Showing papers in "Language and Cognitive Processes in 1986"

Parsing WH-constructions: Evidence for on-line gap location

Abstract: Two experiments investigate how people assign a grammatical meaning to WH-phrases in embedded questions. The first experiment replicates Crain and Fodor's (1985) finding that object NPs take longer to read in a WH-question than in a corresponding declarative sentence, suggesting that people expect not to find an object, presumably because they have associated the object semantic role with the WH-phrase. Experiment 1 also shows that there is no such difficulty at the subject NP, suggesting that the subject semantic role is not associated with the WH-phrase in the same way as the object role. Experiment 2 investigated whether people assign a semantic role to the WH-phrase which cannot be grammatically acceptable; the evidence suggests that people are not prone to make such mistakes.

Crossed and nested dependencies in German and Dutch: A psycholinguistic study

Abstract: The clause-final verbal clusters in Standard Dutch and German differ strikingly in the kinds of dependencies they normally permit between verbs and their arguments, with Dutch preferring crossed dependencies and German nested. This study investigates the consequences of these differences for the psycholinguistic processing complexity of sentences containing either crossed or nested dependencies. German and Dutch subjects performed two tasks-ratings of comprehensibility and a test of successful comprehension-on matched sets of sentences which varied in complexity from a simple sentence to one containing three levels of embedding. The results show no difference between Dutch and German for sentences within the normal range (up to one level of embedding), but with a significant preference emerging for the Dutch crossed order for the more complex strings. We argue that this rules out the push-down stack as the universal basis for the human parsing mechanism.

Aspects of the Spelling Process: Evidence from a Case of Acquired Dysgraphia

Abstract: Within the last decade, we have witnessed a radical change in the approach to the study of acquired spelling disorders (dysgraphias). Researchers have shifted their attention from classification schemes that describe global characteristics (e.g., agraphia without alexia) to more detailed and explicit accounts of how the spelling system is organized and the possible forms its dissolution may take (see Newcombe & Marshall, 1980; Shallice, 1981; Beauvois & Derouesne, 1981; Bub & Kertesz, 1982; Hatfield & Patterson, 1983, 1984; Caramazza, Miceli, & Villa, 1986; Goodman & Caramazza, 1986; Patterson, in press; Ellis, 1982, in press).

On the comprehension of temporal order

Abstract: The effects of a match or mismatch between the order in which events occur and the order in which they are mentioned in a narrative were studied in two experiments. Events were connected either by a causal relation or by an arbitrary temporal relation. A mismatch between order of mention and order of occurrence did not significantly affect speed of comprehension of causally connected events. However, a mismatch significantly slowed down comprehension of arbitrarily connected events. It was suggested that in the case of causal events a mental model of their temporal order already exists, but for arbitrarily related events it must be constructed. This process is facilitated when order of mention matches the order of occurrence. There were no effects of order of mention on memory for temporal order, but there were memory differences depending on the connective used.

Dictionaries in the mind

Abstract: How lexical knowledge is acquired, and how it is organized in memory for rapid retrieval during language use, are central questions for congitive psychologists. Research into these questions has revealed interesting differences and similarities between the subjective dictionaries in our heads and the objective dictionaries on our shelves. The differences might be reduced in the future by publishing dictionaries as computer programs.

Grammars, parsers, and memory limitations

Abstract: Linguistic competence cannot be adequately characterized by grammatical devices of finite state power. Nevertheless, there are reasons to suspect that the human parsing device cannot adequately deal with languages that fall outside this class. This paper discusses these issues, arguing that restrictions on available parsing memory, and on our ability to operate properly when parsing recursive constructions, mean that there is an interesting sense in which human parsing resources must be characterized as finite state. This means that certain constructions regarded as grammatical according to a (richer than finite state) competence grammar, are not parsable, or are parsed in a way which is not in exact correspondence to their description by this grammar. This raises the further question of how these constructions can nevertheless be understood appropriately, given the assumption that semantic interpretation relies on syntactic structure. The paper goes on to describe an implemented computer program...

Lexical access codes in visual and auditory word recognition

Abstract: Lexical access takes place when sensory information is matched to lexical information. The nature of the code in which this match takes place was examined in two experiments. The first experiment looked at auditory lexical processing and found that nonwords took longer to classify as nonwords if they formed the beginnings of real words, regardless of syllable structure. This was in contrast to a second experiment which employed a visual lexical decision task, where nonwords took longer to classify only if they formed the first syllable of a word. It was concluded that the access code that activates lexical information in spoken word recognition is the first few phonemes regardless of syllable structure, whereas in printed word recognition the access code is the first (orthographically defined) syllable.

Process and products of lexical access

Abstract: Theories of lexical access are generally concerned with the process of access and not with the information, or products, recovered when this process is accomplished. An analysis of the products of access suggests two criteria for theories of comprehension. First, a theory must specify what information belongs in the mental lexicon. Second, a theory must indicate what part of this information is ordinarily made available by the access process. A brief examination of alternative theories of comprehension exposes flaws that are due to inattention to these issues.