. and S. A. Thompson. 1976. Subject and Topic: A new typology. In C. N. Li (Ed.), Subject and Topic, pp. 457—490. New York: Academic Press. [10] Prat-Sala, M. and Branigan, H. P., 2000. Discourse constraints on syntactic processing in language production: A cross-linguistic study in English and Spanish. Journal of Memory and Language 42, 168-182 [11] Tanaka, M. N., H. P. Branigan, J. F. McLean, M. J. Pickering. 2011. Conceptual influences on word order and voice in sentence production: Evidence from Japanese. Journal of Memory and Language 65 (3): 318-330. [12] Van Nice, K. Y. and Dietrich, R. 2003. Task sensitivity of animacy effects: Evidence from German picture descriptions. Linguistics 41, 825-849..
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