Syntactic Encoding Research Articles

Cross-project defect prediction via semantic and syntactic encoding

Cross-project defect prediction via semantic and syntactic encoding

Irish autonomous verbs in a semantic-pragmatic interface: Some reflections on information structure-driven valency reduction

Autonomous verbs in Irish are special verb forms incompatible with the surface realization of a subject. Previous studies have suggested to postulate empty categories such as pro, PRO or expletive pro to fill the subject position (cf. Stenson 1989; McCloskey 2007; Bondaruk/ Charzyńska-Wóicjk 2003), thus rejecting the idea that these verbs might be classified as completely subjectless. A series of syntactic tests bear out the hypothesis that, at least for Irish, these verbs behave as actually lacking a subject. I first suggest correlating this state of affairs to the fact that, with autonomous verbs, no argument role to be promoted to subject position is selected at the valency level, although it is “implied” in the unfolding of the event. Secondly, I argue that both valency reduction and syntactic non-realization of an argument role is driven by information structural constraints; notably, the focal nature of autonomous verbs (as advocated elsewhere, cf. Nolan 2012) causes the subject (together with the argument role it is associated with) to be informationally downgraded, thereby leading to its suppression in the sentence. The position held in this paper is that autonomous verbs of the Irish type epitomize an interesting phenomenon of semantic-pragmatic interface, with the pragmatic level of the utterance “mediating” between the semantic and the syntactic level; in such a perspective, the pragmatic (information structural) level of an utterance would determine either the number and type of argument roles a verb can take in a particular discourse context (cf. DuBois 1987; Goldberg 2006) and their syntactic encoding.

Longitudinal development of second language utterance fluency, cognitive fluency, and their relationship

AbstractThe development of L2 utterance fluency has been extensively researched, whereas that of cognitive fluency has rarely been examined. This study investigated the longitudinal development of L2 utterance and cognitive fluency and their relationship. Thirty-one Chinese learners of English completed speaking tasks and a set of tasks for cognitive fluency before and after 5 months’ study abroad. The results showed that participants made a significant improvement in mean syllable duration, end-clause pause frequency, and the speed of syntactic encoding and articulation but not in mid-clause pause frequency or lexical retrieval speed. Mixed-effects modeling confirmed a significant relationship between syntactic encoding speed and mean syllable duration and mid-clause pausing. Furthermore, the significant relationships were maintained over time. The findings highlight (a) the differences between mid-clause and end-clause pausing in terms of their developmental patterns and relationship with cognitive fluency and (b) a significant role of syntactic encoding speed in L2 utterance fluency.

Effects of age on the time course of syntactic priming in Chinese sentence production: an ERP study.

Using a syntactic priming task, we investigated the time course of syntactic encoding in Chinese sentence production and compared encoding patterns between younger and older adults. Participants alternately read sentence descriptions and overtly described pictures, while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. We manipulated the abstract prime structure (active or passive) as well as the lexical overlap of the prime and the target (verb overlap or no overlap). The syntactic choice results replicated classical abstract priming and lexical boost effects in both younger and older adults. However, when production latency was taken into account, the speed benefit from syntactic repetition differed between the two age groups. Meanwhile, preferred priming facilitated production in both age groups, whereas nonpreferred priming inhibited production in the older group. For electroencephalography, an earlier effect of syntactic repetition and a later effect of lexical overlap showed a two-stage pattern of syntactic encoding. Older adults also showed a more delayed and interactive encoding pattern than younger adults, indicating a greater reliance on lexical information. These results are illustrative of the two-stage competition and residual activation models.

Syntactic encoding in written language production by deaf writers: A structural priming study and a comparison with hearing writers.

In three structural priming experiments, we investigated whether deaf and hearing writers differ in the processes and representations underlying written language production. Experiment 1 showed that deaf writers of Mandarin Chinese exhibited comparable extents of structural priming and comparable lexical boosts, suggesting that syntactic encoding in written language production is similarly sensitive to prior lexical-syntactic experience in deaf and hearing writers. Experiment 2 showed that, while hearing writers showed a boost in structural priming when the prime and the target had homographic or heterographic homophone dative verbs compared to unrelated ones, deaf writers showed a homophone boost only with homographic homophone verbs but not with heterographic homophone verbs. This finding suggests that while hearing people develop associated lemmas for homophones due to phonological identity, deaf people do so due to orthographic identity. Finally, Experiment 3 showed no boost in structural priming in deaf writers or hearing writers when the prime and the target had the same verb of the same orthography (i.e., in the same script) than of different orthographies (i.e., between Simplified and Traditional Chinese), suggesting that neither hearing nor deaf people use orthographic identity to reactivate the prime structure. In all, the findings suggest that syntactic encoding in writing employs the same syntactic and lexical representations in deaf and hearing writers, though lexical representations are shaped more by orthography than phonology in deaf writers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Mandarin overt wh-fronting as focus movement

