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39
Effect of ambiguity and lexical availability on syntactic and lexical production
- Cognitive Psychology
, 2000
"... Speakers only sometimes include the that in sentence complement structures like The coach knew (that) you missed practice. Six experiments tested the predictions concerning optional word mention of two general approaches to language produc-tion. One approach claims that language production processes ..."
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Cited by 83 (5 self)
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Speakers only sometimes include the that in sentence complement structures like The coach knew (that) you missed practice. Six experiments tested the predictions concerning optional word mention of two general approaches to language produc-tion. One approach claims that language production processes choose syntactic structures that ease the task of creating sentences, so that words are spoken opportu-nistically, as they are selected for production. The second approach claims that a syntactic structure is chosen that is easiest to comprehend, so that optional words like that are used to avoid temporarily ambiguous, difficult-to-comprehend sen-tences. In all experiments, speakers did not consistently include optional words to circumvent a temporary ambiguity, but they did omit optional words (the comple-mentizer that) when subsequent material was either repeated (within a sentence) or prompted with a recall cue. The results suggest that speakers choose syntactic struc-tures to permit early mention of available material and not to circumvent disruptive temporary ambiguities. ª 2000 Academic Press With each use of a linguistic expression, two acts are accomplished. First,
Intonational disambiguation in sentence production and comprehension
- Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
, 2000
"... Speakers ’ prosodic marking of syntactic constituency is often measured in sentence reading tasks that lack realistic situational constraints on speaking. Results from such studies can be criticized because the pragmatic goals of readers differ dramatically from those of speakers in typical conversa ..."
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Cited by 51 (7 self)
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Speakers ’ prosodic marking of syntactic constituency is often measured in sentence reading tasks that lack realistic situational constraints on speaking. Results from such studies can be criticized because the pragmatic goals of readers differ dramatically from those of speakers in typical conversation. On the other hand, recordings of unscripted speech do not readily yield the carefully controlled contrasts required for many research purposes. Our research employs a cooperative game task, in which two speakers use utterances from a predetermined set to negotiate moves around gameboards. Results from a set of early versus late closure ambiguities suggest that speakers signal this syntactic difference with prosody even when the utterance context fully disambiguates the structure. Phonetic and phonological analyses show reliable prosodic disambiguation in speakers ’ productions; results of a comprehension task indicate that listeners can successfully use prosodic cues to categorize syntactically ambiguous fragments as portions of early or late closure utterances.
Egocentrism Over E-Mail: Can We Communicate as Well as We Think?
, 2005
"... Without the benefit of paralinguistic cues such as gesture, emphasis, and intonation, it can be difficult to convey emotion and tone over electronic mail (e-mail). Five experiments suggest that this limitation is often underappreciated, such that people tend to believe that they can communicate over ..."
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Cited by 46 (1 self)
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Without the benefit of paralinguistic cues such as gesture, emphasis, and intonation, it can be difficult to convey emotion and tone over electronic mail (e-mail). Five experiments suggest that this limitation is often underappreciated, such that people tend to believe that they can communicate over e-mail more effectively than they actually can. Studies 4 and 5 further suggest that this overconfidence is born of egocentrism, the inherent difficulty of detaching oneself from one’s own perspective when evaluating the perspective of someone else. Because e-mail communicators “hear” a statement differently depending on whether they intend to be, say, sarcastic or funny, it can be difficult to appreciate that their electronic audience may not.
The relationship between intonational phrasing and syntactic structure in language production
- Language and Cognitive Processes
, 2004
"... In this paper, we evaluate several theories of how syntactic/semantic structure influences the placement of intonational boundaries in language production (Cooper & Paccia-Cooper, 1980; Gee & Grosjean, 1983; Ferreira, 1988). Although the theories that we tested are shown to be quite successf ..."
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Cited by 34 (2 self)
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In this paper, we evaluate several theories of how syntactic/semantic structure influences the placement of intonational boundaries in language production (Cooper & Paccia-Cooper, 1980; Gee & Grosjean, 1983; Ferreira, 1988). Although the theories that we tested are shown to be quite successful, they are complex, and furthermore, they are incompatible with recent evidence for incrementality in sentence production. In light of these problems, we propose a simpler incremental model called the Left hand side/Right hand side Boundary hypothesis (LRB). According to this hypothesis, two factors that underlie the successful performance of the algorithms from the literature contribute to the likelihood of producing intonational boundaries at word boundaries: (1) the size of the recently completed syntactic constituent at a word boundary; and (2) the size of the upcoming syntactic constituent. These factors are further constrained by syntactic argument relationships. We demonstrate that the LRB performs as well as previous models with respect to the data from Experiment 1. In
The communicative function of ambiguity in language
- Cognition
, 2012
"... a b s t r a c t We present a general information-theoretic argument that all efficient communication systems will be ambiguous, assuming that context is informative about meaning. We also argue that ambiguity allows for greater ease of processing by permitting efficient linguistic units to be re-us ..."
