Syntactic Category Information Research Articles

Neural classification maps for distinct word combinations in Broca's area.

Humans are equipped with the remarkable ability to comprehend an infinite number of utterances. Relations between grammatical categories restrict the way words combine into phrases and sentences. How the brain recognizes different word combinations remains largely unknown, although this is a necessary condition for combinatorial unboundedness in language. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivariate pattern analysis to explore whether distinct neural populations of a known language network hub-Broca's area-are specialized for recognizing distinct simple word combinations. The phrases consisted of a noun (flag) occurring either with a content word, an adjective (green flag), or with a function word, a determiner (that flag). The key result is that the distribution of neural populations classifying word combination in Broca's area seems sensitive to neuroanatomical subdivisions within this area, irrespective of task. The information patterns for adjective + noun were localized in its anterior part (BA45) whereas those for determiner + noun were localized in its posterior part (BA44). Our findings provide preliminary answers to the fundamental question of how lexical and grammatical category information interact during simple word combination, with the observation that Broca's area is sensitive to the recognition of categorical relationships during combinatory processing, based on different demands placed on syntactic and semantic information. This supports the hypothesis that the combinatorial power of language consists of some neural computation capturing phrasal differences when processing linguistic input.

Syntactic Representations Contain Semantic Information: Evidence From Balinese Passives

Semantics-based approaches to syntax hold that the basic units of language are constructions: form-meaning pairings that have meanings in and of themselves. The aim of the present study was to test this claim using a previously-unstudied construction: Balinese passives. Using a grammatical acceptability judgment methodology with 60 native adult speakers, we found that independent ratings of 49 verbs’ semantic affectedness (obtained from a separate group of 20 native adult speakers) significantly predict the relative acceptability of these verbs in three types of passives (-a, ka- and ma- passives), and also actives, but not in what we term the “basic passive”; a construction which lacks the morphological markers that characterize the other passive types. These findings constitute support for semantics-based approaches to syntax, but are more difficult to reconcile with approaches that posit a pure-syntax level of representation that includes syntactic category information but not semantic information or lexical content.

Is Passive Priming Really Impervious to Verb Semantics? A High-Powered Replication of Messenger Et al. (2012)

The aim of the present study was to conduct a particularly stringent pre-registered in-vestigation of the claim that there exists a level of linguistic representation that “includes syntactic category information but not semantic information” (Branigan & Pickering, 2017: 8). As a test case, we focussed on the English passive; a construction for which previous findings have been somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, several studies using different methodologies have found an advantage for theme-experiencer passives (e.g., The girl was shocked by the tiger; and also agent-patient passives; e.g., The girl was hit by the tiger) over experiencer-theme passives (e.g., The girl was ignored by the tiger). On the other hand, Messenger et al. (2012) found no evidence that theme-experiencer and experiencer-theme passives vary in their propensity to prime production of agent-patient passives. We therefore conducted an online replication of Messen-ger et al (2012) with a pre-registered appropriately powered sample (N=240). Although a large and significant priming effect (i.e., an effect of prime sentence type) was ob-served, a Bayesian analysis yielded only weak/anecdotal evidence (BF=2.11) for the crucial interaction of verb type by prime type; a finding that was robust to different coding and exclusion decisions, operationalizations of verb semantics (dichoto-mous/continuous), analysis frameworks (Bayesian/frequentist) and – as per a mixed-effects-multiverse analyses – random effects structures. Nevertheless, these findings do no not provide evidence for the absence of semantic effects (as has been argued for the findings of Messenger et al, 2012). We conclude that these and related findings are best explained by a model that includes both lexical, exemplar-level representations and rep-resentations at multiple higher levels of abstraction.

