Sentence Perception Research Articles

Linguistic Intuitions are the Result of Interactions Between Perceptual Processes and Linguistic Universals

We found a direct relationship between variation in informants' grammaticality intuitions about pronoun coreference and variation in the same informants' use of a clause segmentation strategy during sentence perception. It has been proproposed that ‘c‐command’, a structural principle defined in terms of constituent dominance relations, constrains within‐sentence coreference between pronouns and noun antecedents. The relative height of the pronoun and the noun in the phrase structure hierarchy determines whether the c‐command constraint blocks coreference: Coreference is allowed only when the complement structure containing the noun is attached higher than the pronoun. We collected informants' judgments on pronoun‐noun coreference in which the noun antecedent was contained in a complement structure dominated by either the Sentence‐node (S‐node) (higher than the pronoun) or the Verb‐phrase‐node (VP‐node) (not higher than the pronoun). We also assessed each informant's perceptual clause‐closure tendency using an auditory word‐monitor paradigm. Informants who strongly segmented clauses in the perceptual task did not differentiate between an S‐ and VP‐attachment of sentence complements, as revealed in their coreference judgments, but rather appeared to attach all sentence complements to the S‐node. Informants with relatively weak perceptual segmentation differentiated their coreference judgments according to the node attachment of the complement structure. These results indicate that the linguistic universal controlling within‐sentence coreference applies to the perceptually available structure for a sequence, not to its pure linguistic structure. Hence, linguistic intuitions result from the interaction of three independent faculties: language‐specific knowledge, perceptual processes, and linguistic universals.

Evaluation of a synthesized Spanish accent

English speakers' perception of a synthetic sentence with a moderate Spanish accent was reported on previously [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 77, S9 (1985)]. It was found that an increased number of cues caused significantly higher ratings, and formant frequency perturbation of full vowels was the strongest cue signaling accentedness. The present research investigated perception of newly synthesized strong and moderate accents, manipulating F0, VOT of syllable‐initial voiceless stops, duration of sentence‐medial stressed vowels, and formant frequency for full and reduced vowels. For each condition, the accented sentences were paired with the standard sentence in four randomizations. Forty‐two English speakers rated how different each accented sentence was from the standard sentence and indicated confidence in their judgments. It was found that the synthetic English sentence was reliably rated for cue modifications indicative of a moderate Spanish accent; an increase in number of cues resulted in perception of increased accentedness and higher confidence ratings for both accents; F0 and formant frequency perturbation in full vowels were the most prominent cues signaling moderate Spanish accent, and their presence resulted in higher confidence ratings.

The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations

The editor of this volume, who is also author or coauthor of five of the contributions, has provided an introduction that not only affords an overview of the separate articles but also interrelates the basic issues in linguistics, psycholinguistics and cognitive studies that are addressed in this volume. The twelve articles are grouped into three sections, as follows: I. Lexical Representation: The Passive in Lexical Theory (J. Bresnan); On the Lexical Representation of Romance Reflexive Clitics (J. Grimshaw); and Polyadicity (J. Bresnan).II. Syntactic Representation: Lexical-Functional Grammar: A Formal Theory for Grammatical Representation (R. Kaplan and J. Bresnan); Control and Complementation (J. Bresnan); Case Agreement in Russian (C. Neidle); The Representation of Case in Icelandic (A. Andrews); Grammatical Relations and Clause Structure in Malayalam (K. P. Monahan); and Sluicing: A Lexical Interpretation Procedure (L. Levin).III. Cognitive Processing of Grammatical Representations: A Theory of the Acquisition of Lexical Interpretive Grammars (S. Pinker); Toward a Theory of Lexico-Syntactic Interactions in Sentence Perception (M. Ford, J. Bresnan, and R. Kaplan); and Sentence Planning Units: Implications for the Speaker's Representation of Meaningful Relations Underlying Sentences (M. Ford).

On-line probe recognition latencies within complex sentences.

