Selectional Restriction Violation Research Articles

A Short Research on the use of Selectional Restriction Violations among Lyrics

Songs, along with poetry, short stories, novels, and dramas, belong to the language of humanity (literary language). As an art form that began to be popular in the last century, it has come into the view of linguists more frequently today.Between its lines, vivid expressions such as “city can sleep”, “animals can talk to each other” and “memory can dance” often appear. This abnormal writing skill refers to a unique linguistic phenomenon ------ Selective Restriction Violation(SRV) explained by Noam Chomsky and is often associated with “metaphor” according to generative grammarians and cognitive linguists. In this research article, 10 representative sentences from popular musics’ list in recent years were selected in order to explore more about this phenomenon in music field. After a detailed analysis, it is found that it appears frequently and The author prefers to use the technique of “replacing concrete nouns with abstract nouns”(9 from all 10 sentences) although it is a special linguistic phenomenon. The underlying reason for writing in this way might be that metaphorical expressions can not only make the sentence more vivid, but also help readers more accurately understand the ideas which authors want to express.

Sensitivity to verb-argument anomalies in aphasia is driven by event knowledge

Sensitivity to verb-argument anomalies in aphasia is driven by event knowledge

World knowledge affects prediction as quickly as selectional restrictions: evidence from the visual world paradigm

ABSTRACTThere has been considerable debate regarding the question of whether linguistic knowledge and world knowledge are separable and used differently during processing or not (Hagoort et al, 2004). Integration of word meaning and world knowledge in language comprehension (Matsuki et al, 2011). Event-based plausibility immediately influences on-line language comprehension (Paczynski et al, 2012). Multiple influences of semantic memory on sentence processing: Distinct effects of semantic relatedness on violations of real-world event/state knowledge and animacy selection restrictions (Warren et al, 2007). Investigating effects of selectional restriction violations and plausibility violation severity on eye movements in reading. Previous investigations into this question have provided mixed evidence as to whether violations of selectional restrictions are detected earlier than violations of world knowledge. We report a visual world eye-tracking study comparing the timing of facilitation contributed by selectional restrictions vs. world knowledge. College-aged adults (n = 36) viewed photographs of natural scenes while listening to sentences. Participants anticipated upcoming direct objects similarly regardless of whether facilitation was provided by only world knowledge or a combination of selectional restrictions and world knowledge. These results suggest that selectional restrictions are not available earlier in comprehension than world knowledge.

Comprehending the impossible: what role do selectional restriction violations play?

To elucidate how different kinds of knowledge are used during comprehension, readers’ eye movements were monitored as they read sentences that were: plausible, impossible because of a selectional restriction violation (SRV) or impossible because of a violation of general world knowledge. Eye movements on the pre-critical, critical, and post-critical words evidenced disruption in the SRV condition compared to the other two conditions. These findings suggest that disruption associated with reading about impossible events is not directly determined by how impossible the event seems. Rather, the relationship between the verb and arguments in the sentence seems to matter. These findings are the strongest evidence to date that processing effects associated with selectional restrictions can dissociate from those associated with general world knowledge about events.

The influence of event-related knowledge on verb-argument processing in aphasia

Event-related conceptual knowledge outside the language system rapidly affects verb-argument processing in unimpaired adults (McRae and Matsuki, 2009). Some have argued that verb-argument processing is in fact reducible to the activation of such event-related knowledge. However, data favoring this conclusion have come primarily from college-aged healthy adults, for whom both linguistic and conceptual semantic processing is fast and automatic. This study examined the influence of event-related knowledge on verb-argument processing among adults with aphasia (n=8) and older unimpaired controls (n=60), in two self-paced reading studies. Participants read sentences containing a plausible verb-argument combination (Mary used a knife to chop the large carrots before dinner), a combination that violated event-related world knowledge (Mary used some bleach to clean the large carrots before dinner), or a combination that violated the verb's selectional restrictions (Mary used a pump to inflate the large carrots before dinner). The participants with aphasia naturally split into two groups: Group 1 (n=4) had conceptual-semantic impairments (evidenced by poor performance on tasks like Pyramids & Palm Trees) but reasonably intact language processing (higher Western Aphasia Battery Aphasia Quotients), while Group 2 (n=4) had intact conceptual semantics but poorer language processing. Older unimpaired controls and aphasic Group 1 showed rapid on-line disruption for sentences with selectional-restriction violations (SRVs) and event-related knowledge violations, and also showed SRV-specific penalties in sentence-final acceptability judgments (Experiment 1) and comprehension questions (Experiment 2). In contrast, Group 2 showed very few reliable differences across conditions in either on-line or off-line measures. This difference between aphasic groups suggests that verb-related information and event-related knowledge may be dissociated in aphasia. Furthermore, it suggests that intact language processing is more critical for successful verb-argument integration than intact access to event-related world knowledge. This pattern is unexpected if verb-argument processing is reducible to activation of event-related conceptual knowledge.

