Sentential Complements Research Articles

Rhythmic alternation and the optional complementiser in English: New evidence of phonological influence on grammatical encoding

In a recall-based spoken production experiment, native English-speaking participants’ variable use of the complementiser that to introduce the sentential complement in sentences like Henry knew (that) Lucy/Louise washed the dishes was found to be related to whether that inclusion/omission resulted in an alternating sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables between the verb of the main clause and the subject of the complement clause. This finding is discussed in relation to the question of whether and how phonological encoding can influence grammatical encoding in spoken language production.

Linguistic complexity and information structure in Korean: Evidence from eye-tracking during reading

The nature of the memory processes that support language comprehension and the manner in which information packaging influences online sentence processing were investigated in three experiments that used eye-tracking during reading to measure the ease of understanding complex sentences in Korean. All three experiments examined reading of embedded complement sentences; the third experiment additionally examined reading of sentences with object-modifying, object-extracted relative clauses. In Korean, both of these structures place two NPs with nominative case marking early in the sentence, with the embedded and matrix verbs following later. The type (pronoun, name or description) of these two critical NPs was varied in the experiments. When the initial NPs were of the same type, comprehension was slowed after participants had read the sentence-final verbs, a finding that supports the view that working memory in language comprehension is constrained by similarity-based interference during the retrieval of information necessary to determine the syntactic or semantic relations between noun phrases and verb phrases. Ease of comprehension was also influenced by the association between type of NP and syntactic position, with the best performance being observed when more definite NPs (pronouns and names) were in a prominent syntactic position (e.g., matrix subject) and less definite NPs (descriptions) were in a non-prominent syntactic position (embedded subject). This pattern provides evidence that the interpretation of sentences is facilitated by consistent packaging of information in different linguistic elements.

The Anaphoric Theory of Tense

No abstract.

Attitudes without Monsters: A Japanese Perspective

No abstract.

Watching English grammar change: a case study on complement selection in British and American English

This article traces the complement selection properties of the adjective accustomed from the eighteenth century to the present. The adjective has frequently selected sentential complements, but the study illustrates a major change affecting the form of such complements. In the eighteenth century they were regularly of the to infinitive type, but today they are almost as regularly of the to -ing type. Both syntactic and semantic factors are identified in the article as having an impact on the change. The study also compares the pace of the change in British and American English, arguing that incipient change was discernible in both varieties as early as the nineteenth century. It is argued further that, at the present time, the change has been completed more fully in American English than in British English. This conclusion is reached by considering sentences with extraction or filler–gap dependencies. The data in the article come from large electronic corpora.

Examining the role of lexical frequency in the acquisition and processing of sentential complements

We present empirical data showing that the relative frequency with which a verb normally appears in a syntactic construction predicts young children's ability to remember and repeat sentences instantiating that construction. Children aged 2;10–5;8 years were asked to repeat grammatical and ungrammatical sentential complement sentences (e.g., ‘ I think + S’). The sentences contained complement-taking verbs (CTVs) used with differing frequencies in children's natural speech. All children repeated sentences containing high frequency CTVs (e.g., think) more accurately than those containing low frequency CTVs (e.g., hear), and made more sophisticated corrections to ungrammatical sentences containing high frequency CTVs. The data suggest that, like adults, children are sensitive to lexico-constructional collocations. The implications for language acquisition are discussed.

On the acquisition of sentential complement constructions: Comments on Morikawa’s article

On the acquisition of sentential complement constructions: Comments on Morikawa’s article

The Abstracts of the 15th Australian Language and Speech Conference

DeVilliers and DeVilliers (2000, 2005) propose that deaf and hearing children acquire a theory of mind (or the understanding that human behaviour is the product of psychological states like true and false beliefs) as a consequence of their linguistic mastery of a rule of syntax. Specifically, they argue that the syntactic rule for sentential complementation with verbs of speech (e.g., “say”) precedes syntactic mastery of complementation for cognition (e.g., “think”) and both of these developmentally precede and promote conceptual mastery of a theory of mind (ToM), as indexed via success on standard false belief tests. The present study examined this proposition in groups of primary-school-aged deaf children and hearing preschoolers who took false belief tests and a modified memory for complements test that included control questions. Guttman scaling techniques indicated no support either for the prediction that syntactic skill precedes ToM understanding or for the earlier emergence of complementation for “say” than for “think”. Methodological issues and implications for deaf children's ToM development are discussed.

