Syntactic Prediction Research Articles

Processing causal structure sentences in Mandarin Chinese: an eye movements study.

It remains uncertain whether causal structure prediction can improve comprehension in Chinese sentences and whether the position of the headword mediates the prediction effect. We conducted an experiment to explore the effect of causal prediction and headword position in Chinese sentence reading. Participants were asked to read sentences containing causal connectives with their eye movements recorded. In the experiment, we manipulated the causal structure of the sentence and the position of the headword. We found a promoting effect of causal structure on first-pass reading time and a hindering impact on total reading time. However, the effect was not mediated by the headword position. The results show that causal syntactic prediction facilitated early-stage processing and increased the integration cost in the late stage of Chinese sentence processing. These findings also support the constraint-based approach, which suggests an isolation between semantic and syntactic processing.

Semantic and Syntactic Predictions in Reading Aloud: Are Good Predictors Good Statistical Learners?

Recent research suggests that becoming a fluent reader may partially rely on a domain-general statistical learning (SL) mechanism that allows a person to automatically extract predictable patterns from the sensory input. The goal of the present study was to investigate a potential link between SL and the ability to make linguistic predictions. All previous studies investigated quite general levels of reading ability rather than the dynamic process of making linguistic predictions. We thus used a recently developed predictive reading task, which consisted of having participants read aloud words that were preceded by either semantically or syntactically predictive contexts. To measure the componential nature of SL, we used a visual and an auditory SL task (VSL, ASL) and the classic serial reaction time task (SRT). General reading ability was assessed with a reading speed/comprehension test. The study was conducted online on a sample of 120 participants to make it possible to explore interindividual differences. The results showed only weak and sometimes even negative correlations between the various SL measures. ASL correlated positively and predicted general reading ability but neither semantic nor syntactic prediction effects. Similarly, one of the SRT measures was significantly associated with reading level and reading speed but not with linguistic prediction effects. In sum, there is little evidence that domain-general SL is a good predictor of people's ability to make domain-specific linguistic predictions. In contrast, SL shows a weak but significant association with general reading ability.

The Effects of Semantic and Syntactic Prediction on Reading Aloud

Semantic and syntactic prediction effects were investigated in a word naming task using semantic or syntactic contexts that varied between three and six words. Participants were asked to read the contexts silently and name a target word, which was indicated by a color change. Semantic contexts were composed of lists of semantically associated words without any syntactic information. Syntactic contexts were composed of semantically neutral sentences, in which the grammatical category but not the lexical identity of the final word was highly predictable. When the presentation time of the context words was long (1,200 ms), both semantically and syntactically related contexts facilitated reading aloud latencies of target words and syntactically related contexts produced larger priming effects than semantically related contexts in two out of three analyses. When the presentation time was short (200 ms), however, syntactic context effects disappeared, while semantic context effects remained significant. Across the three experiments, longer contexts produced faster response latencies, but longer contexts did not produce larger priming effects. The results are discussed in the context of the extant literature on semantic and syntactic priming and more recent evidence, suggesting that syntactic information constrains single word recognition.

Online neurostimulation of Broca's area does not interfere with syntactic predictions: A combined TMS-EEG approach to basic linguistic combination.

Categorical predictions have been proposed as the key mechanism supporting the fast pace of syntactic composition in language. Accordingly, grammar-based expectations are formed-e.g., the determiner "a" triggers the prediction for a noun-and facilitate the analysis of incoming syntactic information, which is then checked against a single or few other word categories. Previous functional neuroimaging studies point towards Broca's area in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) as one fundamental cortical region involved in categorical prediction during incremental language processing. Causal evidence for this hypothesis is however still missing. In this study, we combined Electroencephalography (EEG) and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to test whether Broca's area is functionally relevant in predictive mechanisms for language. We transiently perturbed Broca's area during the first word in a two-word construction, while simultaneously measuring the Event-Related Potential (ERP) correlates of syntactic composition. We reasoned that if Broca's area is involved in predictive mechanisms for syntax, disruptive TMS during the first word would mitigate the difference in the ERP responses for predicted and unpredicted categories in basic two-word constructions. Contrary to this hypothesis, perturbation of Broca's area at the predictive stage did not affect the ERP correlates of basic composition. The correlation strength between the electrical field induced by TMS and the ERP responses further confirmed this pattern. We discuss the present results considering an alternative account of the role of Broca's area in syntactic composition, namely the bottom-up integration of words into constituents, and of compensatory mechanisms within the language predictive network.

Syntactic prediction during self-paced reading is age invariant.