ERP correlates of German Sign Language processing in deaf native signers.

BackgroundThe present study investigated the neural correlates of sign language processing of Deaf people who had learned German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS) from their Deaf parents as their first language. Correct and incorrect signed sentences were presented sign by sign on a computer screen. At the end of each sentence the participants had to judge whether or not the sentence was an appropriate DGS sentence. Two types of violations were introduced: (1) semantically incorrect sentences containing a selectional restriction violation (implausible object); (2) morphosyntactically incorrect sentences containing a verb that was incorrectly inflected (i.e., incorrect direction of movement). Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 74 scalp electrodes.ResultsSemantic violations (implausible signs) elicited an N400 effect followed by a positivity. Sentences with a morphosyntactic violation (verb agreement violation) elicited a negativity followed by a broad centro-parietal positivity.ConclusionsERP correlates of semantic and morphosyntactic aspects of DGS clearly differed from each other and showed a number of similarities with those observed in other signed and oral languages. These data suggest a similar functional organization of signed and oral languages despite the visual-spacial modality of sign language.

Event-based plausibility immediately influences on-line language comprehension.

In some theories of sentence comprehension, linguistically relevant lexical knowledge, such as selectional restrictions, is privileged in terms of the time-course of its access and influence. We examined whether event knowledge computed by combining multiple concepts can rapidly influence language understanding even in the absence of selectional restriction violations. Specifically, we investigated whether instruments can combine with actions to influence comprehension of ensuing patients of (as in Rayner, Warren, Juhuasz, & Liversedge, 2004; Warren & McConnell, 2007). Instrument-verb-patient triplets were created in a norming study designed to tap directly into event knowledge. In self-paced reading (Experiment 1), participants were faster to read patient nouns, such as hair, when they were typical of the instrument-action pair (Donna used the shampoo to wash vs. the hose to wash). Experiment 2 showed that these results were not due to direct instrument-patient relations. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 1 using eyetracking, with effects of event typicality observed in first fixation and gaze durations on the patient noun. This research demonstrates that conceptual event-based expectations are computed and used rapidly and dynamically during on-line language comprehension. We discuss relationships among plausibility and predictability, as well as their implications. We conclude that selectional restrictions may be best considered as event-based conceptual knowledge rather than lexical-grammatical knowledge.

Data and models for metonymy resolution

We describe the first shared task for figurative language resolution, which was organised within SemEval-2007 and focused on metonymy. The paper motivates the linguistic principles of data sampling and annotation and shows the task’s feasibility via human agreement. The five participating systems mainly used supervised approaches exploiting a variety of features, of which grammatical relations proved to be the most useful. We compare the systems’ performance to automatic baselines as well as to a manually simulated approach based on selectional restriction violations, showing some limitations of this more traditional approach to metonymy recognition. The main problem supervised systems encountered is data sparseness, since metonymies in general tend to occur more rarely than literal uses. Also, within metonymies, the reading distribution is skewed towards a few frequent metonymy types. Future task developments should focus on addressing this issue.

Event-related potential (ERP) responses to violations of inflectional and derivational rules of Finnish

Event-related potentials (ERP) were used to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of inflectional and derivational morphology. The participants were presented with visual sentences containing critical words in which either inflectional, derivational or both rules (combined violation) of Finnish were violated. Inflectional anomalies violated a number agreement of a noun with a previous auxiliary word. Derivational violations included a word-internal selectional restriction violation, i.e., a root and suffix category violation. Combined violations contained both a number and a category violation. The phonemic length of the critical words was controlled. Inflectional violations elicited a bilateral negative effect in the 450–550 ms time window, which was interpreted as an anterior negativity (AN) effect. Inflectional violations also elicited a late positivity (P600) effect. Derivational violations elicited an N400-like negativity effect, followed by the P600 effect. The P600 effects in the derivational and inflectional violation conditions summated linearly in the combined violation condition. The results are discussed with respect to the hypothesis that inflectional and derivational processes are independent and elicited in parallel in the online language comprehension.

