Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science University of Trento, Italy The Syntactic Side of Time: Processing Adverb-Verb Temporal Agreement by Nicoletta Biondo Dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Advisor Prof. Francesco Vespignani External Referees Prof. Brian W. Dillon – University of Massachusetts Amherst Prof. Francesca Peressotti – University of Padova ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have met many people that have supported and inspired me during these three years, and it is definitely time to thank all of them. First and foremost, I want to thank my advisor, Francesco Vespignani. I started my PhD career as a theoretical linguist with no idea about the cognitive side of language research. Although my inexperience has often led us to inescapable discussions about how and if a psycholinguistic experiment can support specific claims coming from theoretical linguistics (and vice versa), Francesco has patiently guided me and taught me what methodological rigor is. Thanks to him I have learned to think big, to broaden my horizons and to address the right questions, so thanks Francesco. I want also to thank two valuable researchers that guided me through my research activities when I was abroad, Simona Mancini and Brian Dillon. Simona’s work has been extremely inspiring from the very beginning, since the time of my master’s studies in Siena. My research project would have not been the same without her seminal work on agreement processing. Moreover, I have also found in her a good friend that supported me during some frustrating moments of my PhD, so thanks Simona. Similarly, Brian’s work on memory access during sentence comprehension has opened a new interesting window in my research path. Moreover, his encouragement and his countless advice have made my stay at UMass the most creative and productive time of my PhD. Thanks to Brian I have really learned to believe in my ideas. I want also to thank Brian, as well as Francesca Peressotti, for having kindly accepted to review my dissertation. They both gave me interesting comments and useful suggestions. I want also to thank the scholar that initially guided me through the complex and fascinating world of linguistics, Luigi Rizzi. I had the great opportunity to III work with him when I was a master student in Siena and, despite his copious commitments, he has always found the time to give me useful feedback about my experimental findings or to discuss about big (and controversial) theoretical questions, so thanks Luigi. Many thanks also go to my new friends in Rovereto, in particular to Francesco, Marco, Alessandra, Teresa, Alessio, Andrea, Giuseppe, Luca, Stefano, Tania, Isabel and to my dearest friends and roommates Noemi, Rossella and Chiara that were there for me, both in the “darkest” and in the “brightest” times. Last, but not least, I want to thank mamma Piera, Paolo and Lia. In particular, I dedicate my dissertation to my father, who taught me to never give up. He rejoiced in my happiness when I started this PhD program, but he left too early to see my satisfaction in concluding this hard and challenging work. IV CONTENTS Acknowledgments ........................................................................................ III 1. Introduction ............................................................................................ 1 1.1. The challenging status of agreement in current models of parsing ........ 1 1.2. The current work: investigating adverb-verb temporal agreement ......... 3 1.3. Rationale and structure of the dissertation .......................................... 7 2. Temporal agreement in theoretical linguistics .......................................... 11 2.1. The semantics of Tense and deictic temporal adverbs........................... 12 2.2. The syntax of Tense and deictic temporal adverbs ................................ 18 2.2.1. Tense .............................................................................................. 18 2.2.2. Deictic temporal adverbs and their relation with tense .................... 20 2.3. Theoretical choices .............................................................................. 23 2.4. Terminological choice: agreement or concord? ...................................... 27 3. Past experimental literature and new research questions......................... 29 4. Study 1: A self-paced reading study on adverb-verb temporal agreement ................................................................................ 37 4.1. Introduction ........................................................................................ 41 4.2. Experiment 1 ....................................................................................... 49 4.2.1. Materials and method .......................................................................... 58 4.2.1.1. Participants .................................................................................... 58 4.2.1.2. Design and materials ...................................................................... 58 4.2.1.3. Procedure ....................................................................................... 60 4.2.1.4. Data analysis .................................................................................. 62 4.2.2. Results ................................................................................................ 63 4.2.2.1. Temporal violations ........................................................................ 63 V 4.2.2.2. Number violations .......................................................................... 65 4.2.2.3. N-words violations ......................................................................... 66 4.2.2.4. Across experiment interaction ........................................................ 67 4.2.3. Discussion ........................................................................................... 67 4.3. Experiment 2 ....................................................................................... 72 4.3.1. Materials and method .......................................................................... 73 4.3.1.1. Participants .................................................................................... 73 4.3.1.2. Design and materials ...................................................................... 74 4.3.1.3. Procedure ....................................................................................... 74 4.3.1.4. Analysis .......................................................................................... 74 4.3.2. Results ................................................................................................ 76 4.3.2.1. Temporal violations ......................................................................... 77 4.3.2.2. Number violations ........................................................................... 80 4.3.2.3. N-words violations .......................................................................... 80 4.3.2.4. Across experiment interaction ........................................................ 81 4.3.3. Discussion ........................................................................................... 81 4.4. Experiment 3 ....................................................................................... 85 4.4.1. Materials and method .......................................................................... 86 4.4.1.1. Participants .................................................................................... 86 4.4.1.2. Design and materials ...................................................................... 87 4.4.1.3. Procedure ....................................................................................... 90 4.4.1.4. Data analysis .................................................................................. 90 4.4.2. Results ................................................................................................ 91 4.4.2.1. Temporal violations ......................................................................... 91 4.4.2.2. Number violations ........................................................................... 92 4.4.2.3. N-words violations .......................................................................... 93 4.4.2.4. Across experiment interaction ........................................................ 94 4.4.3. Discussion ........................................................................................... 95 4.5. General discussion .............................................................................. 97 4.5.1. Late stages of processing ..................................................................... 97 4.5.2. Early stages of processing .................................................................... 99 VI 4.5.3. Distance between the pre-verbal adverb and the verb ........................... 102 4.5.4. Order of the two constituents ............................................................... 103 4.6. Acknowledgements .............................................................................. 105 5. Bridge between Study 1 and Study 2 ....................................................... 107 6. Study 2: Widening agreement processing: a matter of time, distance and features .................................................................................. 109 6.1. Introduction .......................................................................................