Quantificational Arguments in Temporal Adjunct Clauses

Quantificational arguments can take scope outside of temporal adjunct clauses, in an apparent violation of locality restrictions: the sentence few secretaries cried after each executive resigned allows the quantificational NP each executive to take scope above few secretaries. I show how this scope relation is the result of local operations: the adjunct clause is a temporal generalized quantifier which takes scope over the main clause (Pratt and Francez, Linguistic and Philosophy 24(2), 187–222. [2001]), and within the adjunct clause, the quantificational argument takes scope above the implicit determiner which forms the temporal generalized quantifier. The paper explores various relations among quantificational arguments across clause boundaries, including temporal clauses that are modified internally by a temporal adverbial and temporal clauses with embedded sentential complements.

Reading relative clauses in English

Abstract Two self-paced reading experiments investigated several factors that influence the comprehension complexity of singly-embedded relative clauses (RCs) in English. Three factors were manipulated in Experiment 1, resulting in three main effects. First, object-extracted RCs were read more slowly than subject-extracted RCs, replicating previous work. Second, RCs that were embedded within the sentential complement of a noun were read more slowly than comparable RCs that were not embedded in this way. Third, and most interestingly, object-modifying RCs were read more slowly than subject-modifying relative clauses. This result contradicts one of the central tenets of complexity research: that nested sentences are harder to understand than their right-branching equivalents (e.g., Miller and Chomsky 1963). It is hypothesized that this result followed from a combination of two information-flow factors: (1) background information is usually presented early in a sentence; and (2) restrictive RCs—the form of the RCs in Experiment 1—usually convey background information. Experiment 2 tested this hypothesis by comparing restrictive and non-restrictive RCs— which generally provide new information—in both subject- and objectmodifying positions. The results of the experiment were as predicted by the information-flow account: Only restrictive RCs were read more slowly when modifying objects. It is concluded that both resource and information-flow factors need to be considered in explaining RC complexity effects.

Case Studies of Sentence Complement Training and False Belief Performance

It has been hypothesized that sentence complement comprehension is a prerequisite for the development of false belief understanding in young children. Previous research has suggested that training on sentence complements leads to improved false belief performance. This study used a case study design to investigate the effect of sentence complement training on false belief for 2 children. One was a 3-year-old twin girl with typical language development; her twin sister was included, without training, for comparison. The second child was a 3-year-old girl with an expressive language delay. The twins demonstrated sentence complement mastery from the outset of the study, but did not display full competence with false belief. The child with a language delay improved markedly in comprehen- sion of sentence complements but consistently failed false belief tasks. The results suggest that although sentence complement comprehension may play a role in false belief development, the relationship between the two may not be as close as has been suggested.

Why is that? Structural prediction and ambiguity resolution in a very large corpus of English sentences

Previous psycholinguistic research has shown that a variety of contextual factors can influence the interpretation of syntactically ambiguous structures, but psycholinguistic experimentation inherently does not allow for the investigation of the role that these factors play in natural (uncontrolled) language use. We use regression modeling in conjunction with data from the British National Corpus to measure the amount and specificity of the information available for disambiguation in natural language use. We examine the Direct Object/Sentential Complement ambiguity and the closely related issue of complementizer use in sentential complements, and find that both ambiguity resolution and complementizer use can be predicted from contextual information.

Mental state verb production and sentential complements in four-year-old children

The relationship between mental state verbs (MSVs) and sentential complements (S-comps) was investigated in language samples of 40 4-year-old children. MSVs were coded by function (cognitive, sensory, or pragmatic), complement (simple, simple+, or S-comp) and expression of certainty. Children produced an average of 14 total and 5 different MSVs; approximately equal numbers of MSVs had cognitive and pragmatic functions. MSVs referring to cognitive states were more likely to occur with S-comps than MSVs used as pragmatic markers; S-comps were more likely to occur with uncertain than certain MSVs. Utterances containing MSVs were longer than utterances with other matrix verbs, but MSVs and S-comps were strongly correlated after adjusting for utterance length. Finally, S-comps occurred more often with MSVs than with other matrix verbs after excluding the predominant MSV (want to) and the predominant other matrix verb (going to) from analysis. Implications for using MSVs to investigate the relationship among semantics, cognition and syntax are discussed.

Is Cognitive Grammar a Usage-Based Model? Towards a Realistic Account of English Sentential Complements

Cognitive Grammar (Langacker FCG1, FCG2) is commonly described as a usagebased model, a label applied to grammatical approaches which purport to give “substantial importance to the actual use of the linguistic system and a speaker’s knowledge of this use” (Langacker FCG1: 494). This paper examines this claim in the light of the Cognitive Grammar research on English sentential complements, and confronts its findings with empirical data on complementation retrieved from several computerized corpora of Present-day British and American English.

False belief and sentence complement performance in children with specific language impairment.