Grammatical category and the neural processing of phrases

The interlocking roles of lexical, syntactic and semantic processing in language comprehension has been the subject of longstanding debate. Recently, the cortical response to a frequency-tagged linguistic stimulus has been shown to track the rate of phrase and sentence, as well as syllable, presentation. This could be interpreted as evidence for the hierarchical processing of speech, or as a response to the repetition of grammatical category. To examine the extent to which hierarchical structure plays a role in language processing we recorded EEG from human participants as they listen to isochronous streams of monosyllabic words. Comparing responses to sequences in which grammatical category is strictly alternating and chosen such that two-word phrases can be grammatically constructed—cold food loud room—or is absent—rough give ill tell—showed cortical entrainment at the two-word phrase rate was only present in the grammatical condition. Thus, grammatical category repetition alone does not yield entertainment at higher level than a word. On the other hand, cortical entrainment was reduced for the mixed-phrase condition that contained two-word phrases but no grammatical category repetition—that word send less—which is not what would be expected if the measured entrainment reflected purely abstract hierarchical syntactic units. Our results support a model in which word-level grammatical category information is required to build larger units.

Syntactic category constrains lexical competition in speaking

We report two experiments that suggest that syntactic category plays a key role in limiting competition in lexical access in speaking. We introduce a novel sentence-picture interference (SPI) paradigm, and we show that nouns (e.g., running as a noun) do not compete with verbs (e.g., walking as a verb) and verbs do not compete with nouns in sentence production, regardless of their conceptual similarity. Based on this finding, we argue that lexical competition in production is limited by syntactic category. We also suggest that even complex words containing category-changing derivational morphology can be stored and accessed together with their final syntactic category information. We discuss the potential underlying mechanism and how it may enable us to speak relatively fluently.

Revisiting form typicality of nouns and verbs

Abstract Research has shown that, in English, the mapping between a word’s form and its syntactic category is not entirely arbitrary. Though formal differences between lexical categories are subtle, adults are sensitive to them and access this knowledge when retrieving or manipulating grammatical category information. Studies of form typicality have so far exclusively investigated unambiguous (or disambiguated) wordforms. We test the prediction that form typicality also affects visual processing of ambiguous wordforms, with formal features correlating, not with a form’s designation as a particular category, but with a form’s probability of being used as a particular category. Our results indicate that “form discrepancy”, a measure of how well a form’s category usage matches up with its form (i.e. typically nouny forms associated with high probability of usage as a noun), is a significant predictor of lexical decision response time. These data are in line with models in which category is not specified for roots in the lexicon but rather assigned within syntactic or semantic context, and show that distributional information about grammatical category usage is automatically accessed in visual word processing.

The time course of contextual cohort effects in auditory processing of category-ambiguous words: MEG evidence for a single “clash” as noun or verb

ABSTRACTThe size and probability distribution of a word-form’s cohort of lexical competitors influence auditory processing and can be constrained by syntactic category information. This experiment employs noun/verb homonyms (e.g. “ache”) presented in syntactic context to clarify the mechanisms and representations involved in context-based cohort restriction. Implications for theories positing single versus multiple word-forms in cases of category ambiguity also arise. Using correlations between neural activity in auditory cortex, measured by magnetoencephalography (MEG), and standard and context-dependent cohort entropy and phoneme surprisal variables, we consider the possibility of cohort restriction on the basis of form or on the basis of category usage. Crucially, the form-conditional measure is consistent only with a single word-form view of category ambiguity. Our results show that noun/verb homonyms are derived from single category-neutral word-forms and that the cohort is restricted incrementally in context, by form and then by usage.

The Interaction of Semantic and Syntactic Information in Chinese–English Bilinguals’ Early Recognition of Polysemous Words

Polysemy is an important linguistic phenomenon, and it appears widely in every language. The main issue of polysemy research includes whether there is semantic ambiguity advantage and its’ influencing factors. Studies of polysemy in bilingual research are few in number and are contradictory about polysemy recognition. This study, based on out-of-context condition, discussed the proficient Chinese-English bilinguals’ recognition process and relative factors using masked priming paradigm. Two experiments were involved: The influence of the dominant and non-dominant translation equivalence, syntactic category information and relatedness of translation equivalence were investigated in Experiment 1 with word decision task and English ambiguous words. The experimental procedure was classical masked priming procedure. Subjects were told to decide whether the word was true or not. All the participants were tested individually on computers. Reaction times for correct responses and error rates were analyzed by subject and item variance. Results showed a significant masked priming effect and semantic relatedness effect in English polysemous word recognition. Furthermore, when words were presented with their dominant translation, the recognition process was faster than when words were presented with their non -dominant translation. Experiment 2 was exactly the same with experiment1, except for the material. The aim of experiment 2 was to discuss how the above-mentioned factors influenced the Chinese ambiguous words. Surprisingly, the results were also similar with experiment1 despite the huge difference between Chinese and English ambiguous words. That is to say, We had observed the effect of dominance of translations and semantic relatedness of multiple translations. Responses were faster when the two translations of a word were related in meaning than when the two translations of a word were unrelated in meaning. It is well known that the distributed conceptual feature model has been proposed for bilingual memory. Our findings could also be explained in the light of this model with activated semantic nods. When it is dominant translation or two translations that are semantically related, it can increase the semantic overlap between target word and its translation equivalence. The difference between this research and previous study was that the syntactic information was activated in early stage of word recognition. We think this is due to the difference of experiments paradigm which reflected different process stage. Based on this research, the authors expand the Distributed Conceptual Feature Model to syntactic level.