The notion was tested that sentence perception involves holding single clauses or propositions in a temporary buffer. Subjects were visually presented, one word at a time, with two-clause sentences in which each clause expressed a complete proposition. At an unexpected point in the second clause, the sentence was interrupted, a probe word was presented, and subjects were to respond quickly whether the probe word had appeared previously in the sentence. In sentences comprised of coordinate clauses, response times did not differ between probes that had appeared previously in the first clause and those that had appeared in the second clause. This is contrary to earlier work, in which the probe was presented following a complete sentence, that found faster response time for a probe that had appeared in the second clause. It is concluded that single clauses or propositions are not held in any temporary buffer during processing of a sentence but that more recently presented or important material may become more accessible in memory as presentation of the sentence proceeds. Surprising results for sentences containing complement and relative clauses suggest, however, that the sentence processor itself does treat clauses or propositions as distinct entities.

Response of hearing‐impaired adults to a structured program of auditory training

Twenty adults with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing impairments were given three tests of auditory perception: The CUNY Nonsense Syllable Test (NST), the low predictability items of the Speech in Noise (SPIN) test, and the high predictability items of the SPIN test. The tests were administered at a signal‐to‐noise ratio giving a score of approximately 50%, as determined with an adaptive procedure at the beginning of the study. They were tested on four occasions: (1) at the beginning of the study, (2) after one month of “no treatment,” (3) after a month of intensive auditory training, and (4) after a further month of “no treatment.” During the treatment period, ten of the subjects spent all of the time on global tasks (i.e., activities involving sentence perception and perceptual strategy) while the other 10 spent part of the time on analytic tasks (i.e., activities involving consonant recognition). The results showed: (a) that performance improved only during the treatment period, and (b) that the i...

Sentence perception in listening and reading

Abstract This article examines the role of suprasegmental phonology in speech processing and its implications for reading instruction. The article reviews evidence for the hypothesis that prosodic features cue the boundaries of perceptually functional units (e.g., phrases) in spoken sentences, thus assisting the listener in the immediate segmentation of verbal information. Findings from both comprehension and production studies suggest that the perceptual organization of sentences is guided by syntactic structure as well as by information‐processing requirements related to meaning and memory capacity. It is argued that prosodic cues are not well represented in written text, a fact which may underlie the difficulty that many children experience when learning how to comprehend what they read. The use of phrasally segmented text accompanied by adult modeling of prosodic rendering is suggested as a means for facilitating the child's induction of organization strategies during reading.

Reiterant speech: an acoustic and perceptual validation.

Reiterant speech, or nonsense syllable mimicry, has been proposed as a way to study prosody, particularly syllable and word durations, unconfounded by segmental influences. Researchers have shown that segmental influences on durations can be neutralized in reiterant speech. If it is to be a useful tool in the study of prosody, it must also be shown that reiterant speech preserves the suprasegmental duration and intonation differences relevant to perception. In the present study, syllable durations for nonreiterant and reiterant ambiguous sentences were measured to seek evidence of the duration differences which can enable listeners to resolve surface structure ambiguities in nonreiterant speech. These duration patterns were found in both nonreiterant and reiterant speech. A perceptual study tested listeners' perception of these ambiguous sentences as spoken by four "good" speakers--speakers who neutralized intrinsic duration differences and whose sentences were independently rated by skilled listeners as good imitations of normal speech. The listeners were able to choose the correct interpretation when the ambiguous sentences were in reiterant form as well as they did when the sentences were spoken normally. These results support the notion that reiterant speech is like nonreiterant speech in aspects which are important in the study of prosody.

Aphasics' perception of words in sentential context: Some real-time processing evidence

The perception of words belonging to different grammatical classes was investigated in Wernicke's and Broca's aphasics. The experiment used a word monitoring task, which varied the target's word class, as well as the sentential context. The sensitivity to semantic context was very similar for both aphasic groups. Processing differences for the two groups were found, however, with respect to different word classes. It appears that Broca's aphasics are unable to process grammatical morphemes as features of a phrasal frame. Wernicke's aphasics, however, seem to retain the ability to process syntactic as well as some semantic information, at least, during sentence perception.

