No description available.

Simple shifts within the syntactic structure of a sentence can have significant effects on the cognitive processes involved in language comprehension (Deckert, 2015; Ellis, 2002; Ferreira, 2003). Modifier position is one such syntactic element that has shown the importance of structure as demonstrated by Karimi et al. (2019). Post-modified words (e.g., a “peasant who was highly educated”) are encoded more robustly and are retrieved more easily than pre-modified words (e.g., a “highly educated peasant”). We explored the potential influence of modifier position on statement believability, namely, how much people believe a statement they have not heard before in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2 we examined how linear modification affects the perceptual qualities being transferred to the target noun phrase. Our results from both experiments illustrate a strong effect of Likelihood (familiarity) and provide interesting insight into the modification effect, and how modifiers may enhance target noun phrases.

This thesis explores the nature of linguistic introspection through the phenomenon known in the literature as the Syntactic Satiation Effect, where the perceived unacceptability of some syntactic structures is attenuated on repeated exposure. Recent findings suggest that rating change in experimental settings may not reveal the underlying grammatical status of syntactic objects by mitigating performance factors related to memory limitations, as initially proposed, but rather arise as a response bias conditioned by characteristics of some experimental designs, in effect introducing task-based performance factors. Findings from rating and reading times suggest that there is evidence supporting both accounts of rating change in experimental designs and highlights areas of development for the Experimental Syntax program. Exploring anecdotal reports, Snyder (2000) found that in as few as five exposures, participants found some types of wh-extraction anomaly (‘weak Islands’) significantly more acceptable at the end of the session compared to the beginning whereas others (‘strong Islands’) did not experience any rating improvement. Varied success in replicating initial results casts doubts on the proposal that rating data, experimentally elicited, can tease apart grammatical from performance sources of unacceptability. Sprouse (2009) suggests an alternative –Satiation arises as an artifact of a disproportionate number of ungrammatical to grammatical sentences in the testing session. This approach provides an explanation for the apparent mismatch in findings, but also highlights issues regarding the advances of experimental syntax: do experimental methods provide better data or do aspects of some designs systematically introduce extraneous influences themselves? Evidence from three rating and two self-paced reading tasks suggests that although robust evidence supporting the memory-based claim is not found, evidence that Satiation is strictly task-based is not substantiated either; sentences that satiate are similar across experiments. A novel observation is made that satiating sentences are also more readily interpretable than non-satiating sentences – providing some explanation for the apparent mismatch between Satiation studies, and also points to another source of variability associated with experimental approaches to linguistic intuition. In sum, evidence here underlines the composite nature of introspection, points areas of refinement for experimental techniques and advocates for the adoption of cross-methodological procedures to enhance syntactic investigation.

Universiẗat, Diss--Leipzig, 2006. / Literaturverz. S. [191] - 209.

AIM The aim of this study is to investigate the opacity of Chinese compounds in search of conceptual motivations for traditional exocentric compounds and contemporary neologisms in Chinese. METHODOLOGY This research may be characterised as an empirical investigation within the quantitative paradigm. The study contains three tasks. The design of Task 1 and Task 2 replicates the experiment concerning the classification of compound transparency which Libben, Gibson, Yoon and Sandra (2003) used to test English compounds. Task 3 is a kind of word association task that is designed following a suggestion by Gleason and Ratner (1998: 215). A sample of 95 Chinese native speakers for Task 1 & Task 2 is used. A sample of 50 Chinese native speakers for Task 3 is used. None of them has participated in either Task 1 or Task 2. FINDINGS The findings are presented with regard to the two types of compounds investigated in the study: ‘semantically free’ compounds and neologisms. In summary, ‘semantically free’ compounds may process through their constituents in the mental lexicon. Meanwhile, for some certain reasons ‘semantically free’ compounds may be recognized from the mental lexicon as whole. In the research, it found that the frequency effect is stronger than the effect of ‘semantic transparency’ in ‘semantically free’ compounds, it could mean that lexico-semantic distance (semantic freedom) is much smaller in Chinese exocentric compounds than anticipated by Scalise and Guevara (2006). Neologisms may process through their constituents in the mental lexicon. The effect of semantic transparency may be stronger than the frequency effect in neologisms when compounds are semantically transparent and their constituents’ meanings are similarity. KEY CONCEPTS Exocentric compounds, endocentric compounds, ‘semantically free’ compounds, neologisms, opaqueness, semantic transparency, frequency effect, word-superiority effect. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.

Stuttgart, Univ., Diss., 2001.

