1 Reading time evidence for enriched composition McElree et al. (2001) Rianne Oostwoud-Wijdenes & Maartje Schulpen

2 Introduction Verbs like begin/finish/enjoy semantically select for activities/events. Also occur with NP-complements: (1)The critic began the book  interpreted as activity/event with NP as direct object (= type-shifted)

3 Introduction Pustejovsky’s account for type-shifting: set of compositional rules that operates over a semantic typing system. Qualia (formal, constitutive, telic, agentive roles): relational structures with variables that are bound during interpretation.  determine interpretation of type-shifted NP (though subject or discourse context may also play a role).

Introduction Goal of the experiment was to prove that sentences requiring enriched composition (type-shifted NPs) (example 2) took longer to read than sentences with simple composition (3 and 4). (2) The author was starting the book in his house on the island. (3) The author was writing the book in his house on the island. (4) The author was reading the book in his house on the island. 4

5 Experiment: Pretest 1 and 2 4 pretests 1. Derive preferred and non-preffered sentences: Fill-in-the-black response to: “The author was starting _____ the book.” Results: preferred condition: mean=15.2 (range 8-23) non-preferred: mean=1.3 (range 0-5) 2. Sensibility of items: Plausibility survey – rating 1 (makes no sense) to 7 (makes perfect sense) Results: Mean plausibility ratings: type-shifted: 6.4 preferred: 6.4 non-preffered: 6.3 Conclusion: no reliable differences among conditions

6 Experiment: Pretest 3 and 4 3. Predictability of the NP given the verb: Sentence completion: “The author was starting the _____.” Results: The mean close probabilities were: type-shifted: 0.07; preferred: 0.13; non-preferred: 0.09 Conclusion: the predictability of the noun will not explain any reading time differences. 4. Account for differences in frequencies of matrix verb: Corpus (Francis & Kucera) study: Results: type-shifted: 123; preferred: 89; non-preferred: 78 Conclusion: cannot explain longer reading times on the critical noun and noun +1 regions in type-shifting condition.

7 Experiment: method 51 participants 33 sets of 3 sentences (99 items) Self-paced reading The author…………………………………………………………

8 Experiment: method 51 participants 33 sets of 3 sentences (99 items) Self-paced reading ……………..was starting………………………………………….

9 Experiment: method 51 participants 33 sets of 3 sentences (99 items) Self-paced reading …………………………….the book………………………………

10 Experiment: method 51 participants 33 sets of 3 sentences (99 items) Self-paced reading ………………………………………..in his house ……………...

11 Experiment: method 51 participants 33 sets of 3 sentences (99 items) Self-paced reading ………… ……………………………………………on the island. Yes-or-no questions after each sentence Recorded times for display – press space

12 Experiment: hypothesis Type-shifting condition should have longer RTs than the other 2 conditions Non-preferred condition should have longer RTs than preferred condition Type-shifting > Non-preferred > Preferred

13 Experiment: results VerbDeterminer the Noun book +1 in +2 his +3 house Type-shifted Preferred Non-preferred The author was starting/writing/reading the book in his house on the island

14 Conclusion Type-shifting takes longer (additional operation): effect at Noun and +1 Non-preferred takes longer (less prototypical activity for the subject – not expected): effect only at Noun  type-shifting is more difficult than interpreting non-preferred verbs

15 Discussion Issues: –Test items: some of them not convincing –Pretest 1: preferred items: wide range, occurring 8 out of 23 not very convincing; some non-preferred items didn’t occur at all –Pretest 2: should have included fillers, also clearly non-sensical sentences –Can the data be explained in terms of Fodor & Lepore? Problem for F&L: how to “give an adequate treatment of the interpretation of verbs like ‘begin’ and ‘enjoy’ without appeal to the content that the subject and the complement contribute to the interpretation”? –How much of this is actually proof for type-shifting (more than just proof for higher processing costs for some other reason – e.g. plausibility/predictability)

16 Questions Questions? Thanks for your attention!