Controversy exists as to whether, compared to young adults, older adults are more, equally or less likely to make linguistic predictions while reading. While previous studies have examined age effects on the prediction of upcoming words, the prediction of upcoming syntactic structures has been largely unexplored. We compared the benefit that young and older readers gain when the syntactic structure is made predictable, as well as potential age differences in the costs involved in making predictions. In a self-paced reading study, 60 young and 60 older adults read sentences in which noun-phrase coordination (e.g. large pizza or tasty calzone) is made predictable through the inclusion of the word either earlier in the sentence. Results showed a benefit of the presence of either in the second half of the coordination phrase, and a cost of the presence of either in the first half. We observed no age differences in the benefit or costs of making these predictions; Bayes factor analyses offered strong evidence that these effects are age invariant. Together, these findings suggest that both older and younger adults make similar strength syntactic predictions with a similar level of difficulty. We relate this age invariance in syntactic prediction to specific aspects of the ageing process.

Syntactic prediction in L2 learners: evidence from English disjunction processing

Abstract This study examined the extent to which second language (L2) learners’ syntactic prediction resembles or differs from native speakers’ and the role of L2 proficiency in this process. An experimental group of 135 Chinese learners of English and a control group of 58 English native speakers participated in a phrase-by-phrase self-paced reading task where the experimental sentences were contrastive in whether the DP disjunction was preceded by either or not. To ensure that the participants had sufficient knowledge about the target stimuli, they were asked to additionally judge the acceptability of the experimental sentences. The results showed that like native speakers, L2 learners read the critical region consisting of “or” and a DP disjunct faster when it was preceded by either compared to when either was absent. In addition, this effect of the presence versus absence of either spilled over to the post-critical region. Moreover, L2 proficiency was not found to robustly modulate this process. It is concluded that L2 learners, like native speakers, can make predictions at the level of syntax.

Corrigendum: Developmental Language Disorder as Syntactic Prediction Impairment

Hestvik, Arild; Schwartz, Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, University of Delaware, 125 East Main Street, Newark, DE 19711, USAEpstein, BailaCommunication Arts, Sciences & Disorders, Brooklyn College, 4433 Boylan Hall, Brooklyn, NY 11210, USARichard G. and Shafer, Valerie L.PhD Program in Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USACorrespondence: hestvik@udel.eduKeywords: syntax, gap-filling, prediction, event-related potentials, developmental language disorder, relative clauses, sentence processingCorrigendum on: Hestvik, A., Epstein, B., Schwartz, R. G., & Shafer, V. L. (2022). Developmental Language Disorder as Syntactic Prediction Impairment . In Frontiers in Communication (Vol. 6).Figure/Table LegendIn the original article, there was a mistake in the legend for Figure 10 as published. The order of the legend on the horizonal axis was “filled gap” then “control”. The correct order should be “control” and then “filled gap.” The correct legend appears below. The authors apologize for this error and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated.

Lexicalization in the developing parser

We use children's noun learning as a probe into the nature of their syntactic prediction mechanism and the statistical knowledge on which that prediction mechanism is based. We focus on verb-based predictions, considering two possibilities: children's syntactic predictions might rely on distributional knowledge about specific verbs–i.e. they might be lexicalized–or they might rely on distributional knowledge that is general to all verbs. In an intermodal preferential looking experiment, we establish that verb-based predictions are lexicalized: children encode the syntactic distributions of specific verbs and use those distributions to make predictions, but they do not assume that these can be assumed of verbs in general.

Towards Understanding Sustained Neural Activity Across Syntactic Dependencies.

Sustained anterior negativities have been the focus of much neurolinguistics research concerned with the language-memory interface, but what neural computations do they actually reflect? During the comprehension of sentences with long-distance dependencies between elements (such as object wh-questions), prior event-related potential work has demonstrated sustained anterior negativities (SANs) across the dependency region. SANs have been traditionally interpreted as an index of working memory resources responsible for storing the first element (e.g., wh-phrase) until the second element (e.g., verb) is encountered and the two can be integrated. However, it is also known that humans pursue top-down approaches in processing long-distance dependencies-predicting units and structures before actually encountering them. This study tests the hypothesis that SANs are a more general neural index of syntactic prediction. Across three experiments, we evaluated SANs in traditional wh-dependency contrasts, but also in sentences in which subordinating adverbials (e.g., although) trigger a prediction for a second clause, compared to temporal adverbials (e.g., today) that do not. We find no SAN associated with subordinating adverbials, contra the syntactic prediction hypothesis. More surprisingly, we observe SANs across matrix questions but not embedded questions. Since both involved identical long-distance dependencies, these results are also inconsistent with the traditional syntactic working memory account of the SAN. We suggest that a more general hypothesis that sustained neural activity supports working memory can be maintained, however, if the sustained anterior negativity reflects working memory encoding at the non-linguistic discourse representation level, rather than at the sentence level.