Age of acquisition affects the retrieval of grammatical category information

This study investigated age of acquisition (AoA) effects on processing grammatical category information of Chinese single-character words. In Experiment 1, nouns and verbs that were acquired at different ages were used as materials in a grammatical category decision task. Results showed that the grammatical category information of earlier acquired nouns and verbs was easier to retrieve. In Experiment 2, AoA and predictability from orthography to grammatical category were manipulated in a grammatical category decision task. Results showed larger AoA effects under lower predictability conditions. In Experiment 3, a semantic category decision task was used with the same materials as those in Experiment 2. Different results were found from Experiment 2, suggesting that the grammatical category decision task is not merely the same as the semantic category decision task, but rather involves additional processing of grammatical category information. Therefore the conclusions of Experiments 1 and 2 were strengthened. In summary, it was found for the first time that AoA affects the retrieval of grammatical category information, thus providing new evidence in support of the arbitrary mapping hypothesis.

Is syntactic-category processing obligatory in visual word recognition? Evidence from Chinese

Three experiments were conducted to investigate how syntactic-category and semantic information is processed in visual word recognition. The stimuli were two-character Chinese words in which semantic and syntactic-category ambiguities were factorially manipulated. A lexical decision task was employed in Experiment 1, whereas a semantic relatedness judgment task and a syntactic-category judgment task were adopted in Experiments 2 and 3, respectively. A semantic ambiguity disadvantage was observed in all three experiments, whereas a syntactic-category ambiguity disadvantage was only found in Experiment 3. In addition, no significant semantic ambiguity×syntactic-category ambiguity interaction was obtained across the three experiments. These results are consistent with the view that in isolated visual word recognition, the semantic information is crucial, but the syntactic-category information is not, at least in Chinese.

The role of grammatical category information in spoken word retrieval.

We investigated the role of lexical syntactic information such as grammatical gender and category in spoken word retrieval processes by using a blocking paradigm in picture and written word naming experiments. In Experiments 1, 3, and 4, we found that the naming of target words (nouns) from pictures or written words was faster when these target words were named within a list where only words from the same grammatical category had to be produced (homogeneous category list: all nouns) than when they had to be produced within a list comprising also words from another grammatical category (heterogeneous category list: nouns and verbs). On the other hand, we detected no significant facilitation effect when the target words had to be named within a homogeneous gender list (all masculine nouns) compared to a heterogeneous gender list (both masculine and feminine nouns). In Experiment 2, using the same blocking paradigm by manipulating the semantic category of the items, we found that naming latencies were significantly slower in the semantic category homogeneous in comparison with the semantic category heterogeneous condition. Thus semantic category homogeneity caused an interference, not a facilitation effect like grammatical category homogeneity. Finally, in Experiment 5, nouns in the heterogeneous category condition had to be named just after a verb (category-switching position) or a noun (same-category position). We found a facilitation effect of category homogeneity but no significant effect of position, which showed that the effect of category homogeneity found in Experiments 1, 3, and 4 was not due to a cost of switching between grammatical categories in the heterogeneous grammatical category list. These findings supported the hypothesis that grammatical category information impacts word retrieval processes in speech production, even when words are to be produced in isolation. They are discussed within the context of extant theories of lexical production.

