Immediate Constraint Application While she was taking classes full-time, Jessica was working two jobs to pay the bills. While she was taking classes full-time, Russell was working two jobs to pay the bills. She was taking classes full-time while Jessica was working two jobs to pay the bills. She was taking classes full-time while Russell was working two jobs to pay the bills. While she … She … Jessica … Russell … while Jessica … while Russell … Self-Paced Reading, Gender Mismatch Paradigm (Kazanina, Lau, Lieberman, Phillips, & Yoshida, submitted)

Results GME at the 2 nd NP in non-PrC pair while Jessica Russell (Kazanina et al., submitted)

Results GME at the 2 nd NP in non-PrC pair NO GME at the 2 nd NP in PrC pair Condition C – immediate while Jessica Russell (Kazanina et al., submitted)

Incrementality in Production

Different domains –Speech errors –Flexibility and incrementality –Look-ahead in planning

Broca’s Aphasia

Message Functional Processing Positional Processing Phonological Encoding a. Lexical selection b. Function assignment a. Constituent assembly b. Inflection Adapted from Bock & Levelt (1994) Kay Bock Pim Levelt

Speech Errors

“…the most slippable units are the most basic units in language production […] each of these - the word, the morpheme, and the phoneme - is the basic building block for a particular linguistic level.” (Dell 1995, p. 190)

Word Errors - Category Constraint

Incrementality in Production

Message Functional Processing Positional Processing Phonological Encoding a. Lexical selection b. Function assignment a. Constituent assembly b. Inflection Adapted from Bock & Levelt (1994)

Wilhelm Wundt ( ) “…the main job will be to do as much as can be done with strictly incremental production. This is a time-honored principle in psycholinguistics. Wundt (1900) said that word order follows the successive apperception of the parts of a total conception [Gesamtvorstellung]. Of course, Wundt added that this can only hold to the degree that word order is free in a language.” (Levelt 1989, p. 26).

V. Ferreira 1996 Incremental models predict easier production with syntactic flexibility for two reasons –All structures are freely available to be filled –Strict incremental construction permits the most active lexical representation (rather than syntactic competition) to determine structural decisions.

+ I gave toys children to 250ms 500ms 1500ms 250ms Until button press I gave toys to the children. I gave the children toys. I donated toys to the children. *I donated the children toys.

She gave it to the child. *She gave the child it. She gave the box to him. She gave him the box.

confused him story 250ms 1500ms 1000ms Until button press The story confused John.John rejected the story. John was confused by the story.The story was rejected by John. The story confused him.He rejected the story. *Him was confused by the story.*The story was rejected by he.

confused rejected

Ferreira & Dell 2000 “Production proceeds more efficiently if syntactic structures are used that permit quickly selected lemmas to be mentioned as soon as possible. We call this the principle of immediate mention.” (Ferreira & Dell, 2000, p. 299) Availability effects –The coach knew (that) you missed practice. –‘that’ omitted more frequently the more accessible the embedded subject is.

Ferreira & Dell 2000 Repetition –I knew (that) I had booked a flight for tomorrow. –You knew (that) I had booked a flight for tomorrow. –I knew (that) you had booked a flight for tomorrow. –You knew (that) you had booked a flight for tomorrow.

Ferreira & Dell 2000

Picture-Word Interference

cat

Picture-Word Interference duck

Picture-Word Interference rice

Levels of Encoding Task: picture description –Conjunctions:“the arrow and the bag” –Simple sentences“the arrow is next to the bag” Auditory distractor: semantic, phonological, unrelated Interference effects - delay in utterance onset latencies –SemanticNP1NP2 –PhonologicalNP1 (Meyer 1996)

Look-Ahead “Is the verb an obligatory part of the advance planning unit?” Task - simple scene description + distractors –Intransitive: verb + subject –Transitive: verb + subject + object Prompts –Auf dem nächsten Bild sieht man wie…S (O) V in the next pic. sees one how… –Und auf dem nächsten Bild…V S (O) and on the next pic. … Distractors: SEM, UNREL, SYN, IDENT, NONE (Schriefers et al., 1998)

Look-Ahead (Schriefers et al., 1998)

Look-Ahead “The production system does not have to wait for successful retrieval of the verb lemma when it occurs late in the utterance.” (Schriefers et al., 1998)

Look-Ahead (Schriefers et al., 1998) Distractor onsets after 200ms

Look-Ahead “It appears that speakers can assign syntactic functions without knowing the verb lemma and its subcategorization frame and argument structure, and they do so if the verb does not occur in utterance initial position.” (Schriefers et al., 1998)

Look-Ahead (Schriefers et al., 1998) Expt. 5 - simple main clauses, no prompts “…the verb is only part of the grammatical advance planning unit if it occurs in utterance initial position.”

