Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title from title page (viewed Apr. 19, 2007) Includes bibliographical references (p. 35-43)

Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 39-43).

Chinese is a logographic writing system that drastically differs from alphabetic scripts in many important aspects. Thus, the nature of parafoveal processing in reading Chinese may be different from that in reading alphabetic languages. Here, four eye-tracking experiments using the boundary display change paradigm (Rayner, 1975) were conducted to explore the role of high level information, like semantic and plausibility information, in the parafovea for Chinese readers. Experiments 1 and 2 used two-character words that can have the order of their component characters reversed, and still be lexical units as target words. Readers received a parafoveal preview of a target word that was either (1) identical to the target word, (2) a reversed word that was the target word with the order of its characters reversed, or (3) a control word. The results indicated that fixation durations on the target words were comparable in the identical and the reverse preview condition when the reversed preview word was plausible; however, fixation durations were longer in the reverse than the identical preview condition when the reverse preview word was implausible. This plausibility preview effect was independent of whether the reverse preview word shared the meaning with the target word or not. Moreover, a plausible reverse preview word provided more facilitation to the processing of the target word than a plausible control preview word, since the former one had orthographic overlap with the target word. Experiment 3 tested whether plausible preview words would yield a semantic preview benefit. That is, the question was whether a semantically related & plausible preview word would provide more benefit than a semantically unrelated & plausible preview word to the processing of the target word. However, such semantic preview effect was only marginally significant by participants. In addition, a plausibility preview effect was revealed in Experiment 3. Furthermore, Experiment 4 found that contextual information could affect word recognition in the parafovea: Chinese readers were more likely to encode a plausible preview word than an implausible preview word. Collectively, these experiments indicated that the plausibility of a preview word has an important role in reading Chinese.

The characterization of the relationship between morphological and syntactic properties of sentences is central to current linguistic theories, for example, suggesting that morphological features play a central role in determining verb movement and the occurrence of null and expletive subjects. Given such a theory of competence, many questions arise about the role of these features in performance, such as: Is there a primary role for morpho-syntactic feature information in parsing sentences? How is feature checking accomplished and at what stage of the parse? The thesis addresses these questions with on and off-line studies of the comprehension of subject-verb agreement in English. Two general views are contrasted: (1) agreement information constrains initial parsing decisions (the “Structure Building” hypothesis) and (2) agreement is checked on structure which has been built using only major category information and structural parsing principles (the “Structure Evaluation” hypothesis). Evidence presented in this thesis, as well as previously reported results, are argued to support the Structure Evaluation hypothesis. A detailed statement of the checking process (the Structural Agreement Check) is developed within the Structure Evaluation approach. The SAC assumes (following previous work) that the nominal singular is underspecified and that feature checking is initiated at the verb. Evidence is presented that checking is enforced by passing agreement features through the links of the phrase structure tree between the subject and verb. Further evidence in favor of the Structure Evaluation hypothesis and the SAC will come from on- and off-line data in three previously uninvestigated domains: agreement with ambiguous Pseudo-partitive DPs, agreement with Pseudo-partitive and Coordinate DPs in verb-subject order constructions and agreement in more complex structural contexts (subject-verb agreement embedded in a filler-gap feature dependency and verb agreement in ambiguous subject relative clauses). In addition to providing a more detailed characterization of the role of agreement features and representation of the agreement relation in parsing, the results contribute to the analysis of the structure of Pseudo-partitive DPs and the Existential construction (as compared to other post-verbal subject constructions). Finally, it is shown in two case studies that the processing mechanisms proposed here may play a role in destabilizing perceivers' intuitions about grammaticality and possibly lead to language change.

Speakers frequently make subject-verb number agreement errors in the presence of a number-mismatching local noun (e.g., *The key to the rusty old cabinets are on the table). A series of two-choice response time (RT) experiments was used to test an account of these errors according to which a number attractor generally makes the speaker's representation of subject number less definitive, with errors arising probabilistically from a competitive decision process. As predicted by this account, the presence of a number attractor reliably slowed responding when the correct response was issued. Analysis of RT distributions showed that this slowing was not due to pronounced difficulty on a minority of trials, but instead was manifested on most trials. Error responses were not slowed compared to correct responses, suggesting that errors and correct responses emerged from a single decision process. The data patterns were modeled using the Ratcliff diffusion model (Ratcliff, 1978), which explicitly assumes that variability in response output is due to random trial-to-trial variability in a range of decision parameters. Exceptions to these data patterns were observed in the case of non-intervening attraction, suggesting that this phenomenon may have a distinct cause. The results are taken to argue against standard accounts of number attraction, according to which errors occur in specific instances in which the speaker's representation of subject number is defective.

This study is about the interpretation of a plural pronoun in English. A two-stage performance model is proposed on the basis of Link's competence theory which claims that plurals denote sums of individuals, i.e. groups. The first stage is the construction of group discourse entities on syntactic and non-syntactic grounds. Construction on syntactic grounds is described by the NP rule which states that an N P with a plural feature triggers a group discourse entity. Construction on non-syntactic grounds is described by the equivalence hypothesis which states that if two individuals are equivalent with respect to some property, they can be collected as a group. The second stage concerns the selection of the preferred antecedent. I proposed the closure strategy which states that if all the individuals in the interpretation domain belong to one group, select this group as the antecedent of a plural pronoun. One crucial prediction of this model is the preference for the maximal group in the interpretation domain. Experiments 1, 2 and 3 tested whether symmetric predicates lead to the construction of a group. Experiments 4 and 5 tested whether ontological knowledge influences the construction of a group. Experiment 6 tested whether perspective influences the interpretation of a plural pronoun.

This longitudinal study charts the development and achievement in reading, language and memory skills of a representative group of children with Down syndrome in mainstream education. Twenty-four children with Down syndrome were followed over a 2 year period and compared to (i) children matched for reading age (N=31) and, (ii) average readers (N=42), from the same school classes as the children with Down syndrome. A battery of standardised assessments was administered annually to obtain measures of reading, language, memory, number skills, and general intelligence. On all three occasions the children with Down syndrome showed an uneven profile of development with advanced reading ability compared to their other cognitive skills. Two years after the initial assessment there was still no significant difference between the reading scores of the children with Down syndrome and the reading age control group indicating similar rates of progress in the two groups despite the children with Down syndrome being significantly delayed on all of the other measures. Although it was predicted that learning to read may enhance the language and memory skills of children with Down syndrome, partial correlations revealed no significant associations between reading and language ability once age and intelligence had been controlled for. This suggests that reading and language are independent cognitive skills in this age group of children. The relationship between reading and auditory STM was less clear as significant partial correlations were only found at some times. Furthermore, exploratory multiple regression analyses also suggested that there was no clear predictive relationship of language and memory development from early reading ability. Finally, reading strategies were examined longitudinally in an experimental task in which words and nonwords were presented via a computer. The Down syndrome and reading matched groups were similar in their ability to read words but the children with Down syndrome were significantly less accurate when reading nonwords. The results suggested that the majority of the children with Down syndrome were continuing to make progress using a logographic reading strategy. However, there was also some evidence that some children with Down syndrome (those who had the highest reading ages) had developed alphabetic skills.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Adviser: Janet Astington.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [51]-58).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, and San Diego State University, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 149-164).