This study reexamines the syntactic encoding of information structure embodied by Mandarin overt wh-fronting questions. The sentence patterns that this paper is concerned with are wh-questions containing one or more fronted wh-phrases surfacing in (i) a clause-initial position (in root or non-root contexts) or (ii) a position immediately following a topicalized subject (also in root or non-root contexts). Departing from previous literature that obscures the exhaustifying effect exerted by a clause-initial shi ‘be’, I propose a more fine-grained classification of the focus interpretations of this type of question: a bare wh-fronting question coerces a plain (non-exhaustive) contrastive focus or a mirative focus reading (when the wh-phrase is prosodically marked) of the wh-variable, and shi-marked wh-fronting questions are shown to enforce an exhaustive focus in the answer. These three types of focus-associated interpretations are treated as conventional implicatures following Bianchi et al. (2015).

Interference effects on the processing of Korean double relative clauses

The current investigates the parsing process and its utilization of various linguistic information to resolve dependencies in Korean double relative clauses. While previous research has revealed evidence of interference effects of a distractor during dependency formations, a distractor involving dependency formations by itself has not been thoroughly explored. In light of this, we aimed to explore how the grammatical-role parallelism of a distractor modulates multiple filler-gap dependencies and examine the role of case marking in the resolution of these dependencies. In a self-paced reading experiment, we discovered that the parallelism effects of both head nouns were instrumental in the resolution of longer dependencies of a higher head noun and its gap. The non-parallel role of a distractor (i.e., low head noun) was reanalyzed before the integration of higher head noun and its gap. This finding suggests that parallelism effects play a critical role in the resolution of complex dependency structures. Additionally, our experiments investigated the role of case marking as a morphosyntactic cue in predicting the syntactic encoding of upcoming noun phrases. Our results demonstrated the immediate processing difficulty of conditions with double nominative markers, suggesting that parsers are selectively sensitive to case marking. Overall, our study contributes to our understanding of the parsing process and the selective use of linguistic cues in the resolution of complex dependency structures.

The Syntactic Encoding of Conventional Implicatures in Sicilian Polar Questions

AbstractThis paper describes and analyses two discourse particles that are found in polar questions and in some declarative structures in central Sicilian. The analysis adopts an interface approach, relying on the cartographic framework. It is proposed that each particle conveys in all its uses one and the same conventional implicature, relating to the epistemic state of one of the discourse participants. The interaction of the two particles with left-peripheral elements, in particular topics, vocatives, fronted foci, and speaker-oriented adverbs, supports the view that the speaker, the hearer, and the commitment anchor are syntactically represented in sentence structure.

Visual form of ASL verb signs predicts non-signer judgment of transitivity.

Longstanding cross-linguistic work on event representations in spoken languages have argued for a robust mapping between an event’s underlying representation and its syntactic encoding, such that–for example–the agent of an event is most frequently mapped to subject position. In the same vein, sign languages have long been claimed to construct signs that visually represent their meaning, i.e., signs that are iconic. Experimental research on linguistic parameters such as plurality and aspect has recently shown some of them to be visually universal in sign, i.e. recognized by non-signers as well as signers, and have identified specific visual cues that achieve this mapping. However, little is known about what makes action representations in sign language iconic, or whether and how the mapping of underlying event representations to syntactic encoding is visually apparent in the form of a verb sign. To this end, we asked what visual cues non-signers may use in evaluating transitivity (i.e., the number of entities involved in an action). To do this, we correlated non-signer judgments about transitivity of verb signs from American Sign Language (ASL) with phonological characteristics of these signs. We found that non-signers did not accurately guess the transitivity of the signs, but that non-signer transitivity judgments can nevertheless be predicted from the signs’ visual characteristics. Further, non-signers cue in on just those features that code event representations across sign languages, despite interpreting them differently. This suggests the existence of visual biases that underlie detection of linguistic categories, such as transitivity, which may uncouple from underlying conceptual representations over time in mature sign languages due to lexicalization processes.

Commonalities and Asymmetries in the Neurobiological Infrastructure for Language Production and Comprehension.

The neurobiology of sentence production has been largely understudied compared to the neurobiology of sentence comprehension, due to difficulties with experimental control and motion-related artifacts in neuroimaging. We studied the neural response to constituents of increasing size and specifically focused on the similarities and differences in the production and comprehension of the same stimuli. Participants had to either produce or listen to stimuli in a gradient of constituent size based on a visual prompt. Larger constituent sizes engaged the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and middle temporal gyrus (LMTG) extending to inferior parietal areas in both production and comprehension, confirming that the neural resources for syntactic encoding and decoding are largely overlapping. An ROI analysis in LIFG and LMTG also showed that production elicited larger responses to constituent size than comprehension and that the LMTG was more engaged in comprehension than production, while the LIFG was more engaged in production than comprehension. Finally, increasing constituent size was characterized by later BOLD peaks in comprehension but earlier peaks in production. These results show that syntactic encoding and parsing engage overlapping areas, but there are asymmetries in the engagement of the language network due to the specific requirements of production and comprehension.