Word category conversion causes processing costs: Evidence from adjectival passives

Constructing syntactic representations in language comprehension begins with the identification of word categories. Whether the category information is stored in the mental lexicon is a matter of debate in current linguistic theorizing. The standard view assumes that the syntactic category of a word is lexically specified (lexicalist approach). More recently, it has been proposed within the paradigm of distributed morphology that lexical elements (roots) are stored without any syntactic category information: The syntactic category of a lexical element is determined only by the syntactic context in which it appears (syntactic approach). For processing category-ambiguous words, different hypotheses can be derived from these two accounts. The lexicalist approach predicts that there are productive grammatical processes, such as nominalization and adjectivization, that convert a word of Category A into one of Category B. Such a conversion might be assumed to create additional processing costs. Within the syntactic approach, on the other hand, no additional processing step is expected, because there is no need for any category shift. In a self-paced reading study on so-called adjectival passives, we found evidence of costs predicted under the lexicalist approach (i.e., for a grammatical process that changes the category of a word). More specifically, the present study provides evidence for category conversion from a verbal participle into an adjectival one. We also discuss an alternative explanation for this finding in terms of frequency.

Semantic composition engenders an N400: evidence from Chinese compounds

This study provides evidence for the role of semantic composition in compound word processing. We examined the online processing of isolated two meaning unit compounds in Chinese, a language that uses compounding to 'disambiguate' meaning. Using auditory presentation, we manipulated the semantic meaning and syntactic category of the two meaning units forming a compound. Event-related brain potential-recordings revealed a significant influence of semantic information, which was reflected in an N400 signature for compounds whose meaning differed from the constituent meanings. This finding suggests that the combination of distinct constituent meanings to form an overall compound meaning consumes processing resources. By contrast, no comparable difference was observed based on syntactic category information. Our findings indicate that combinatory semantic processing at the word level correlates with N400 effects.

MANULEX: A grade-level lexical database from French elementary school readers

This article presents MANULEX, a Web-accessible database that provides grade-level word frequency lists of nonlemmatized and lemmatized words (48,886 and 23,812 entries, respectively) computed from the 1.9 million words taken from 54 French elementary school readers. Word frequencies are provided for four levels: first grade (G1), second grade (G2), third to fifth grades (G3-5), and all grades (G1-5). The frequencies were computed following the methods described by Carroll, Davies, and Richman (1971) and Zeno, Ivenz, Millard, and Duvvuri (1995), with four statistics at each level (F, overall word frequency; D, index of dispersion across the selected readers; U, estimated frequency per million words; and SFI, standard frequency index). The database also provides the number of letters in the word and syntactic category information. MANULEX is intended to be a useful tool for studying language development through the selection of stimuli based on precise frequency norms. Researchers in artificial intelligence can also use it as a source of information on natural language processing to simulate written language acquisition in children. Finally, it may serve an educational purpose by providing basic vocabulary lists.

Syntactic category Information and the semantics of derivational morphological rules

In standard generative approaches, word-formation rules contain, among other things, information on the semantics of the suffix and the syntactic category (or word-class) of possible bases. Based on the general assumption that word-class specification of the input is a crucial ingredient of derivational morphology, far-reaching claims have been made. For example, the unitary base hypothesis (Aronoff 1976) states that word-formation rules can take only bases as input that share syntactic category information. This generative position is a reflection of the well-established traditional descriptive practice of talking about affixes as being, for example, 'deverbal', 'deadjectival' or 'denominal'. Thus, across the different theoretical camps, the syntactic category of the base is, implicitly or explicitly, assumed to be central to any account of affixal behavior. In the present paper this view is challenged and it is claimed that derivational morphology does not necessarily make reference to syntactic category information in the input. It will be shown that the word-class specification of the input of word-formation rules creates numerous empirical and theoretical problems that have been largely ignored in the literature. It is argued that there are productive affixes where the syntactic category of potential base words is only a by-product of the semantics of the process. The data even strongly suggest that input word-class specification should be generally abandoned. Based on the analysis of a large number of English affixes and an in-depth analysis of a subset of these affixes it will be shown that the inclusion of syntactic category information in the word-formation rules under investigation makes wrong predictions for significant portions of the data and fails to account for the phonological and semantic patterns observable in these morphological categories. In contrast, a semantic, output-oriented approach is much more successful in coping with these problems. Th

The time course of recovery for grammatical category information during lexical processing for syntactic construction.