Developmental Language Disorder as Syntactic Prediction Impairment.

We provide evidence that children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) are impaired in predictive syntactic processing. In the current study, children listened passively to auditorily-presented sentences, where the critical condition included an unexpected “filled gap” in the direct object position of the relative clause verb. A filled gap is illustrated by the underlined phrase in “The zebra that the hippo kissed the camel on the nose…”, rather than the expected “the zebra that the hippo kissed [e] on the nose”, where [e] denotes the gap. Brain responses to the filled gap were compared to a control condition using adverb-relative clauses with identical substrings: “The weekend that the hippo kissed the camel on the nose [e]…”. Here, the same noun phrase is not unexpected because the adverb gap occurs later in the structure. We hypothesized that a filled gap would elicit a prediction error brain signal in the form of an early anterior negativity, as we have previously observed in adults. We found an early (bilateral) anterior negativity to the filled gap in a control group of children with Typical Development (TD), but the children with DLD exhibited no brain response to the filled gap during the same early time window. This suggests that children with DLD fail to predict that a relativized object should correspond to an empty position after the relative clause verb, suggesting an impairment in predictive processing. We discuss how this lack of a prediction error signal can interact with language acquisition and result in DLD.

Literacy can enhance syntactic prediction in spoken language processing.

Language comprehenders can use syntactic cues to generate predictions online about upcoming language. Previous research with reading-impaired adults and healthy, low-proficiency adult and child learners suggests that reading skills are related to prediction in spoken language comprehension. Here, we investigated whether differences in literacy are also related to predictive spoken language processing in non-reading-impaired proficient adult readers with varying levels of literacy experience. Using the visual world paradigm enabled us to measure prediction based on syntactic cues in the spoken sentence, prior to the (predicted) target word. Literacy experience was found to be the strongest predictor of target anticipation, independent of general cognitive abilities. These findings suggest that (a) experience with written language can enhance syntactic prediction of spoken language in normal adult language users and (b) processing skills can be transferred to related tasks (from reading to listening) if the domains involve similar processes (e.g., predictive dependencies) and representations (e.g., syntactic). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Syntactic Prediction Adaptation Accounts for Language Processing and Language Learning

AbstractA previous study has shown that children use recent input to adapt their syntactic predictions and use these adapted predictions to infer the meaning of novel words. In the current study, we investigated whether children could use this mechanism to disambiguate words whose interpretation as a noun or a verb is ambiguous. We tested 2‐ to 4‐year‐old French children using the phrase la petite followed by a homophone that could be interpreted as either a noun or a verb. We assigned the children to a noun condition or a verb condition. Before the test, those in the noun condition were exposed to sentences where la petite predicted nouns, and those in the verb condition to sentences where la petite predicted verbs. At testing, 3‐ to 4‐year‐olds, but not 2‐year‐olds, from the verb condition looked at the verb interpretation longer than did the children in the noun condition. This suggests a progression in children's ability to rely on input to adapt their predictions in language comprehension.

XP- and X<sup>0</sup>-movement in the Latin verb: Evidence from mirroring and anti-mirroring

Latin verbs appear to both obey and disobey the Mirror Generalization (Baker 1985), albeit in different inflectional forms (Cinque 1999). Given the importance of the Mirror Generalization to morphosyntactic theorizing, this situation deserves scrutiny. We develop an analysis on which all Latin finite verbs, whether mirroring or anti-mirroring, share a single, simple, virtually invariant derivation, involving one step of head movement (Asp to T) and one step of phrasal movement (vP to [Spec,TP]). On this analysis, the Mirror Generalization is valid for Latin, despite appearances, but it is crucially about structures formed by operations on heads: phrasal movement can give rise to apparent violations of it (Myler 2017). The analysis extends readily to nonfinite forms, solving an anti-mirroring paradox arising among the participles. It also makes correct syntactic predictions. When the verb word is a constituent, it is a TP, and the analysis correctly predicts that it should move as a phrase, not as a head. The analysis also makes correct predictions about the positions of vP-adjuncts, and is fully compatible with what is known about leftward argument movement out of vP. Finally, unlike two competing analyses (Embick 2000; Calabrese 2019), it accounts for anti-mirroring in Latin without any stipulations placing passive Voice in an unexpectedly peripheral position within the verb word. The larger picture that emerges is one in which phonological words need not correspond to syntactic constituents, but can instead be reflexes of linearly contiguous series of morphemes suspended across potentially vast regions of syntactic space (Julien 2002).