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Cited by 24 (4 self)
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a b s t r a c t We present a general information-theoretic argument that all efficient communication systems will be ambiguous, assuming that context is informative about meaning. We also argue that ambiguity allows for greater ease of processing by permitting efficient linguistic units to be re-used. We test predictions of this theory in English, German, and Dutch. Our results and theoretical analysis suggest that ambiguity is a functional property of language that allows for greater communicative efficiency. This provides theoretical and empirical arguments against recent suggestions that core features of linguistic systems are not designed for communication.
Effects of prosodic and lexical constraints on parsing in young children (and adults)
, 2008
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Prosody and recursion
- DOCTORAL DISSERTATION, MIT
, 2005
"... This thesis proposes a recursive mapping of syntactic derivations to prosodic representations. I argue that the prosody of an expression, just like its meaning, is determined compositionally, as originally proposed in Chomsky et al. (1957) and Chomsky and Halle (1968). Syntactic structure are cyclic ..."
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Cited by 15 (5 self)
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This thesis proposes a recursive mapping of syntactic derivations to prosodic representations. I argue that the prosody of an expression, just like its meaning, is determined compositionally, as originally proposed in Chomsky et al. (1957) and Chomsky and Halle (1968). Syntactic structure are cyclically spelled out and as-signed a semantic and phonological interpretation. The cyclic approach is motivated based on data from the prosody of coordinate structures, integrating insights from syntax, combinatorics, and semantics. The algorithm distinguishes two ways of prosodically relating the output of cyclic domains: They can either be mapped to prosodic domains that are on a par and match in prosodic status: Prosodic Matching; or the output of one cycle can be prosodically subordinated to another cycle: Prosodic Subordination. To-gether, they derive a metrical structure that encodes information about phrasing, accent placement, and prominence. Scope relations, argument structure, and information structure affect prosodic phrasing indirectly by determining which of the two
Intonation and sentence processing
, 2003
"... This paper summarises recent research concerning the relationship between intonation and the syntactic analysis of sentences. After introductory comments on the nature of intonation, we discuss methodological problems in determining the relationship between syntactic and intonational structure, and ..."
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Cited by 15 (0 self)
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This paper summarises recent research concerning the relationship between intonation and the syntactic analysis of sentences. After introductory comments on the nature of intonation, we discuss methodological problems in determining the relationship between syntactic and intonational structure, and the potential dangers of basing claims about this relationship on scripted readings rather than on spontaneous speech. We present some of our own speech production data from the SPOT project, and highlight the variability in the intonational realisation of that data. After discussing the broad question of whether correspondences between syntactic and intonation structure are speaker- or listener-oriented, we review experimental data on the role of intonation in sentence comprehension, and finally discuss the position of intonation in the sentence processing mechanism.
Syntactic probabilities affect pronunciation variation in spontaneous speech
, 2009
"... Speakers frequently have a choice among multiple ways of expressing one and the same thought. When choosing between syntactic constructions for expressing a given meaning, speakers are sensitive to probabilistic tenden-cies for syntactic, semantic or contextual properties of an utterance to favor on ..."
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Cited by 11 (3 self)
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Speakers frequently have a choice among multiple ways of expressing one and the same thought. When choosing between syntactic constructions for expressing a given meaning, speakers are sensitive to probabilistic tenden-cies for syntactic, semantic or contextual properties of an utterance to favor one construction or another. Taken together, such tendencies may align to make one construction overwhelmingly more probable, marginally more probable, or no more probable than another. Here, we present evidence that acoustic features of spontaneous speech reflect these probabilities: when speakers choose a less probable construction, they are more likely to be disfluent, and their fluent words are likely to have a relatively longer du-ration. Conversely, words in more probable constructions are shorter and spoken more fluently. Our findings suggest that the di¤ering probabilities of a syntactic construction in context are not epiphenomenal, but reflect a part of a speakers ’ knowledge of their language.
Syntactic Parsing
"... A crucial part of understanding a sentence is to construct its syntactic structure. Without this, it would be very difficult for language users to determine that sentences with different word orders such as the man sees the woman and the woman sees the man have different interpretations or explain w ..."
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Cited by 9 (0 self)
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A crucial part of understanding a sentence is to construct its syntactic structure. Without this, it would be very difficult for language users to determine that sentences with different word orders such as the man sees the woman and the woman sees the man have different interpretations or explain why sentences such as The hunter killed the poacher with the rifle have two possible interpretations. The processes involved in constructing syntactic structures during language comprehension are commonly referred to as parsing or syntactic processing. Sentence processing research has shown that parsing is largely incremental, that is, language comprehenders incorporate each word into the preceding syntactic structure as they encounter it; they do not delay syntactic structure building until for instance, the end of the sentence or phrase (e.g., Marslen-Wilson, 1973, 1975). Evidence for incrementality comes from numerous studies that show that language comprehenders experience difficulty with temporarily ambiguous sentences well before the end of the sentence. For example, many experiments have shown that readers slow down in the region by the lawyer in (1) (e.g., Clifton
