Complex Syntactic Structures Research Articles

The linguistic processes underlying the P600

The P600 is an event-related brain potential (ERP) typically associated with the processing of grammatical anomalies or incongruities. A similar response has also been observed in fully acceptable long-distance wh-dependencies. Such findings raise the question of whether these ERP responses reflect common underlying processes, and what might be the specific mechanisms that are shared between successful processing of well-formed sentences and the detection and repair of syntactic anomalies. The current study presents a comparison of the ERP responses elicited by syntactic violations, garden path sentences, and long-distance wh-dependencies, using maximally similar materials in a within-subjects design. Results showed that a P600 component was elicited by syntactic violations and garden path sentences, but was less robustly elicited in the long-distance wh-dependency condition. Differences in the scalp topography, onset and duration of the P600 effects are characterised in terms of the syntactic operations involved in building complex syntactic structures, with particular attention to retrieval processes, which control the latency of the P600, and structure building processes, which control its duration and amplitude.

The Dialect of Jowshaqan Part One: Phonology, Morphology and Syntax

AbstractThis article presents the grammar of Jowshaqani, a Central Iranian dialect. Like other members of this group, Jowshaqani has its own peculiarities; for instance, it has a rich inventory of personal pronouns distinguished by gender in the 3rd person singular, as do verb endings: nen ate “he comes”, néna atea “she comes”, etc. The past tenses of transitive verbs are inflected ergatively, with the agential affixes, which float through the sentence yielding complex syntactic structures.

On Multidominance and Linearization

This article centers around two questions: What is the relation between movement and structure sharing, and how can complex syntactic structures be linearized? It is shown that regular movement involves internal remerge, and sharing or ‘sideward movement’ external remerge. Without ad hoc restric-tions on the input, both options follow from Merge. They can be represented in terms of multidominance. Although more structural freedom ensues than standardly thought, the grammar is not completely unconstrained: Argu-ably, proliferation of roots is prohibited. Furthermore, it is explained why external remerge has somewhat different consequences than internal re-merge. For instance, apparent non-local behavior is attested. At the PF inter-face, the linearization of structures involving remerge is non-trivial. A cen-tral problem is identified, apart from the general issue why remerged mater-ial is only pronounced once: There are seemingly contradictory linearization demands for internal and external remerge. This can be resolved by taking into account the different structural configurations. It is argued that the line-arization is a PF procedure involving a recursive structure scanning algo-rithm that makes use of the inherent asymmetry between sister nodes im-posed by the operation of Merge.

The pragmatic meanings conveyed by function words in Chinese sentences: An ERP study

In the study, we aimed to investigate the cognitive processing of the Chinese sentences utilizing the function words “CAI” or “JIU” through ERP methods, and to provide further evidence to the theory of function word in Chinese linguistics. In the experiment, we constructed four types of materials (Type 1–Type 4): simple sentences, complex sentences without numerals, complex sentences with numerals and sentences with fixed expressions. There were corresponding correct and incorrect sentences in each type. It was observed that the incorrect sentences of the first two types elicited significant N400 and P600 effects, and the complex syntactic structures in the second type made their amplitudes larger. This result suggests that “CAI” and “JIU” can constrain sentence meanings within certain boundaries, and the contrast between the preset context and actual context can be further distinguished when the preset context is described explicitly. The unexpected “CAI” or “JIU” in the sentences in Type 3 elicited a larger P3b as compared with the expected ones. This indicates that the relationship between the preset and actual contexts in quantity is constrained and such a constraint is further converted to the direct quantitative comparison between the numerals. Moreover, the widely distributed and sustaining CPS (closure positive shift) evoked by the violations of fixed expressions denotes that the fixed prosodic boundaries are broken. These results suggest that in certain conditions, the function words “CAI” and “JIU” can also convey pragmatic meanings beyond their syntactic functions. It further confirms the theory of function word in Chinese linguistics.