Prior processing, foreign language classroom anxiety, and L2 fluency

Abstract This study examines the role of prior processing (understood as L2 use earlier in discourse) in moderating the contributions of foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) and proficiency to L2 utterance fluency. Two groups with comparable FLCA and proficiency scores performed the same narrative task. One group completed it in the absence of any other L2 task, and one group completed it immediately after responding to a similar but not identical prompt. The participants’ speech was analyzed using breakdown, speed, and repair fluency measures. Results showed that prior processing can reduce FLCA’s interference during L2 production. Unexpectedly, prior processing did not produce significant fluency gains associated with lexical retrieval and syntactic encoding. Instead, the patterns of variation revealed that more attention was paid to message conceptualization. This finding implies that prior processing can moderate FLCA’s role in L2 production because it alters the way attentional resources are allocated in subsequent performance.

Licensing imperative subjects without an imperative operator

It is often assumed that imperatives contain a covert imperative licenser, such as an imperative operator. The purpose of the operator is to bind the imperative subject, and thereby derive a number of the syntactic properties of imperatives. In this paper, I show, based on variation in V2 imperatives in varieties of Dutch and German, that if there is an alternative way of licensing the imperative subject, presence of an imperative operator is not necessary. I put forth the novel observation that V2 imperatives are only allowed in varieties that have verbal umlaut. I argue that verbal umlaut corresponds to a syntactic encoding of person features on the imperative verb, which can bind the imperative subject. This voids the need for an imperative operator in SpecCP, and gives way to V2 imperatives in V2 languages like Dutch and German. The implication is that a covert imperative licenser is a last resort mechanism, rather than an inherent part of imperatives clauses.

‘Onvervreemdbaar bezit’ verschillend benaderd

Abstract In this paper I explain the difference between the notions possessive dative and possessive accusative as used by me and other linguists like Vandeweghe (e.g. 1986 and 1987) and the notions dative and accusative inalienable possessors as used in ). It is not so much the difference in the descriptive system I want to focus on, but the difference in aim. Broekhuis et al. want to specify the syntactic encoding of ‘inalienable possession’ and come to the conclusion that the possessor of the inalienable possession is always the referent of an indirect object, be it on different syntactic levels. I want to explain why this is the case. This can be done by showing that the complex predicates in inalienable possession constructions are comparable to the dative verbs in constructions with a regular indirect object, due to the fact that they contain a constituent referring to inalienable possession. Our descriptions have much in common and if we see them as complementary, they can profit from each other.

¡Mira! The grammar-attention interface in the Spanish left periphery

Abstract In this paper, we focus on Spanish hearer-oriented particles like the highly frequent verb-based particle mira (lit. ‘look’). We provide a detailed syntactic account of these particles by demonstrating (i) that they must be distinguished from both vocative/appellative and expressive/exclamative particles, and (ii) that they feature illocutionary restrictions familiar from the class of discourse particles in languages other than Spanish. Since our proposal locates mira in the information-structural layer of the clause and, at the same time, demonstrates its sensitivity to the illocutionary component of sentence interpretation, we thus raise more general questions about the interaction between the syntax of speech acts and the syntactic encoding of information structure.

Are there segmental and tonal effects on syntactic encoding? Evidence from structural priming in Mandarin