In the experiments outlined in this article, the authors investigate lexical access processes in language production. In their earlier work, T. Pechmann and D. Zerbst (2002) reported evidence for grammatical category constraints in a picture-word interference task. Although grammatical category information was not activated when subjects produced bare noun descriptions of simple objects, a robust effect arose when the target word had to be embedded in a syntactic frame. The current experiments demonstrate that compilation of a simple noun phrase (NP) yields word class effects in picture-word interference experiments in the same time frame as that generally observed for semantic processing. Most significantly, the effect emerges both in German and English with very similar profiles. On these grounds, it is implausible that the effect depends on syntactic gender activation, because such constraints are lacking in the English language version of the experiments.

Syntactic Influences on Lexical and Morphological Processing in Language Production

When one word replaces another in a speech error, the two words predominantly share syntactic category membership; this is the syntactic category constraint. Stem exchanges like “trucked the park” appear to violate this constraint, implying either that morphological representations do not include syntactic category information (e.g., Garrett, 1975) or that syntactic category membership only softly constrains lexical errors (Stemberger, 1985). Four experiments elicited exchanges with target phrases like “taped the record,” in which the intended nouns sound different when used as nouns (REcord) or as verbs (reCORD). With such phrases, a stem exchange reveals whether the word produced in verb stem position is a noun or verb. Against the predictions of standard accounts, in stem exchange errors, speakers predominantly produced phrases like “reCORDed the tape,” revealing that target nouns erroneously produced in verb stem position were produced as verbs. The pattern of results suggests that the processing of morphological representations is strongly influenced by syntactic information.

Representation of Grammatical Categories of Words in the Brain

We report the performance of a patient who, as a consequence of left frontal and temporoparietal strokes, makes far more errors on nouns than on verbs in spoken output tasks, but makes far more errors on verbs than on nouns in written input tasks. This double dissociation within a single patient with respect to grammatical category provides evidence for the hypothesis that phonological and orthographic representations of nouns and verbs are processed by independent neural mechanisms. Furthermore, the opposite dissociation in the verbal output modality, an advantage for nouns over verbs in spoken tasks, by a different patient using the same stimuli has also been reported (Caramazza & Hillis, 1991). This double dissociation across patients on the same task indicates that results cannot be ascribed to "greater difficulty" with one type of stimulus, and provides further evidence for the view that grammatical category information is an important organizational principle of lexical knowledge in the brain.

Non-Obligatory Vowel Epenthesis in -Ed Pseudowords: Ambiguity in Syllabification Resolved by Syntax and Suffixation

In this study, we consider a number of factors that affect whether psuedowords ending with the suffix -ed are pronounced with an additional syllable. The additional syllable results if vowel epenthesis occurs. Because this process is optional unless -ed is preceded by a dental, an ambiguity in syllabification arises in many cases. in Experiment 1, we found that subjects do occasionally pronounce -ed pseudowords with an additional syllable, although vowel epenthesis for this class of words has been considered to be unproductive (Marchand, 1969). Moreover, as with actual English words, this process occurred when the pseudowords were used in sentences as adjectives, but did not occur when the same pseudo-words were used as verbs. in Experiment 2, we found that addition of the suffixes -ly and -ness increased the likelihood of vowel epenthesis despite the fact that these suffixes generally do not change the pronunciation of the root in Experiment 3, we showed that perceived grammatical category also affected vowel epenthesis; vowel epenthesis was more likely when the pseudowords were used in a preceding sentence with suffixes that adjectives normally take (-ly or -ness) compared to a condition in which the pseudowords were used in an inflectional form of a verb (-es or -ing instead of -ed). The final experiment was a control experiment showing that the results in Experiment 3 were not simply due to priming effects. The results of the experiments on the pronunciation of pseudowords reported here and elsewhere by other investigators suggest that grammatical category information must be included in any complete model of reading aloud. A parallel distributed processing approach that incorporates a grammatical category constraint is discussed.