The British component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB), Release 2 , and: Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English (DCPSE) , and: The International Corpus of English Corpus Utility Program (ICECUP), version 3.1 (review)

Reviewed by: The British component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB), Release 2, and: Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English (DCPSE), and: The International Corpus of English Corpus Utility Program (ICECUP), version 3.1 Mark Davies The British component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB), Release 2. CD-ROM. Ed. by Bas Aarts and Sean Wallis. London: Survey of English Usage, University College London, 2006. Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English (DCPSE). CD-ROM. Ed. by Bas Aarts and Sean Wallis. London: Survey of English Usage, University College London, 2006. The International Corpus of English Corpus Utility Program (ICECUP), version 3.1. CD-ROM. Ed. by Sean Wallis. London: Survey of English Usage, University College London, 2006.* In the movie Back to the future (1985), the main character is transported back thirty years into the 1950s, but the knowledge and experience that he took from the 1980s provide for a happy ending. This is somewhat analogous to the two recent corpora under discussion: The British component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB) and the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English (DCPSE). These corpora are reminiscent of corpora from thirty to forty years ago, when million-word corpora were the norm. In terms of relationships to older corpora, it is also interesting to note that half of the DCPSE actually IS a corpus from the late 1960s to early 1980s. But as in the movie, these corpora have been (re)structured and annotated in ways that make them much more useful than other small corpora of bygone days, and I believe that both still fill an important niche in today's world of English corpora. ICE-GB is the British component of the International Corpus of English, a project that will eventually contain components from approximately twenty English-speaking countries (see http://www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage/ice/). Each component contains one million words—600,000 spoken and 400,000 written. IGE-GB is without a doubt the most advanced component of the overall ICE project in terms of its annotation and interface, which is something that serves as the focal point of this review. DCPSE, the second corpus under review, is composed of two parts. The first is the 600,000-word spoken part of ICE-GB and the second is the 400,000-word London Lund Corpus, a corpus of spoken British English from the late 1960s through the early 1980s. In addition to the corpora users receive ICECUP ('ICE Corpus Utility Program') 3.1, the software and interface that are used to access the two corpora. The ICECUP corpus interface allows users to interact with the corpus and corpus data in a number of different ways. Via expanding tree diagrams, users can browse through the corpora (based on several different criteria), and can limit the search to a particular 'node' of the corpus, or to texts identified by a given speaker or text variables. They can search through a lexicon of all forms in the corpus, or a 'grammaticon' of all syntactic tags and the associated words. In the 'Keyword in context' display, there are many options for customizing the display, increasing and decreasing context, and so on. Users can carry out basic searches via the 'text fragment search', such as end* up <V> for ended up leaving, ends up watching, and so on. The heart of the search engine, however, is an extremely powerful (and yet relatively easy to use) interface that looks for 'fuzzy tree fragments'. Users create chart-like maps of the query by adding nodes and indicating part of speech, word forms, wildcards, and the like. The power of the fuzzy-tree-fragment searches comes from the fact that the corpora are not just tagged for part of speech, but are also parsed. Thus users can search for complex syntactic structures like 'notional direct objects', 'floating NP postmodifiers', 'cleft operators', and more than fifty other features. Users can also save query results, and can [End Page 443] later combine queries at virtually any level of complexity. And lest users think that it is all too complex, the creators have written a 340+ page book...

Impersonal null‐subjects in Icelandic and elsewhere*

Abstract. This paper discusses impersonal null‐subjects in Icelandic and elsewhere. Despite the fact that the interpretation of Icelandic impersonal null‐subjects obeys restrictions similar to those observed for overt impersonal subject pronouns in various languages, they cannot be analyzed as lexical pronouns, deleted in PF. Rather, it is argued, impersonal null‐subjects are constructed in syntax, by combination (merger) of abstract features. In general, it seems that pronouns, silent and overt, are PF representations of complex syntactic structures, rather than tokens for discrete terminal nodes. In addition, the paper discusses the cross‐linguistic distribution and typology of impersonal null‐subjects.

