Noun Phrase Arguments Research Articles

Directional verb constructions in Mandarin

Abstract In modern Chinese, a Directional Verb Construction (DVC) may contain either two or three verbs. DVCs with two verbs can be represented in three different ways, and DVCs with three verbs can be represented in four different ways. The different positions of the shared internal noun phrase (NP) argument result in divergent word orders of DVCs. Based on the Corpus of the United Daily News, this study discusses the syntax-pragmatic interface in Chinese DVCs within the framework of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) with the intention of ascertaining how NP arguments are linked to syntax in DVCs, while at the same time accounting for what pragmatic factors play a role in determining constructional schemas for argument linking. The results show that different patterns of DVCs have different focus domains, and that the differential activation state of the internal NP argument plays an essential role in determining word order. Considering the correlation between activation state and focus domain, a highly activated internal NP tends to be linked to the position following the word bǎ or immediately following V1. In contrast, a least activated NP tends to be linked to the position immediately following V2 or V3.

Argument Types Affect Children's Acquisition of a Novel Argument Structure.

Acquisition of an argument structure may be affected by the diversity of lexical types that appear in that structure (Conwell etal., 2011; Yang, 2016). Seventy-two 5- and 6-year-old English-speaking children completed a learning study where they were exposed to a novel argument structure and then tested on their ability to comprehend it. The number of verb types heard in the learning phase did not predict comprehension at test. However, learning with only full noun phrase arguments resulted in lower comprehension of the structure, particularly with pronouns. Hearing pronouns during learning supported comprehension of all argument types at test. These results indicate that pronominal arguments support argument structure learning by providing multiple cues that can facilitate thematic role assignment.

Wait a second! delayed impact of argument roles on on-line verb prediction

ABSTRACTComprehenders can use rich contextual information to anticipate upcoming input on the fly, but recent findings suggest that salient information about argument roles may not impact verb prediction. We took advantage of the word order properties of Mandarin Chinese to examine the time course with which argument role information impacts verb prediction. We isolated the contribution of argument role information by manipulating the order of pre-verbal noun phrase arguments while holding lexical information constant, and we examined its effects on accessing the verb in long-term semantic memory by measuring the amplitude of the N400 component. Experiment 1 showed when the verb appeared immediately after its arguments, even strongly constraining argument role information failed to modulate the N400 response to the verb. An N400 effect emerged in Experiment 2 when the verb appeared at a greater delay. Experiment 3 corroborated the contrast between the first two experiments through a within-participants manipulation of the time interval between the arguments and the verb, by varying the position of an adverbial phrase. These results suggest time is a key factor governing how diverse contextual information contributes to predictions. Here argument role information is shown to impact verb prediction, but its effect is not immediate.

Sources of relative clause processing difficulty: Evidence from Russian

This study investigates the sources of processing difficulty in complex sentences involving relative clauses (RCs). Self-paced reading and eye tracking were used to test the comprehension of Russian subject- and object-extracted RCs (SRCs and ORCs) that had the same word-order configuration, but different noun phrase (NP) types (full NPs vs. pronouns) in the embedded clause. In both SRCs and ORCs, this NP intervened between the modified noun and the RC verb. A corpus analysis and acceptability rating experiment indicated different frequency/preference profiles for this word order depending on RC type and embedded NP type. In line with these profiles, processing difficulty was revealed early in the embedded clause for less frequent/dispreferred constructions. Later in the embedded clause, the processing of the RC verb was comparable for both SRCs and ORCs when the same number of NP arguments was available for integration. While there were no indications of an ORC penalty at or after this verb, late-stage comprehension difficulty was found for full-NP ORCs, but not for their pronominal counterparts, suggesting that similarity-based interference in combination with ORC structure influences the overall comprehension of these sentences. Taken together, these findings support a hybrid model under which independent sources of processing difficulty affect different stages of RC comprehension.

Semantic but not Phonological Short-Term Memory Supports Sentence Elaboration in Narrative Production: Evidence from Left Hemisphere Acute Stroke

Semantic but not Phonological Short-Term Memory Supports Sentence Elaboration in Narrative Production: Evidence from Left Hemisphere Acute Stroke

Predicate-Induced Permutation Groups

Natural languages abound in combinatorial phenomena that are related to the predicate of the sentence and its ability to permute noun phrase arguments. After compiling several illustrative phenomena of natural languages, I propose a novel analysis in terms of permutation groups, a concept borrowed from mathematical combinatorics that is ubiquitous in applied sciences. I show that each natural language predicate of degree n (n natural number) can be associated with two permutation groups of degree n. The first group measures the predicate’s flexibility to permute arguments in two independent events, whereas the second group captures permutations in two dependent events. These groups serve as linguistic tools to help predict the predicate’s grammaticality pattern in a range of natural language constructions.

