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Autism is characterized by language dysfunction ranging from mild and peculiar language usage to a total lack of expressive language function. These language oddities are manifest in the form of phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic/behavioral dysfunction. Research suggests that the autistic language deficit is focal—dealing with a specific area of language processing; however, previous research has failed to identify this language enigma. This thesis demonstrates a novel approach to the problem, showing that the autistic language deficit is tied to a particular aspect of language processing—quantification. Quantification is defined and explained in the context of autistic language and behavior.

Benjamin Whorf proposed a relationship between habitual language use and automatic behavior. His work has since led to a great deal of linguistic research, but the field thus far has neglected to explore the relationship between individual lexical items and their connotational effects. This work explores the relationship between exposure to altruism-related words and the subsequent lexical accessibility of aggressive words, then applies that research to real-life situations by exploring the consumer entitlement paradigm with the manipulation of slogans. I found that in a response time study, priming with altruistic items facilitated the lexical accessibility of aggressive items; however, in an untimed ambiguous word completion task, exposure to an altruistic prime decreased the number of aggressive responses. This may suggest an additional level of processing beyond that of phonological, grammatical, and prosodic elements, in which cultural and usage-based connotation affects the output as well. Finally, tests of a customer service scenario found that slogan manipulation did result in several significant effects, which effects were most commonly found in subjects outside the 18-25 age range, and male subjects. An entitled slogan generally resulted in more negative attitudes towards a hypothetical store associate in a potentially-antagonistic customer service encounter and a higher reported likelihood of further action on the matter, while an altruistic slogan generally resulted in the opposite. However, these results were highly dependent on question framing. Implications for linguistics, psychology, and practical applications are discussed.

This dissertation examines comparative constructions, both in terms of their representation in syntax and semantics and in terms of the way these representations are built and interpreted incrementally during sentence processing. While there has been extensive investigation of comparatives in the syntax and semantics literature (see Bresnan, 1973; von Stechow, 1984; Heim, 1985; Kennedy, 1999, among others), there has been little work on how comparatives are processed (although see Fults and Phillips, 2004; Wellwood et al., 2009 for work on so-called comparative illusions). In the first half of the dissertation, I address issues that are primarily syntactic in nature; in the second half, I address issues that are primarily at the semantic and pragmatic levels. In Chapter 2, I examine the basic syntax of English comparatives and readers’ expectations for the structure of comparatives during parsing. I present evidence from eye movements during reading to argue that a curious pattern of acceptability in comparatives (observed by Osborne, 2009) arises from processing factors rather than the grammar. Chapter 3 provides evidence from self-paced reading that, in contrast to what has been shown for other more widely studied structures, in comparative clauses subject gaps are more difficult to process than object gaps. Some potential accounts for this asymmetry between comparatives and other structures are discussed, and in Chapter 4, I argue for a grammar-based account of the subject gap penalty. Chapters 5 and 6 investigate questions in the semantics/pragmatics and semantic processing of comparatives. In Chapter 5, I introduce a previously unstudied type of comparative, which I call subset comparatives, and investigate their appropriate formal representation. In addition to their theoretical interest, subset comparatives can provide insight into comprehenders’ expectations regarding the relationship between the two sets of entities involved in comparatives. Evidence from eye movement studies suggests that readers have an initial preference for contrast, or disjointness, between sets in comparatives. Chapter 6 investigates issues in the comparison of pluralities during on-line sentence processing, again as studied through eye movements during reading. This chapter provides evidence that, when comparing sets, comparisons that involve degrees along an adjectival scale involve complexity beyond that involved in comparing sets in terms of their cardinalities. The results of my experimental studies on comparatives are related to broader issues in linguistics and psycholinguistics, such as the sources of well-formedness (or ill-formedness) in language, the representation of linguistically described sets in language processing, and the interaction between levels of information (syntactic, semantic, and conceptual/world knowledge) in comprehension.

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This thesis examines the semantic processing of morphologically complex words during visual word recognition. In a series of three experiments this thesis addresses (i) the role semantic transparency during compound word reading, (ii) the nature of the conceptual structure of compound words and its effect on visual word recognition, and (iii) the time-course of semantic access during the visual comprehension of derived words. Chapter 2 documents evidence that the outcome of the compound semantic transparency effect is dependent upon the amount of language experience of the reader. We report that high compound transparency inhibits less experienced readers during naturalistic reading, yet facilitates processing among relatively more experienced readers. This study is the first to demonstrate that semantic processing of compound words is driven by individual reading skill. The study reported in Chapter 3 tests the hypothesis that the conceptual representation of a compound is based on a relational structure linking the compound’s constituents. Across two lexical decision datasets, Chapter 3 reports that greater entropy (i.e., increased competition) among a set of conceptual relations associated with a compound gives rise to longer lexical decision latencies. This finding indicates that the same compound word form is associated with many potential relational meanings, and that these meanings compete for selection during visual word recognition. Chapter 4 concerns the time-course of lexical-semantic access during derived word recognition. Existing accounts of derived word recognition widely disagree about whether access to conceptual information is granted prior to morphological decomposition. We report evidence which shows that the semantics of derived words and their stems are accessed in concert with morphological sources of information. These results challenge theoretical accounts that advocate strictly serial access to (morpho-orthographic then morpho-semantic) lexical cues. Overall, the empirical evidence presented in this thesis suggests that morphological processing involves rapid and concurrent access to many sources of conceptual information. These findings align with a view of complex word processing in which the cognitive system utilizes as many cues as possible in order to maximize the opportunity of obtaining the meaning of the word. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)