More Production

Summary so far… Evidence for incremental grammatical encoding –V. Ferreira (1996): give/donate alternation - opportunistic choice of word order –Schriefers et al. (1998): lack of picture-word interference effects on verb in S (O) V structures –V. Ferreira & Dell (2000): modulation of use of that.

Arithmetic Add the following – = – = (Dutch, French speakers) (Brysbaert et al., 1998)

Arithmetic Language contrast –Dutch: 51ms advantage for order –French: 56ms advantage for order Radically incremental account –“the Dutch speakers try to get access to the unit of the response first, because they can start programming the pronunciation of the answer as soon as the value of the unit is known. In contrast, the French speakers have to capitalise on the value of the ten, which they must know before the response execution can be started” (p. 67) (Brysbaert et al., 1998)

Arithmetic Say the following – “[…]” “[…] is the sum” “the sum is […]” (Ferreira & Swets, 2002)

Expt 1: utterance duration unaffected by difficulty Expt 2: utterance duration affected by difficulty

Look-Ahead in Grammatical Encoding Swets & F. Ferreira (2003)

(Swets & Ferreira 2003)

How Incremental is Production? This question can mean different things –What are the units of grammatical encoding? –What are the units of phonological encoding? –How closely time-locked are grammatical and phonological encoding?

Psycholinguistics II The Dynamics of Language LING 641 Colin Phillips, Jeff Lidz

Last semester… Abstraction

Abstraction is valuable –Provides representational power –Provides representational freedom Abstraction is costly –Linguistic representations are more distant from experience –This places a burden on the learner - motivation for innate knowledge –This places a burden on comprehension/production systems –(and it makes it harder to know what to look for in the brain)

This semester… Progression in focus –‘What are the mental representations?’ –‘How do the representations change?’ –Inference and dynamics

Multiple Time Resolutions days - years seconds milliseconds

Recurring Themes How does information/input lead to change? –Highly general inferences using abstract categories … or not –Inferences based on robust generalizations … or not –Risk-taking in inferences … and recovery from error –Integration of information/input across levels of representation Does certain information have priority?

Memory for Structure

Old finding - Bransford/Franks

Old finding - Sachs

Potter & Lombardi 1990 Regeneration in the Short-term Recall of Sentences Journal of Memory & Language, 29,

+

The

knight

rode

around

the

palace

looking

for

a

place

to

enter.

%%%

BRIDGE

TABLE

GOOSE

CASTLE

HORSE

%%%

? HOUSE ?

Recall the original sentence…

Target The knight rode around the palace searching for a place to enter. Distractors BRIDGE TABLE GOOSE CASTLE HORSE lure Results Spontaneous intrusion of lures:9% Intrusion of lures from distractors:27% Conclusion Short-term recall is no different from regular message generation. (Potter & Lombardi 1990)

Lombardi & Potter 1992 The Regeneration of Syntax in Short-term Memory Journal of Memory & Language, 31,

Lombardi & Potter 1992 Logic: if recall involves message re-generation, then it should be possible to create syntactic lures, parallel to the lexical lures in Potter & Lombardi (1990). Targets –The rich widow is going to give a million dollars to the university. –The rich widow is going to give the university a million dollars. Lure –DONATE Intrusion in recall of NP-PP targets11%7% changed syntax Intrusion in recall of NP-NP targets7% (n.s.)90% changed syntax

Sentence words meaning structure Not yet shown

But there is memory for structure…

(Potter & Lombardi 1998, exp. 1)

Syntactic Priming Repeating a structure aloud (e.g., passive, dative construction) increases the tendency to use the same surface syntax when generating a subsequent, unrelated sentence to describe a picture (Bock, 1986, 1989; Bock & Loebell, 1990). Picture for active/passive alternation

Granularity of Priming Superficially similar V-NP-PP sequences prime one another, e.g., dative and locative PPs. –The wealthy widow gave an old Mercedes to the church. –The wealthy widow drove an old Mercedes to the church. –The construction worker was hit by the bulldozer. –The construction worker was digging by the bulldozer. –Susan brought a book to Sally. –Susan brought a book to study.

Priming Effects Production - Production Comprehension - Comprehension Comprehension - Production etc.