• The Mandarin Ba-SVO transitive alternation shows structural priming. • There is a lexical, but not a semantic, boost of such priming. • The phonological boost of such priming does not depend on orthographic overlap. • Syllabic overlap promotes structural priming while tonal overlap is not. • Phonological (and lexical) overlap facilitates word order encoding. Numerous studies have established that speakers tend to form utterances by reusing previously experienced sentence structures (i.e., structural priming). It was also frequently found that the repetition of lexical items enhances structural priming (i.e., lexical boost). This facilitation effect occurs not only when there is a full overlap of verbs, but also when one level of the lexical representation (semantic or phonological representation) overlaps between the prime and the target. In the current study, we further scrutinize the phonological overlap effect on structural priming. We asked whether the phonological effect is independent of orthographic overlap, and whether it is driven by overlap of segments, tone, or both. In five structural priming experiments (three lab-based, two web-based experiments), native Mandarin speakers were instructed to describe transitive pictures after receiving SVO or SOV “ba” prime sentences. In Experiment 1, prime and target verbs had lexical overlap (e.g., 脱[tuo1, to take off]-脱[tuo1] ), semantic overlap (e.g., 卸[xie4, to remove]-脱[tuo1] ), phonological overlap (e.g., 拖[tuo1, to mop]-脱[tuo1] ), or no overlap (e.g., 打[da3, to beat]-脱[tuo1] ) while similarities at other levels were carefully avoided. There were structural priming and lexical boost effects, but semantic or phonological overlap did not boost priming. In two further lab-based experiments and their large-scale online replications, verbs in prime and target had full phonological overlap (segmental + tonal, e.g., 拖[tuo1]-脱[tuo1] ), syllabic overlap only (e.g., [tuo2, to carry]-脱[tuo1] ), tonal overlap only ( 称[cheng1, to weigh]-脱[tuo1] ), or no overlap. All four experiments showed structural priming, which was boosted by full phonological overlap. The syllabic overlap exerted a significant facilitation effect on structural priming, whereas no tonal effect was found. Together, these results indicate that processing at the phonological level feeds back to syntactic encoding in sentence production, which further supports an interactive view of language production.

How do phonology and orthography feed back to influence syntactic encoding in language production? Evidence from structural priming in Mandarin.

Do speakers make use of a word's phonological and orthographic forms to determine the syntactic structure of a sentence? We reported two Mandarin structural priming experiments involving homophones to investigate word-form feedback on syntactic encoding. Participants tended to reuse the syntactic structure across sentences; such a structural priming effect was enhanced when the prime and target sentences used homophone verbs (the homophone boost), regardless of whether the homophones were heterographic (homophones written in different character; Experiments 1 and 2) or homographic (homophones written in the same character; Experiment 2). Critically, the homophone boost was comparable between homographic and heterographic homophone primes (Experiment 2). Hence unlike phonology, orthography appears to play a minimal role in mediating structural priming in production. We suggest that the homophone boost results from lemma associations between homophones that develop due to phonological identity between homophones early during language learning; such associations stabilise before literacy acquisition, thus limiting the influence of orthographic identity on lemma association between homophones and in turn on structural priming in language production.

Explaining second language utterance fluency: Contribution of cognitive fluency and first language utterance fluency

AbstractGiven that utterance fluency in a second language (L2) is associated with not only L2 cognitive fluency but also utterance fluency in the first language (L1), the study examined to what extent different measures of L2 utterance fluency can be explained by L2-specific cognitive fluency and/or the corresponding L1 utterance fluency measures. Utterance fluency measures on speed, breakdown, and repair phenomena and cognitive fluency measures including speed of lexical retrieval, syntactic encoding, and articulation were collected in the L1 and the L2 from 44 Chinese learners of English. The results show that most L2 utterance fluency measures are accounted for by the combination of L2-specific cognitive fluency measures and the equivalent L1 utterance fluency measure, whereas the number of mid-clause silent pauses and corrections, and mean syllable duration are largely explained by L2-specific cognitive measures, suggesting that they reflect L2-specific knowledge and cognitive skills. In contrast, mean silent pause duration and the number of filled pauses are mainly explained by the corresponding L1 utterance fluency measures.

The Instrumental Case in the Diachrony of Russian Reflexive Verbs of Emotion: From Cause to Content

ABSTRACTRussian experiencer-subject reflexive verbs of emotion vary greatly in the syntactic encoding of their stimuli: poražatʹsja ‘be astonished’ takes the dative case, while obižat’sja ‘feel offended’ takes na ‘on’ + the accusative case, etc. Based on data from the Russian National Corpus, we show that, despite synchronic variegation, many reflexive verbs have been undergoing a unidirectional drift during the last three centuries: the instrumental encoding of the stimulus has gradually been giving way to lexically determined patterns. The use of the instrumental was motivated by its semantic profile: it was closely associated with the meaning of cause. This syntactic change echoes changes in the construal of the stimulus, whereby its cause-like components weaken and its content-like components come to the fore. The evidence in favour of this hypothesis includes the semantic differences between the instrumental case and the relevant encoding devices, a gradual decrease in the proportion of stimuli that are inanimate, the development of emotive meanings on the basis of physical meanings in individual verbs and lexicalization by which reflexive verbs become emancipated from their transitive counterparts. Semantic and syntactic scenarios in the development of reflexive verbs are later partially replicated by corresponding periphrastic participial constructions.

The syntactic encoding of experiential situations in Russian: Comparing verbs of perception, cognition and emotions

The syntactic encoding of experiential situations in Russian: Comparing verbs of perception, cognition and emotions

The Embedding Puzzle: Constraints on Evidentials in Complement Clauses

The Embedding Puzzle: Constraints on Evidentials in Complement Clauses