Investigating effects of selectional restriction violations and plausibility violation severity on eye-movements in reading.

This paper presents a study investigating whether and how different kinds of knowledge affect the detection of plausibility and possibility violations. Readers' eye-movements were monitored while reading sentences describing impossible events cued by selectional restriction violations, extremely implausible events without selectional restriction violations, and plausible events, in order to determine whether the time course of disruption is determined by overall implausibility/unlikelihood, or whether impossibility cued by selectional restriction violations additionally affects disruption. Both early and late fixation measures showed stronger disruption in the impossible/selectional restriction violation condition. However, measures indexing regressive eye-movements showed similar disruption in both extremely implausible conditions. This suggests that the magnitude and latency of disruption to possibility and plausibility violations is not a simple function of the overall implausibility/unlikelihood of the resulting event, but that selectional restriction violations influence the early and late time course of disruption.

Neurodynamics of sentence interpretation: ERP evidence from French

Sentence interpretation was examined with event-related brain potentials (ERPs). The ERPs were recorded while participants listened to French sentences containing a subject-modifying relative clause (SRC). These were either correct, semantically incorrect, syntactically incorrect, or doubly (syntactically and semantically) incorrect. The semantic anomaly realized as a selectional restriction violation was associated with an N400. The syntactic anomaly realized as a phrase structure violation in the SRC elicited a frontal negativity between 150 and 600 ms. This negativity was more pronounced in the left than in the right hemisphere in the early time window (150–300 ms). In a later time window (300–600 ms), it was more broadly distributed including anterior and posterior regions, but with a maximum over the anterior recording sites. Finally, a centro-parietal late positivity (P600) was found between 600 and 1000 ms. While syntactic and semantic information in the double violation condition did not interact between 150 and 300 ms, they did interact between 300 and 600 ms. This finding supports serial models of sentence processing that postulate an initial autonomous stage of phrase structure building and a late stage of interaction.

On the Distinctiveness, Independence, and Time Course of the Brain Responses to Syntactic and Semantic Anomalies

We evaluated the distinctiveness, independence, and relative time courses of the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by syntactically and semantically anomalous words. ERPs were recorded from 13 scalp electrodes while subjects read sentences, some of which contained a selectional restriction violation (semantically anomalous), a verb tense violation (syntactically anomalous), or a doubly anomalous word that violated both selectional restriction and verb tense constraints. Semantic anomalies elicited a monophasic increase in N400 amplitude, whereas syntactic anomalies elicited a late positive shift with an onset around 500 msec and a duration of several hundred msec. Doubly anomalous words elicited both an increase in N400 amplitude and a late positive wave, and these effects summated in an approximately (but not perfectly) linear manner. These results are discussed with respect to the hypotheses that syntactic and semantic processes are separable and independent.

Differential Age Effects on Semantic and Syntactic Priming

Adult age differences in the processing of semantic and syntactic information during language comprehension were investigated in a lexical decision task in which the target word was preceded by a sentence fragment. Sentence fragment and target were presented visually and made up either a correct or an incorrect sentence containing either a semantic violation (selectional restriction violation) or a syntactic violation (subcategorisation violation). Experiment 1 revealed a differential age effect for the processing of syntactic, but not for the processing of semantic violations. Experiment 2, using visually degraded targets, demonstrated that this differential effect was independent of peripheral processing aspects, such as visual encoding. Experiment 3 including a neutral baseline condition revealed that the differential age effect on syntactic processing was due to controlled rather than to automatic aspects of priming, as it was observed for the cost component, but not for the bene”t component. Experiment 4 revealed that this effect was independent of the timing parameters used for stimulus presentation. It appears that age can have differential effects on specific cognitive domains, such as syntax and semantics. This may be attributable to the amount of controlled processes involved in syntactic and semantic priming.