The role of animacy and thematic relationships in processing active English sentences: Evidence from event-related potentials

Recent event-related potential studies report a P600 effect to incongruous verbs preceded by semantically associated inanimate noun–phrase (NP) arguments, e.g., “ eat” in “ At breakfast the eggs would eat…”. This P600 effect may reflect the processing cost incurred when semantic–thematic relationships between critical verbs and their preceding NP argument(s) bias towards different interpretations to those dictated by their sentences’ syntactic structures. We have termed such violations of alternative thematic roles, ‘thematic role violations.’ Semantic–thematic relationships are influenced both by semantic associations and by more basic semantic features, such as a noun’s animacy. This study determined whether a P600 effect can be evoked by verbs whose thematic structures are violated by their preceding inanimate NP arguments, even in the absence of close semantic–associative relationships with these arguments or their preceding contexts. ERPs were measured to verbs under four conditions: (1) non-violated (“ At breakfast the boys would eat…”); (2) preceded by introductory clauses and animate NPs that violated their pragmatic expectations but not their thematic structures (“ At breakfast the boys would plant…”); (3) preceded by semantically related contexts but inanimate NPs that violated their thematic structures (“ At breakfast the eggs would eat…”); (4) preceded by semantically unrelated contexts and inanimate NPs that also violated their thematic structures (“ At breakfast the eggs would plant…”). Pragmatically non-thematic role violated verbs preceded by unrelated contexts and animate NPs evoked robust N400 effects and small P600 effects. Thematically violated verbs preceded by inanimate argument NPs evoked robust P600 effects but no N400 effects, regardless of whether these inanimate arguments or their preceding contexts were semantically related or unrelated to these verbs. These findings suggest that semantic-thematic relations, related to animacy constraints on verbs’ arguments, are computed online and can immediately impact verb processing within active, English sentences.

Word Order Pragmatics and Narrative Functions in Garrwa*

This paper presents an analysis of the order of full noun phrase arguments with respect to the verb in Garrwa non-personal narrative. Word order in this corpus is shown to be motivated by a combination of established pragmatic relations (here characterized as kontrast and rheme, following Vallduví & Vilkuna 1998), and some specific narrative functions relating to perspective structure (eg. shifts from one character's perspective to another). I also argue that the particular patterns found in the Garrwa corpus are related to its status as a verb initial language, typologically unusual in the Australian context. The results present a nice illustration of the need for close discourse based analyses of word order pragmatics, before universal primitive notions like ‘focus’ and ‘topic’, terms which have been commonly used in the Australianist literature, should be adopted.

The Effect of Plausibility on Eye Movements in Reading.

Readers' eye movements were monitored as they read sentences describing events in which an individual performed an action with an implement. The noun phrase arguments of the verbs in the sentences were such that when thematic assignment occurred at the critical target word, the sentence was plausible (likely theme), implausible (unlikely theme), or anomalous (an inappropriate theme). Whereas the target word in the anomalous condition provided evidence of immediate disruption, the effect of the target word in the implausible condition was considerably delayed. The results thus indicate that when a word is anomalous, it has an immediate effect on eye movements, but that the effect of implausibility is not as immediate.

Comprehending noun phrase arguments and adjuncts.

Two experiments investigated how readers comprehend noun phrase (NP) arguments and adjuncts. Previous research suggested that argument phrases are processed more quickly than adjunct phrases (Clifton, Speer, & Abney, 1991; Kennison, 1999; Schütze & Gibson, 1999; Speer & Clifton, 1998). The present experiments investigated whether the type of verb in the sentence context could influence how NP arguments and adjuncts were processed. Reading time was measured on sentences containing NP arguments and adjuncts preceded either by verbs occurring most frequently with NP arguments (biased transitive verbs) or by verbs occurring most frequently without NP arguments (biased intransitive verbs) (e.g., "Meredith read/performed every play/week."). In Experiment 1, reading time was measured using a self-paced phrase-by-phrase moving window. In Experiment 2, reading time was measured using eye tracking. The results of both experiments indicated that, following biased transitive verbs, NP arguments were processed more quickly than NP adjuncts. When NPsfollowed biased intransitive verbs, there was no significant difference between the processing time of NP arguments and adjuncts.

