The processing of extraposed structures in English
In most languages, most of the syntactic dependency relations found in any given sentence are projective: the word–word dependencies in the sentence do not cross each other. Some syntactic dependency relations, however, are non-projective: some of their word–word dependencies cross each other. Non-p...
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Elsevier
2016
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/102468 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3823-514X https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5912-883X |
| _version_ | 1826208162287452160 |
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| author | Levy, Roger Fedorenko, Evelina Breen, Mara Gibson, Edward A. |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Levy, Roger Fedorenko, Evelina Breen, Mara Gibson, Edward A. |
| author_sort | Levy, Roger |
| collection | MIT |
| description | In most languages, most of the syntactic dependency relations found in any given sentence are projective: the word–word dependencies in the sentence do not cross each other. Some syntactic dependency relations, however, are non-projective: some of their word–word dependencies cross each other. Non-projective dependencies are both rarer and more computationally complex than projective dependencies; hence, it is of natural interest to investigate whether there are any processing costs specific to non-projective dependencies, and whether factors known to influence processing of projective dependencies also affect non-projective dependency processing. We report three self-paced reading studies, together with corpus and sentence completion studies, investigating the comprehension difficulty associated with the non-projective dependencies created by the extraposition of relative clauses in English. We find that extraposition over either verbs or prepositional phrases creates comprehension difficulty, and that this difficulty is consistent with probabilistic syntactic expectations estimated from corpora. Furthermore, we find that manipulating the expectation that a given noun will have a postmodifying relative clause can modulate and even neutralize the difficulty associated with extraposition. Our experiments rule out accounts based purely on derivational complexity and/or dependency locality in terms of linear positioning. Our results demonstrate that comprehenders maintain probabilistic syntactic expectations that persist beyond projective-dependency structures, and suggest that it may be possible to explain observed patterns of comprehension difficulty associated with extraposition entirely through probabilistic expectations. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T14:01:30Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/102468 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T14:01:30Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1024682022-10-01T18:40:23Z The processing of extraposed structures in English Levy, Roger Fedorenko, Evelina Breen, Mara Gibson, Edward A. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Gibson, Edward A. Fedorenko, Evelina Gibson, Edward A. In most languages, most of the syntactic dependency relations found in any given sentence are projective: the word–word dependencies in the sentence do not cross each other. Some syntactic dependency relations, however, are non-projective: some of their word–word dependencies cross each other. Non-projective dependencies are both rarer and more computationally complex than projective dependencies; hence, it is of natural interest to investigate whether there are any processing costs specific to non-projective dependencies, and whether factors known to influence processing of projective dependencies also affect non-projective dependency processing. We report three self-paced reading studies, together with corpus and sentence completion studies, investigating the comprehension difficulty associated with the non-projective dependencies created by the extraposition of relative clauses in English. We find that extraposition over either verbs or prepositional phrases creates comprehension difficulty, and that this difficulty is consistent with probabilistic syntactic expectations estimated from corpora. Furthermore, we find that manipulating the expectation that a given noun will have a postmodifying relative clause can modulate and even neutralize the difficulty associated with extraposition. Our experiments rule out accounts based purely on derivational complexity and/or dependency locality in terms of linear positioning. Our results demonstrate that comprehenders maintain probabilistic syntactic expectations that persist beyond projective-dependency structures, and suggest that it may be possible to explain observed patterns of comprehension difficulty associated with extraposition entirely through probabilistic expectations. 2016-05-12T15:01:13Z 2016-05-12T15:01:13Z 2011-10 2011-03 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 00100277 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/102468 Levy, Roger, Evelina Fedorenko, Mara Breen, and Edward Gibson. “The Processing of Extraposed Structures in English.” Cognition 122, no. 1 (January 2012): 12–36. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3823-514X https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5912-883X en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2011.07.012 Cognition Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ application/pdf Elsevier Prof. Gibson via Courtney Crummett |
| spellingShingle | Levy, Roger Fedorenko, Evelina Breen, Mara Gibson, Edward A. The processing of extraposed structures in English |
| title | The processing of extraposed structures in English |
| title_full | The processing of extraposed structures in English |
| title_fullStr | The processing of extraposed structures in English |
| title_full_unstemmed | The processing of extraposed structures in English |
| title_short | The processing of extraposed structures in English |
| title_sort | processing of extraposed structures in english |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/102468 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3823-514X https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5912-883X |
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