As far as individuals with conduction aphasia understood these sentences were ungrammatical: Garden path in conduction aphasia

Background: Recent studies have indicated that working memory is not a unitary resource and that different types of working memory are used for different types of linguistic processing: syntactic, semantic, and phonological. Phonological working memory was found to support the comprehension of sentences that require re‐access to the word‐form of a word that appeared earlier in the sentence. The research was supported by a research grant from the National Institute for Psychobiology in Israel (Friedmann 2004‐5‐2b), and by the Joint German–Israeli Research Program grant (Friedmann GR‐01791). We thank Irena Botwinik‐Rotem, Tali Siloni, and Michal Biran for discussions of this study. Aims: This study explored the relation between phonological working memory and sentence comprehension by testing the comprehension of garden path sentences in individuals with conduction aphasia who have very limited phonological working memory. Our prediction was that if phonological working memory limitation hampers word‐form reactivation, only the comprehension of garden paths that require word‐form reactivation will be impaired, whereas garden paths that require only structural reanalysis will be better preserved. Methods & Procedures: Five individuals with conduction aphasia and 15 matched controls participated in working memory tests and a garden path comprehension test. The phonological working memory assessment included a battery of 10 tests, which showed that four of the individuals, who had input conduction aphasia, had very limited phonological working memory, and one individual, with output conduction aphasia, had unimpaired working memory. The comprehension study included 60 garden path sentences of three types: structural garden paths, which require only structural reanalysis, lexical garden paths, which require lexical re‐access in addition to structural reanalysis, and optional‐complement garden paths, which require re‐access to the lexical‐syntactic frame of the verb in addition to the structural reanalysis. Outcomes & Results: The main result was that the individuals with input conduction aphasia showed different degrees of impairment in different types of garden path sentences. The lexical garden paths were exceptionally hard for them, with a mere 10% correct, and significantly more difficult than the structural garden paths. The individual with output conduction aphasia whose working memory was intact comprehended the lexical garden paths similarly to the normal controls. Conclusions: These findings indicate that phonological working memory impairment only affects the comprehension of sentences that require phonological, word‐form re‐access. The type of sentence and the type of processing it requires should be taken into account when trying to predict the effect of working memory limitation on a patient's ability to understand sentences. Whereas individuals with input conduction aphasia can understand complex syntactic structures well, they have considerable difficulties understanding sentences that also require re‐access to a word‐form.

Anwendung des „Sprachverständnistests für komplexe syntaktische Strukturen (nach D.V. Bishop)“ bei 6- bis 8-jährigen Grundschülern

Standardized tests for speech comprehension have been lacking for the diagnostic investigation of primary school children with problems in hearing and speech development. The informal speech comprehension test for complex syntactic structures ("Sprachverständnistest für komplexe syntaktische Strukturen", SKSS), a shortened and in Swiss German translated modification of the Test for Reception of Grammar of Bishop, was analyzed for its logical validity of content, difficulty indices, selectivity, reliability and standard values in percent. We conducted the SKSS on 64 primary school children (first grade, average age 6.9 years) and 84 primary school children (second grade, average age 8.2 years). Four test sentences were excluded because of their ambiguous nature. The remaining 26 test sentences most often indicated low difficulty. However, there was an obvious difference between the two groups in terms of difficulty as well reliability. Based on our results, the test proved to be useful for screening. It allows both quantitative and qualitative interpretations.

A Functional Neuroimaging Investigation of the Roles of Structural Complexity and Task-Demand During Auditory Sentence Processing

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this study directly examined an issue that bridges the potential language processing and multi-modal views of the role of Broca's area: the effects of task-demands in language comprehension studies. We presented syntactically simple and complex sentences for auditory comprehension under three different (differentially complex) task-demand conditions: passive listening, probe verification, and theme judgment. Contrary to many language imaging findings, we found that both simple and complex syntactic structures activated left inferior frontal cortex (L-IFC). Critically, we found activation in these frontal regions increased together with increased task-demands. Specifically, tasks that required greater manipulation and comparison of linguistic material recruited L-IFC more strongly; independent of syntactic structure complexity. We argue that much of the presumed syntactic effects previously found in sentence imaging studies of L-IFC may, among other things, reflect the tasks employed in these studies and that L-IFC is a region underlying mnemonic and other integrative functions, on which much language processing may rely.