Argumenthood and English Prepositional Phrase Attachment

Two self-paced reading experiments are presented to assess how temporary ambiguities in prepositional phrase attachment are resolved in English verb–noun-phrase–prepositional-phrase sequences. The hypothesis tested is a preference to maximize argument relations, in contrast to an overall verb phrase attachment preference (cf. Minimal Attachment). Five syntactic argumenthood diagnostics were used to construct noun phrase argument and verb phrase modifier completions of sentences, differing by one word and controlled for frequency. It was found that (1) noun phrase argument completions were read significantly faster in the disambiguating region and (2) unambiguous verb phrase modifiers were read as quickly as noun phrase arguments and faster than ambiguous verb phrase modifiers. These results suggest that argument relations are maximized in initial comprehension of the target ambiguity. Alternative potential explanations for the findings are evaluated, including a recency-based account and a lexical-frequency treatment.

The polysynthesis parameter By Mark C. Baker (review)

REVIEW ARTICLE The polysynthesis parameter. By Mark C. Baker. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. xix, 556. Reviewed by Jean-Pierre Koenig and Karin Michelson, State University of New York at Buffalo.* The Polysynthesis Parameter is an investigation into the nature of polysynthesis within a formal principles-and-parameters framework. The languages defined as polysynthetic by the author (hereafter B) have certain distinctive properties, which he classifies into two broad categories : nonconfigurational phenomena and noun incorporation. Nonconfigurational properties include (after Hale 1983) relative freedom of word order, pervasive dropping of noun phrase arguments, and the existence of discontinuous constituents. Noun incorporation must be productive , and nouns must regularly occur independently as an unincorporated nominal. The focus is on Mohawk (Northern Iroquoian), based largely on B's own field research at Kahnawake (near Montreal), but data is cited from six other languages (Ainu, Chukchee, Mayali, Náhuatl, Southern Tiwa, and Wichita), whenever it is available in published sources or via personal communication. The goals of the book are ambitious: B aims to provide a comprehensive description of morphosyntactic phenomena of a single polysynthetic language (in Baker's sense), Mohawk, and of principles which he suggests are at the heart of the typological class of languages to which Mohawk belongs. B presents theoretical principles with characteristic ease and clarity. The attempt to extend theoretical hypotheses of a principles-and-parameters approach to a language outside of ones to which such a framework has been widely applied presents interesting challenges to the formal principles of the theory, to which B persistently seeks solutions. At the same time, B provides detailed and often subtle observations about a large class of constructions in Mohawk, and consistently cites published analyses that contradict his principles. Furthermore, B provides a goodly number of examples for each issue that he addresses. Does the book live up to its ambitious goals? We think the answer to such a question depends, to some extent, on one's perspective on a number of issues we review below. We provide a basic summary of the claims of each chapter and offer certain criticisms after each. General criticisms, as well as comments pertaining to more than one chapter, are addressed at the end of the review. Although our review ultimately raises more negative points than positive ones, we applaud the serious undertaking this book represents. The question B sets out to answer is What makes a polysynthetic language polysynthetic? The answer, he argues, is a macroparameter, a parameter general enough to affect the entire grammar of a language. The particular macroparameter that B posits is simple enough: whether arguments must be recorded via a morpheme on the predicator they depend on in order to be 'visible'. Mohawk and other polysynthetic languages are set positively for the parameter. The two ways to satisfy the parameters are via agreement morphology and via noun incorporation. B's hypothesis about the nature of polysynthesis is clearly innovative from a principles-andparameters approach (although it draws from Jelinek's earlier work). But, in some sense, there is nothing earthshattering in this claim, since it basically amounts to saying that Mohawk is a consistently head-marking language. Otherwise put, B's claim simply recasts the very traditional idea thatpolysynthesis characterizes languages in which words can be sentences, so that predicateargument relations, which are at the core of the structural make-up of sentences, are defined and satisfied within the word. What makes the book theoretically innovative is the attempt to derive so many properties of polysynthetic languages from this single fact. It is important to note that * The reviewers would like to thank Mark Baker, Holger Diessel, Matthew Dryer, and Marianne Mithun for comments on earlier drafts of this review. The order of reviewers' names is alphabetical since the effort was collaborative. 129 130 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 74, NUMBER 1 (1998) B's use of polysynthetic does not refer to an independently defined class of languages. In fact, for B polysynthesis is defined by the polysynthesis parameter. The question, then, is whether indeed the salient and distinctive properties of certain languages follow from a positive setting for this one parameter. In B's analysis of Mohawk and other...