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have language abilities not commensurate with other cognitive abilities. This pattern makes the SLI population of interest when investigating the relationship between language and theory of mind. One view regarding this relationship is that theory of mind develops independently of language, but certain language skills are required to meet the demands of tasks used to measure theory of mind, such as false belief. Another view is that language development facilitates theory of mind development, and specifically, that mastery of sentence complement structures is necessary for false belief. The study asked (1) if children with SLI can succeed on false belief, despite their language deficits, when the linguistic demands of the false belief task are low, and (2) if performance on sentence complement structures predicts false belief performance. Fifteen children with SLI, 15 children matched for age and 15 children matched for language comprehension level participated in a false belief task with four conditions of differing linguistic complexity, and a test of sentence complementation understanding. Spontaneous production of sentence complements was also measured. Group differences for false belief and sentence complementation, and condition differences for false belief, were tested non-parametrically. Partial correlation analysis, log-linear analysis, and Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney tests were used to explore relationships among the complementation and false belief measures for all children and for each group. Children with SLI performed similarly to age-matched peers on false belief when linguistic complexity of the task was low, and performed more poorly than age-matched peers on understanding of sentence complements. For all children, sentence complement performance was correlated with false belief (controlling for age), and those who performed well on sentence complements had higher mean rates of false belief success. Log-linear analysis showed the sentence complement-false belief relationship to hold for a condition with relatively low linguistic demands. The study provides evidence that children with SLI can perform at age-appropriate levels when false belief tasks are less demanding, and that mastery of sentence complementation is a predictor of false belief ability.

Semitic Relatives

This article evaluates a promotion-based analysis for Semitic relatives along the lines of Kayne 1994 and compares it with an alternative analysis that does not make use of promotion but shares with Kayne's analysis an antisymmetric view of phrase structure. The alternative analysis is based on establishing a parametric distinction relating to categorial identity of the relative clause such that it is a CP in some languages and a DP in others. The first type is found in languages where the relative complementizer is the same as the normal complementizer of sentential complementation (e.g., Hebrew). The second type is found in languages where the relative complementizer is a determiner (e.g., Amharic and Arabic). This difference is shown to have crucial implications for the structure and derivation of N-initial and N-final relatives, as well as for some relevant typological generalizations, including a generalization relating to the phenomenon of (relative) clause nominalization.

The On-Line Resolution of the Sentence Complement/Relative Clause Ambiguity: Evidence from Spanish

Two self-paced reading experiments investigated syntactic ambiguity resolution in Spanish. The experiments examined the way in which Spanish subjects initially interpret sentences that are temporarily ambiguous between a sentence complement and a relative clause interpretation. Experiment 1 examined whether the sentence complement preference found in English is observed in Spanish speaking subjects. In Experiment 2, verbal mood was manipulated in order to study the influence of verb-specific information on sentence processing. Since subcategorization for a subjunctive complement clause is generally assumed to be a lexical property of some verbs, the manipulation of the mood of the embedded verb affords us an interesting and novel way to examine the influence of lexical information on syntactic ambiguity resolution. Experiment 1 showed that Spanish speakers initially interpret the ambiguous that-clause as a sentence complement. Experiment 2 showed that verb-specific information, in particular, the information that specificies that a verb subcategorizes for a subjunctive complement, is accessed and used rapidly and affects the ambiguity resolution process. The results are discussed in relation to current models of sentence processing.

The On-Line Resolution of the Sentence Complement/Relative Clause Ambiguity: Evidence from Spanish

The On-Line Resolution of the Sentence Complement/Relative Clause Ambiguity: Evidence from Spanish

Les propriétés des complétives en -ko en coréen

Summary Various types of sentential complements are known in Korean, they differ in their complementizer. We considered those with the complementizer ko (P-ko). Due to their grammatical properties, they do not have the status of noun phrase (NP), and they have particular properties: question in mwôlako (what) or in ôt’ôhke (how) and pronominalization with kîlôhke (this way). Thus, P-ko sentential complements show a mixture of nominal and adverbial features, though they often alternate with NP sentential complements in position of direct object. P-ko sentential complements do not share these properties with other similar sequences which must be classified as adverbial clauses.

The role of language in the development of false belief understanding: a training study.

The current study used a training methodology to determine whether different kinds of linguistic interaction play a causal role in children's development of false belief understanding. After 3 training sessions, 3-year-old children improved their false belief understanding both in a training condition involving perspective-shifting discourse about deceptive objects (without mental state terms) and in a condition in which sentential complement syntax was used (without deceptive objects). Children did not improve in a condition in which they were exposed to deceptive objects without accompanying language. Children showed most improvement in a condition using both perspective-shifting discourse and sentential complement syntax, suggesting that each of these types of linguistic experience plays an independent role in the ontogeny of false belief understanding.