Spanish Second Language Acquisition: State of the Science (review)

Reviewed by: Spanish Second Language Acquisition: State of the Science Yvonne Lam Lafford, B.A., & Salaberry, R. (Eds.). (2003). Spanish Second Language Acquisition: State of the Science. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Pp. 344, $39.95 US (paper). Spanish Second Language Acquisition gathers together in one volume numerous studies on the acquisition of Spanish as a second language. While several books exist that survey the field of second language acquisition (SLA) in general (e.g., Gass & Selinker, 2001; Doughty & Long, 2003), none has focused on the Spanish language. As interest in learning Spanish grows, an increasing number of studies have examined learners of Spanish, and Spanish SLA has become a sub-field with its own fora for publication (e.g., the proceedings of the annual Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese and the applied linguistics section of Hispania). However, these publications are limited to specific issues; only Lafford (2000) has attempted to present an overview of the many varied areas of research within Spanish SLA. This book thus fills a noticeable gap in SLA at a time when interest in learning Spanish is increasing. Spanish Second Language Acquisition is designed as a reference tool for SLA researchers, graduate students, and second/foreign language teachers. The editors also suggest that it might be used as a textbook for a graduate course on Spanish SLA, as some background knowledge of linguistics (and, this reviewer would like to add, some basic knowledge of SLA) is needed. While the editors acknowledge the futility of trying to present an exhaustive survey of Spanish SLA studies, the amount of information collected in this volume is still impressive. The major themes studied by Spanish SLA researchers are all represented in this book, as are some less-studied topics such as pragmatic and discourse competence. The authors of each chapter have research experience in the area they discuss and are thus able to provide a detailed account of what has been done, where the current research stands, and what issues remain to be examined in the future – the three questions that guide every chapter. Spanish Second Language Acquisition is divided into three parts. The first part, 'Linguistic Topics: Products,' examines the acquisition of specific structures of Spanish, such as phonology (chap. 1 by A.R. Elliott); past tense and aspect (chap. 2 by S. Montrul and R. Salaberry); use of complex syntactic structures and the subjunctive (chap. 3 by J.G. Collentine); object pronouns (chap. 4 by J.F. Lee); lexicon (chap. 5 by Lafford, Collentine, and A.S. Karp); and pragmatic and discourse competence (chap. 6 by D. Koike, L. Pearson, and C. Witten). Some of these chapters are more specific to Spanish than others, depending on [End Page 592] how much research has been done on the topic. For instance, tense/aspect morphology, the subjunctive, and object pronouns have been popular areas of study in Spanish SLA, while phonology, lexicon, pragmatics, and discourse have received less attention. The authors of these latter chapters thus survey their topic in general and apply data from Spanish where available. The editors are to be commended for not limiting the overview to structures that have been well studied in Spanish SLA; by including less-examined topics, they have highlighted areas where research is lacking. The second part of Spanish Second Language Acqusition, 'Theoretical Perspectives: Processes,' focuses on the different models of language development that have informed SLA research, namely generative grammars (chap. 7 by L. Sánchez and A.J. Toribio), cognitive approaches (chap. 8 by P. Dussias), and sociocultural perspectives (chap. 9 by M. Antón, F.J. DiCamilla, and J.P. Lantolf). The authors first provide a summary of how these approaches have accounted for SLA in general, then focus on studies involving Spanish that were carried out within these frameworks. These three chapters would perhaps be better placed at the beginning of the book, as some of the studies in the section on linguistic products make reference to these models. For instance, both chapter 2 and chapter 4 refer to generative perspectives on tense/aspect morphology and clitics, so it might be useful for the reader to have a general understanding of these perspectives before...