Functional Linking Between Negative and Positive ERPs for Syntactic Processing in Japanese: Mutual Enhancement, Syntactic Prediction, and Working Memory Constraints.

This study attempts to detect the differences in event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with two syntactic processes: the syntactic integration of discontinuous dependency and the detection of a violation of the syntactic island constraint. We recorded the electroencephalogram elicited by complex sentences in Japanese that included a dependency between a quantifier and its head noun, in which we changed the word order of the two words to manipulate the presence and absence of a syntactic integration and a syntactic island violation while keeping the lexical items and construction unchanged. We found significant negative and positive deflections for the syntactic integration only when a quantifier preceded its head noun. We also observed significant negative and positive deflections for the syntactic island violation, for which the negativity was more salient when a quantifier preceded its head noun. This study is the first to report a late positive ERP for a violation of the syntactic island constraints in Japanese, and the results showed that the ERP elicited by syntactic integration and that by syntactic island violation were different in terms of their latency, topography, and duration. More importantly, the ERPs elicited by the two syntactic processes were biphasic, and the amplitudes of the negative ERP and of the positive ERP were positively correlated. This positive correlation could be a characteristic of syntactic processing because it contrasted with the negative correlation reported for the ERP elicited by semantic anomalies in English. Furthermore, the amplitude of the ERP for syntactic integration was negatively correlated with the individual capacity of working memory (WM). That is, a reader with greater WM capacity showed smaller negativity and positivity for the syntactic integration, whereas the amplitude for the syntactic island violation showed no significant correlation with the individual capacity of WM. Our results suggested that linguistic ERPs functionally interacted with each other and that the ERP involving the retention and the retrieval of a distant word could be constrained by the individual differences in WM capacity. We discuss the possible reasons for the contrast between English and Japanese on the basis of the cross-linguistic differences in the two languages.

Left occipital and right frontal involvement in syntactic category prediction: MEG evidence from Standard Arabic

Though recent years have seen a growth in research on predictive processes in language comprehension, their scope and mechanisms remain partially elusive. While mechanisms involved in predicting specific words are relatively well understood, those underlying syntactic prediction are still unclear. In part, this is because of the difficulty in designing experiments that manipulate syntactic predictability while controlling other variables. In this MEG study, we achieved this with a manipulation of syntactic category predictability within fully well-formed expressions of Standard Arabic. Participants read sentences beginning with a subject-adjective context, in which the presence of at least one of two possible cues (gender-incongruity and/or an intervening relative pronoun) was sufficient for predicting a target word's syntactic category. Absence of both cues (i.e., congruent subject-adjective context with no relative pronoun) increased uncertainty about the target's syntactic category. Using source analysis, we compared activity evoked by targets with predictable and unpredictable categories in the occipital lobe. We found an interaction effect consistent with previous findings: in the primary visual cortex, an early evoked component (visual M100) is enhanced only when the syntactic category was unpredictable. We also compared responses to pre-target predictive and unpredictive contexts across five bilateral frontal and temporal regions. In the right-hemispheric frontal region, we found a temporal cluster (~230 ms after adjective onset), where unpredictive contexts elicited more activation than predictive contexts. By hypothesis elimination, we conclude that the most likely variable driving this effect is syntactic entropy. Our results show that predictive mechanisms recruited during reading also involve predicting upcoming syntactic categories, implicating at least two cortical regions: the left visual cortex and the right frontal cortex.

Agreement Mismatch in Partitive Relatives

Agreement Mismatch in Partitive Relatives

Meaning-driven syntactic predictions in a parallel processing architecture: Theory and algorithmic modeling of ERP effects

Syntactic and semantic information processing can interact selectively during language comprehension. However, the nature and extent of the interactions, in particular of semantic effects on syntax, remain to some extent elusive. We revisit an influential ERP result by Kim and Osterhout (2005), later replicated by Kim and Sikos (2011), that the verb in sentences such as ‘The hearty meal was devouring … ’ evokes a P600 effect—a signature of syntactic processing difficulty—even though all stimuli were grammatically well-formed. We view this effect as a manifestation of a conflict in the assignment of grammatical subject and object roles to the verb's arguments as performed independently by a semantic system (predicting that meal should be the object) and by a syntactic system (labeling meal as the subject). More specifically, we develop an explicit algorithmic implementation of a parallel processing architecture that supports (i) meaning-based prediction of grammatical role labels, using either a probabilistic label guesser or a neural network, and (ii) comparison of the predicted labels with labels assigned by a state-of-the-art dependency parser. We demonstrate that the system can classify sentences from the Kim and Osterhout (2005) corpus with adequate accuracy, and can detect labeling conflicts as intended. Some implications of our results for models of prediction in language processing are discussed.