Syntactically and Semantically Based Computations: Processing of Prepositions in Agrammatism

Six Broca's and six Wernicke's aphasics were tested for their processing of prepositions in different linguistic tasks which placed increasing emphasis on the use of syntactic knowledge. Subjects performed a variety of tasks involving the production and perception of sentences containing prepositions. Agrammatics' production performance was very poor. Although their comprehension performance was superior to production when asked to complete a sentence selecting the target item out of four prepositions their comprehension performance was no longer superior to production in tasks where correct performance strongly depends upon the knowledge of sentence form. These results support the view of a general incapacity of agrammatics to use knowledge of sentence structure in production and in comprehension.

Perception of sentence and paragraph boundaries in natural conversation

Subjects were presented with two versions (with and without semantic information) of a natural conversation and in each condition were asked to respond when they heard a sentence or paragraph boundary. Presence of semantic information resulted in increased numbers of both very quick and very slow responses. Sentence boundaries are cued by non-level intonation contours, laryngealization, pre-boundary lengthening, and presence of a pause, all unit-terminal phenomena; cues for paragraph boundaries both precede and follow a change in topic, reflecting the optional nature of topic changes in natural conversations.

Sentence perception in noise

Previous research has shown that normal children and older people have greater difficulty understanding sentences presented in a multitalker babble than do listeners in the 17–50 year age range. Recent work demonstrates that normally hearing children with speech‐production disorders and normally hearing learning‐disabled adults may demonstrate poorer speech perception than normal age mates. Since everyday listening situations often involve signal‐to‐noise levels comparable to the experimental levels, these data should be considered in design of school classrooms and home environments. [Supported, in part, by NSF, NIH, and BEH.]

Semantic and syntactic factors in the perception of rapidly presented sentences

An important controversy in psycholinguistics has been the nature of the initial hypothesis in sentence processing. This problem has been directly addressed with the Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) technique, in which words of a sentence are presented one at a time at tachistoscopic rates. The results of this research (Forster and Ryder, 1971) have provided evidence against Bever's (1970) thesis that “most normal perceptual processing of sentences is probably carried out with little regard to actual sequence or structure.” However, since the number of words seen is a result of presentation speed as well as psycholinguistic processing, this result could be an artifact of presentation rate. A slower or faster rate could facilitate different processing strategies and perhaps suggest a different nature of the initial hypothesis. Thus, the present study is a conceptual replication of Forster and Ryder (1971), at different presentation rates. While significant effects for syntactic structure were obtained only at the slower presentation rate, results for semantics were significant at both slow and fast presentation speeds. Thus, insofar as sentence perception with the RSVP technique reflects the nature of the initial hypothesis, it is suggested that the hypothesis is semantic.

Perception of CV syllables, words, and sentences by listeners with speech/language disorders

Developmental differences in the performance of normal 6‐ and 10‐year‐old children and young adults, for a group of tasks that includes detection, identification, and labeling of synthesized CV syllables [ba, da, ga] have recently been reported [L. L. Elliott et al., “Developmental differences in identifying and discriminating CV syllables,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 70, 669 (1981); L. L. Elliott et al., “Detection and identification thresholds for consonant‐vowel syllables,” Percept. Psychophys. (in press)]. We now describe performance on these tasks, the NU‐CHIPS Test, and the SPIN Test for a group of children and adults with speech and/or language disorders. Results showed that: (1) all subjects performed more poorly than normals on one or more of the tasks; (2) they performed poorly on different tasks; (3) poor performance on the experimental tasks could be related to subjects' individual speech/language problems; and (4) aberrant performance on these tasks was not predictable from performance on standard clinical tests.