On-line syntactic processing in aphasia: Studies with auditory moving window presentation

Twenty-eight aphasic patients with left hemisphere strokes and matched control subjects were tested on an auditory moving windows task in which successive phrases of a sentence were presented in response to subjects’ self-paced button presses and subjects made timed judgments regarding the plausibility of each sentence. Pairs of sentences were presented that differed in syntactic complexity. Patients made more errors and/or took longer in making the plausibility judgments than controls, and were more affected than controls by the syntactic complexity of a sentence in these judgments. Normal subjects showed effects of syntactic structure in self-paced listening. On-line syntactic effects differed in patients as a function of their comprehension level. High-performing patients showed the same effects as normal control subjects; low performing patients did not show the same effects of syntactic structure. On-line syntactic effects also differed in patients as a function of their clinical diagnosis. Broca’s aphasic patients’ on-line performances suggested that they were not processing complex syntactic structures on-line, while fluent aphasics’ performances suggested that their comprehension impairment occurred after on-line processing was accomplished. The results indicate that many aphasic patients retain their ability to process syntactic structure on-line, and that different groups of patients with syntactic comprehension disorders show different patterns of on-line syntactic processing.

Conceptual grounding in simulation studies of language acquisition

In order to understand the evolutionary pathway to the capability for language, we must first clearly understand the functional capabilities that the child brings to the task of language acquisition. Behavioral studies provide insight into infants’ ability to extract statistical and distributional structure directly from the auditory signal, and their capabilities to construct relations between this structure and the structure extracted from perceptual systems. At the interface of these two processes lies a conceptual scene representation that can be accessed by both, and that importantly provides a means for the two systems to constructively interact. Recent studies have begun to make progress in simulating infants’ capabilities to extract statistical structure (e.g. word segmentation and lexical categorization) directly from the speech sound sequence. The current research examines how this structure interacts with perceptual structure at the level of the conceptualized scene. In particular we demonstrate how the grounding of words and sentences in conceptualized visual scenes permits the system to construct the appropriate relations between words and their referents, and sentences and theirs (structured conceptualizations of scenes representing agents, objects and actions) in the initial phases of acquisition of syntactic structure. These studies simulate behavioral observations of the trajectory of infants’ linguistic acquisition of concrete nouns, followed by concrete verbs and then more abstract nouns and verbs, in parallel with the development of first simple and then more complex syntactic structures. The relevance of these results to infant language acquisition behavior will be discussed. While this research yields interesting new results in characterizing the grounding of language in conceptualized scenes, it also identifies serious limitations of the current methods that will be discussed, along with the associated future extensions.

Legal transformations in Spanish: an ?audiencia? in Chile

There is a small literature on the transformations that occur in transcripts in legal English (Eades 1996; Walker 1990), but little on what happens in languages other than English. This is an important issue for Roman/Continental law systems, which rely in their decision making largely upon written transcripts of oral evidence. This study examines the linguistic consequences of the transcription process, based upon Spanish language tape recordings of oral submissions, and the written ‘declaraciones’ (statements) that emerge, in a labour court in Santiago de Chile. It reveals far-reaching consequences for the language of the evidence, particularly because of the greater planning and editing potential of writing. There are tendencies to move to more complex syntactic structures, to use more passive type structures thereby colouring blame attribution, to use more technical language, and to edit material, both unnecessary redundancies and substantive facts. These findings support current changes to the Chilean justice system, which replace this type of interview with open court hearings.

Legal transformations in Spanish: an 'audiencia' in Chile

There is a small literature on the transformations that occur in transcripts in legal English (Eades 1996; Walker 1990), but little on what happens in languages other than English. This is an important issue for Roman/Continental law systems, which rely in their decision making largely upon written transcripts of oral evidence. This study examines the linguistic consequences of the transcription process, based upon Spanish language tape recordings of oral submissions, and the written ‘declaraciones’ (statements) that emerge, in a labour court in Santiago de Chile. It reveals far-reaching consequences for the language of the evidence, particularly because of the greater planning and editing potential of writing. There are tendencies to move to more complex syntactic structures, to use more passive type structures thereby colouring blame attribution, to use more technical language, and to edit material, both unnecessary redundancies and substantive facts. These findings support current changes to the Chilean justice system, which replace this type of interview with open court hearings.