Scene grammar shapes the way we interact with objects, strengthens memories, and speeds search

Predictions of environmental rules (here referred to as “scene grammar”) can come in different forms: seeing a toilet in a living room would violate semantic predictions, while finding a toilet brush next to the toothpaste would violate syntactic predictions. The existence of such predictions has usually been investigated by showing observers images containing such grammatical violations. Conversely, the generative process of creating an environment according to one’s scene grammar and its effects on behavior and memory has received little attention. In a virtual reality paradigm, we either instructed participants to arrange objects according to their scene grammar or against it. Subsequently, participants’ memory for the arrangements was probed using a surprise recall (Exp1), or repeated search (Exp2) task. As a result, participants’ construction behavior showed strategic use of larger, static objects to anchor the location of smaller objects which are generally the goals of everyday actions. Further analysis of this scene construction data revealed possible commonalities between the rules governing word usage in language and object usage in naturalistic environments. Taken together, we revealed some of the building blocks of scene grammar necessary for efficient behavior, which differentially influence how we interact with objects and what we remember about scenes.

Magnetoencephalography Reveals Mismatch Field Enhancement from Unexpected Syntactic Category Errors in English Sentences.

The type of syntactic operations that increase neuronal activation in humans as a result of syntactically erroneous, unexpected lexical items in hearing sentences has remained unclear. In the present study, we used recordings of magnetoencephalographic (MEG) activity to compare bare infinitive and full infinitive constructions in English. This research aims to identify the type of syntactic deviance that may trigger an early syntax-related mismatch field (MMF) component when unexpected words appear in sentences. Six speakers of English as a first language were presented with auditory stimuli of sentences or words in a passive odd-ball paradigm while watching a silent movie. The experimental protocol included four sessions, specifically investigating the sentential (structural) versions of full (with the 'to' infinitival particle) and bare infinitival structures (without the particle) and the lexical (non-structure) versions of the verb either with or without the particle to determine whether the structure processing of sentences was a more crucial factor in the detection of the MMF than the simple processing of lexical items in verb-only conditions. The amplitude analysis of the resulting evoked fields showed that the presence of the syntactic category error of bare infinitival structures against syntactic predictions evoked a significantly larger MMF activation with a peak latency of approximately 200ms in the anterior superior temporal sulci in the left hemisphere, compared with the lexical items that did not have any syntactic status. These results clearly demonstrate that syntactically unexpected, illegal input in the bare infinitival structure is likely to be noticed more robustly in the brain while processing the structural information of the entire sentence than the corresponding verb-only items.

The role of the IFG and pSTS in syntactic prediction: Evidence from a parametric study of hierarchical structure in fMRI

Sentences encode hierarchical structural relations among words. Several neuroimaging experiments aiming to localize combinatory operations responsible for creating this structure during sentence comprehension have contrasted short, simple phrases and sentences to unstructured controls. Some of these experiments have revealed activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), associating these regions with basic syntactic combination. However, the wide variability of these effects across studies raises questions about this interpretation. In an fMRI experiment, we provide support for an alternative hypothesis: these regions underlie top-down syntactic predictions that facilitate sentence processing but are not necessary for building syntactic structure. We presented stimuli with three levels of structure: unstructured lists, two-word phrases, and simple, short sentences; and two levels of content: natural stimuli with real words and stimuli with open-class items replaced with pseudowords (jabberwocky). While both the phrase and sentence conditions engaged syntactic combination, our experiment only encouraged syntactic prediction in the sentence condition. We found increased activity for both natural and jabberwocky sentences in the left IFG (pars triangularis and pars orbitalis) and pSTS relative to unstructured word lists and two-word phrases, but we did not find any such effects for two-word phrases relative to unstructured word lists in these areas. Our results are most consistent with the hypothesis that increased activity in IFG and pSTS for basic contrasts of structure reflects syntactic prediction. The pars opercularis of the IFG showed a response profile consistent with verbal working memory. We found incremental effects of structure in the anterior temporal lobe (ATL), and increased activation only for sentences in the angular gyrus (AG)/temporal–parietal junction (TPJ) – both regions showed these effects for stimuli with all real words. These findings support a role for the ATL in semantic combination and the AG/TPJ in thematic processing.