Discourse context and sentence perception∗

Three experiments investigated the influence of a context sentence on the processing of a subsequent sentence. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that clauses with pronoun subjects functioned as processing units only when preceded by a context sentence that established a referent for the pronoun. Experiment 3 suggested that listeners make inferences which link definite noun phrases to a preceding context as soon as the definite noun phrase is encountered. The result suggests that context can affect within‐sentence processes in comprehension.

Processing information from screen media: A psycholinguistic approach

How do viewers derive meaning from sequenced images shown on a screen? The author attempted to determine whether methodologies employed in psycholinguistic investigation of sentence perception can be used to ascertain how screen media communicate. In the present study, techniques similar to those used to explore linguistic perception were not transferable to the examination of visual perception. However, the author believes that as researchers proceed to explore the area of screen literacy, the analogy with language will continue to be of heuristic value.

Perception and Interpretation of Ambiguous Sentences by Learning Disabled Twelve-Year-Olds

The present research assessed and compared the abilities of 27 learning disabled twelve-year-olds, 27 academically achieving age controls, 10 academically achieving seven- to eight-year-olds, and 10 normally developing five- to six-year-olds to perceive and interpret lexical and syntactic ambiguities in sentences. Eight lexically ambiguous, eight syntactically ambiguous, and four unambiguous control sentences were presented for interpretation of their alternatives in meaning. Each experimental sentence was associated with four pictorial choices. Significant differences in the ability to perceive and interpret the alternative meanings of both lexical and syntactical ambiguities were found between the learning disabled and the academically achieving twelve-year-olds. No significant difference existed in the ability of the learning disabled twelve-year-olds and the seven- to eight-year-old controls to perceive and interpret lexical ambiguities; however, they differed significantly in the ability to interpret the syntactic ambiguities. Comparison of the ability of the learning disabled twelve-year-olds and the five- to six-year-old controls to interpret the syntactic ambiguities indicated no significant differences. Among the learning disabled twelve-year-olds, performances on the ambiguous sentence test correlated positively with performances on tests of delayed sentence recall (NSST-Expressive) and of comprehension of sentences with linguistic concepts and relationships (Semel & Wiig, 1980). Performances did not correlate significantly with measures of verbal intelligence (WISC-R Verbal Scale). The present findings support previous observations of linguistic deficits among learning disabled children and adolescents and suggest that significant limitations may exist in the acquisition of linguistic competence by some children in this diagnostic group.

The Use of Formulation Frames in Syntax Perception

A source of regularity in sentence construction is the recurrent use of certain fixed syntactic formats in formulating explanations, descriptions, etc. It is demonstrated that subjects exploit these regularities in sentence perception. They assimilate some of the features of the sentence to formulation frames, rather than determining its actual morpho-syntactic structure, and do not normally check the conformity of the sentence to the presumed format. This is shown by an experiment on perceiving "perverse" sentences, which deviate from the normal formats so that normal relationships do not obtain. It is further shown that expectations raised by the context influence the process of sentence analysis and interpretation.

Significance of pauses for speech percetion.

Pauses can be used to facilitate certain operations involved in the production and in the perception of speech. In the case of speech perception, pauses have been found to improve the accuracy of detection and the recall of lists of digits and letters. The aim of the present experiments was to examine the effects of pause time on the perception of sentences. In experiment I, a semantic categorization task was used and in experiment II a sentence recall task. The results indicated that in sentences containing pauses between clauses, words were categorized more rapidly (experiment I) and propositions were recalled more accurately (experiment II, than in sentences containing pauses within the clause. The results are interpreted in the context of existing models of speech processing, and the significance of pause time for cognitive activity is discussed.

Sentence perception and distractibility in schizophrenic, manic, and depressed patients.

Sentence perception and distractibility in schizophrenic, manic, and depressed patients.

Sentence perception and distractibility in schizophrenic, manic, and depressed patients.

Sentence perception and distractibility in schizophrenic, manic, and depressed patients.