Omissions of obligatory relative markers in children with specific language impairment

Although the morphological difficulties of children with specific language impairment (SLI) have been documented extensively, performance on complex syntax production has been explored to a far lesser degree. Leonard's (1995) functional categories account of SLI suggests that syntactic structures involving the embedding of complementizer phrases may be problematic for SLI children. In a follow up to Schuele (1995) and Schuele and Nicholls (2000), this study explored the inclusion of obligatory relative markers in subject relative clauses by children with SLI (5 to 7 years) as compared to children with typical language (3 to 5 years). Children with SLI omitted the obligatory relativizer that or WH relative pronoun in 63% of the attempted subject relative clauses. In contrast, TL children always included the obligatory relative marker. Thus, children with SLI demonstrated particular difficulty in the production of subject relative clauses, complex syntactic structures which require an overt element in an embedded complementizer phrase.

Relative clause sentence production using augmentative and alternative communication systems

Complex syntactic structures may be difficult to recognize when produced using augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems that do not contain grammatical markers. The present study investigated adult English speakers' production of Subject and Object relative clause sentences using a picture/symbol-based AAC system with speech output. Most participants avoided the potential ambiguity that resulted from the absence of grammatical markers. They followed spoken English word order when encoding Object relative clause sentences, but altered this order for Subject relative clause sentences. Most participants used constituent proximity to maintain the distinction between Subject and Object relative clause sentences. Results indicate the combined effects of underlying syntactic knowledge and pragmatic variables on the AAC constituent order patterns observed.

Relative clauses: evidence of continued linguistic vulnerability in children with specific language impairment

It is hypothesized that children with specific language impairment (SLI) will have difficulties in the acquisition of complex syntactic structures. The studies reported provide evidence of linguistic vulnerability at the level of formulation of complex syntactic structures, specifically relative clauses, in three children with SLI participating in a longitudinal familial case study. In language samples, the proband omitted obligatory relative markers in subject relative clauses and made errors in selecting relative markers in object relative clauses. Two other children in the family, identified as SLI, evidenced omissions of obligatory subject relative markers in language sample data and elicited data. Of the five children in the family with a negative clinical history, omission of subject relative markers in language sample and elicited data was observed in only one child. The findings are consistent with Leonard's functional category deficits account of the grammatical limitations of children with SLI.

Assessment of Complex Sentence Production in a Narrative Context.

This study focused on eliciting and assessing complex sentence structure in a meaningful discourse context. The effect of clinician support (modeling of specific structures and practice with the structures) on the subsequent use of complex sentence structures in story retelling was studied. Experiment 1 was conducted with students demonstrating language abilities within normal limits. Because these initial results were promising, Experiment 2 was conducted with students demonstrating language impairments. The results of these experiments indicated, first, that amount of exposure to the stimulus is a critical variable affecting length and syntactic complexity in story retelling. Evidence further supported the use of modeling and practice of specific structures when assessing students' syntactic skills. The assessment protocol used in these experiments was found to be useful for eliciting a large number and variety of complex syntactic structures in a meaningful context from children with and without language impairments.

Effects of aging on the production of Russian

Two studies compared young and older adults’ production of complex syntactic structures in Russian, a morphologically rich language with free word order. A variety of measures of content, fluency, clause structure, and grammatical form were assessed from oral language samples collected from young adult Russians visiting the United States, from older adults who had recently emigrated to the United States from Russia, and from young and older Russians living in Moscow, Russia. Content and fluency in Russian were associated with Russian vocabulary knowledge and influenced by educational level and knowledge of English and other languages. The production of grammatical forms, including clause structure and word order variation, was associated with digit span, suggesting that working memory limitations affect the use of clause and word order variations in Russian.

Biology of language: Principle predictions and evidence

AbstractMüller's target article aims to summarize approaches to the question of how language elements (phonemes, morphemes, etc.) and rules are laid down in the brain. However, it suffers from being too vague about basic assumptions and empirical predictions of neurobiological models, and the empirical evidence available to test the models is not appropriately evaluated. (1) In a neuroscientific model of language, different cortical localizations of words can only be based on biological principles. These need to be made explicit. (2) Evidence for and against word class differences could be evaluated more rigorously. (3) All (and only) humans are able to learn languages with complex syntactic structures; it is, therefore, not appropriate to deny innateness and universality of syntactic principles. The real question appears to be the following: Which neurobiological principles are the linguistic principles based on?