Phrase

About: Phrase is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 12580 publications have been published within this topic receiving 317823 citations. The topic is also known as: syntagma & phrases.

RESEARCH REPORT Seeing a Phrase "Time and Again" Matters: The Role of Phrasal Frequency in the Processing of Multiword Sequences

Abstract: Are speakers sensitive to the frequency with which phrases occur in language? The authors report an eye-tracking study that investigates this by examining the processing of multiword sequences that differ in phrasal frequency by native and proficient nonnative English speakers. Participants read sentences containing 3-word binomial phrases (bride and groom) and their reversed forms (groom and bride), which are identical in syntax and meaning but that differ in phrasal frequency. Mixed-effects modeling revealed that native speakers and nonnative speakers, across a range of proficiencies, are sensitive to the frequency with which phrases occur in English. Results also indicate that native speakers and higher proficiency nonnatives are sensitive to whether a phrase occurs in a particular configuration (binomial vs. reversed) in English, highlighting the contribution of entrenchment of a particular phrase in memory.

Chapter 16 – Eye Movement Measures to Study Global Text Processing

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter describes the applicability of the eye-tracking method in studying global text processing. Eye tracking is used to study basic reading processes and syntactic parsing, but there are few studies where eye tracking is employed to examine global text processing. As one moves from the study of lexical processing to syntactic processing, the potential units of analysis increase in both number and size. There are four relevant levels of processing in the study of syntactic processing: (1) the word at which a parsing choice is expected to be made or a syntactic ambiguity to reveal itself, (2) the phrase, (3) the clause, and (4) the whole sentence. Related to the increase in the number and size of potentially interesting units of analysis, the mental processing associated with syntactic processes is more complex and varied than the mental processing associated with lexical processing. Thus, syntactic effects on eye movements are correspondingly more complex than lexical effects on eye movements.

A Three-Step Procedure for Language Generation

Abstract: : This paper outlines a three-step plan for generation English text from any sematic representation by applying a set of syntactic transformations to a collection of kernel sentences The paper focuses on describing a program which realizes the third step of this plan Step One separates the given representation into groups and generates from each group a set of kernel sentences Step Two must decide, based upon both syntactic and thematic consideration, the set of transformations that shoulld be performed upon each set of kernels The output of the first two steps provides the 'TASK' for Step Three Each element of the TASK corresponds to the generation of one English sentence, and in turn may be defined as a triple consisting of: a list of kernel phrase markers; a list of transformations to be performed upon the list of kernals; a 'syntactic separator' to separate or connect generated sentences Step Three takes as input the results of Step One and Step Two The program which implements Step Three 'reads' the TASK, executes the transformations indicated there, combines the altered kernels of each set into a sentence, performs a pronominalization process, and finally produces the appropriate English word string This approach subdivides a hard problem into three more manageable and relatively independent pieces