This dissertation is an empirical and theoretical study of sentence-level prosody in Conamara (Connemara) Irish. It addresses the architecture of the syntax-phonology interface and the relation between syntactic constituent structure and prosodic structure formation. It argues for a fully interactional view of the interface, in which the phonological form may be influenced by a number of competing factors, including constraints governing syntax-prosody correspondence, linearization, and prosodic well-formedness. The specific proposal is set within the framework of Match Theory (Selkirk 2009, 2011), an indirect-reference theory of the syntax-prosody interface in which correspondence between syntactic and prosodic constituents is governed by a family of violable Match constraints. These constraints call for a one-to-one correspondence between syntactic and prosodic structure, to the extent that prosodic structure may be recursive under pressure from the recursive nature of syntactic phrases. However, this direct correspondence can be overruled by other interacting constraints, including prosodic markedness constraints and, as proposed here, other correspondence relations, as on the linearization of hierarchical syntactic structures. This dissertation argues that the distribution of pitch accents in Conamara Irish provides direct evidence for Match Theory. It is proposed that two phrasal pitch accents, L-H and H-L, demarcate the edges of phonological phrases, where L-H accents specifically target only those phrases which are recursive. Using the distribution of these pitch accents as indicators for the presence of prosodic boundaries, the dissertation investigates a variety of syntactic structures in both the clausal and nominal domain. It is argued that there is a close correspondence between syntactic and prosodic structure in default cases, but that this direct correspondence may be subverted in favour of a structure which better satisfies higher-ranked prosodic markedness constraints. Finally, this dissertation addresses pronoun postposing, a process pervasive in Irish dialects in word order appears to be sensitive to prosodic structure. This dissertation proposes to account for this phenomenon using the theoretical framework developed in the dissertation, in which the main patterns are accounted for through the interaction of Match constraints, prosodic markedness constraints, and a proposed violable constraint on the linearization of syntactic structure.

<p>The Recycling Hypothesis of verb-phrase ellipsis states that elided verb phrases with non-parallel antecedents are interpreted by reconstructing the appropriate verb phrase structure using the information available in the antecedent (Arregui, Frazier, Clifton, & Moulton, 2006). The hypothesis predicts that structurally more complex antecedents will involve more complicated reconstruction operations, which will lower the acceptability of the sentences. The experiments reported in this thesis tested two underlying assumptions of the Recycling Hypothesis as well as one prediction that follows from the proposal. First, the hypothesis assumes that elided verb phrases with parallel antecedents are interpreted by copying the structure of the antecedent into the ellipsis site (Frazier & Clifton, 2001). Second, Arregui et al. (2006) argued that changes in verbal morphology were “really easy (p. 242)” to recover from, suggesting that verbal morphology is not a factor in determining parallelism between the antecedent and elided verb phrases. Results from three written survey experiments in which participants were asked to judge the acceptability of verb-phrase ellipsis with matching or non-matching verbal morphology contradicted these assumptions. Morphologically more complex antecedents were rated less acceptable than simpler antecedents, regardless of whether the antecedent morphology matched the morphology on the elided verb phrase. The fact that verbal morphology affected acceptability ratings suggests that this factor plays a critical role in determining parallelism in ellipsis. Furthermore, the fact that parallel antecedents patterned with non-parallel antecedents suggests that the two must be processed in a similar fashion. Finally, if more complex antecedents require more complicated reconstruction operations, it might be predicted that word-by-word reading times at the ellipsis site should be correlated with the level of difficulty (Gibson, 1998). One self-paced reading experiment using the same materials showed no such correlation. These results are discussed with reference to two other psycholinguistic theories of verb-phrase ellipsis comprehension.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

No description available.

This dissertation uses syntactic, semantic and morphological evidence from English nominalization to probe the interaction of event-structure and syntax, develop a typology of structural complexity within nominalization, and test hypotheses about the strict ordering of functional items. I focus on the widely assumed typology of nominalization found in Chomsky (1970). In particular, I show that derived nominals are structurally more complex than nominal gerunds; this has long been assumed to be the opposite. I provide a structural and morphological account of these forms of nominalization. In doing so, I explore a number of disparate topics such as: the importance of syncretism in apparently unrelated morphological elements for theories like Distributed Morphology; the role of prepositions in allowing or preventing binding relations and NPI-licensing, the exact nature of root-object union that allows idiomatic interpretations; the morphological reflexes of Case in the nominal system; the syntactic structure of verb particle constructions; the nature of events in nominalization; and the role syntactic operations play in determining morphological regularity. The dissertation also explores the nature of the English verb particle construction, arguing that it has (at least) three distinct structural configurations. Using these three distinct structures I am able to explain a number of distinct behaviors from predicate-object relationships, particle modification and argument loss in particle construction. I also discuss the relationship between particles (and results) and the different forms of nominalization. In particular, I show that apparent co-occurrence restrictions between nominal types and particles are not due to event-structure or other semantic restrictions. Rather, these differences are tied solely to the particular, idiosyncratic morphological properties of the constructions. The dissertation shows that certain functional projections may only appear once with a given root, but that there is some freedom of ordering of projections relative to the root in some cases. This work provides a window into the interaction between syntax and event structure as well as the nature of ordering within functional projections.