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Christoph Scheepers

The Arithmetic of Relative-Clause Attachment Syntactic Priming of Global S tructural C onfigurations. Christoph Scheepers. Introduction. Syntactic Priming Syntactic priming refers to the facilitation of linguistic processing when structures are repeated

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Christoph Scheepers

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  1. The Arithmetic of Relative-Clause Attachment Syntactic Priming of Global Structural Configurations ChristophScheepers

  2. Introduction • Syntactic Priming • Syntactic priming refers to the facilitation of linguistic processing when structures are repeated • Producers (unknowingly) tend to re-generate structures they have produced or understood before • Comprehenders find structures easier to process when they are similar to previously encountered ones • Useful, implicit method for investigating the kinds of abstract structural representations activated during language use • Typically measured in experiments where participants are encouraged to produce a particular structure in one trial (prime) and are free to produce the same or an alternative structure in a following trial (target)

  3. Method: Equipment

  4. Method: Equipment !!!

  5. Introduction • In language production, syntactic priming is well documented for a range of structural alternations, e.g. • Ditransitive Structure Priming (PO/DO) (e.g. Bock, 1986; Pickering & Branigan, 1998; etc. etc.) • Peter read the girl a book (prime) > Mary gave the dog a bone(target) • Peter read a book to the girl (prime) > Mary gave a bone to the dog(target) • Transitive Structure Priming (Active/Passive) (e.g. Bock, 1986; Bock & Loebell, 1990; etc etc.) • The boss fired the employee (prime) > Lightning strikes the house (target) • The employee was fired by the boss(prime) > The house is struck by lightning (target) • NP-modifier priming (Adjective/Relative Clause) (e.g. Cleland & Pickering, 2003) • The green circle (prime) > The red sheep (target) • The circle that’s green(prime) > The sheep that’s red (target)

  6. Introduction • However, most (if not all) of these structural priming phenomena involve lexical choices • Ditransitive Structure Priming (PO/DO) • Choice between PO ([[Vgive] [NPthe book] [PPto the man]) versus DO ([[Vgive] [NPthe man] [NPthe book]) verb frames • Active/PassivePriming • Choice between transitive (active) versus intransitive (passive) verb frames, inclusion of “by”, differences in verb morphology, etc. • NP-modifier priming • Choice between an adjective ([NPthe [N’ [Adjred][Nsheep]]]) or a relative pronoun ([NP [NPthe[Nsheep]] [RC [Prothat] [S’is red]]]) for adjunction

  7. Relative Clause Attachment • e.g., “I visited a friend of a colleague who lived in Spain.” NP NP NP PP NP RC a friend prep PP NP NP who lived in Spain of a friend RC prep NP NP of a colleague who lived in Spain a colleague High Attachment (HA) Low Attachment (LA) (1) NP  Det N (2) NP  NP PP (3) NP  NP RC (4) PP  prep NP Configuration of Modifiers!

  8. Relative Clause Attachment • Scheepers (2003, Cognition) • HA Primes: Die Assistentinverlasden Punktestandder Kandidatin, der____ . The assistant announced the scoreof the candidate that____ . • LA Primes: Die Assistentinverlas den Punktestandder Kandidatin, die ____ . The assistant announced the score of the candidate that ____ . • BL Primes: Die Assistentinverlas den Punktestand der Kandidatin, bevor __ . The assistant announced the score of the candidate before ___ . • Targets: Der Rentnerschimpfteüber die Autorin der Flugblätter, die ___ . The pensioner complained about the author of the fliers that ___ .

  9. Procedure • 30 subjects • 24 items • Individual random sequences of • 5 fillers (start) • prime • target • 2 fillers • prime • target • 2 fillers ... • Task: Provide a hand-written completion in each trial, e.g. • The pensioner complained about the author of the fliers that • _were in his letterbox this morning__ ..

  10. Results • Clear structural priming effects! • Global syntactic configuration (high/low RC-attachment) is as much subject to priming as local, lexically-driven structure

  11. Syntax or Pragmatics? • Scheepers (2003), Exp 3: adverbial clause primes • HR Primes: • Die Assistentinverlasden Punktestand der Kandidatin, alsdieser____ . • The assistant announced the score of the candidate when this ____ . • LR Primes: Die Assistentinverlas den Punktestandder Kandidatin, die ____ . The assistant announced the score of the candidate that ____ . • BL Primes: Die Assistentinverlas den Punktestand der Kandidatin, bevor __ . The assistant announced the score of the candidate before ___ . • Targets: Der Rentnerschimpfteüber die Autorin der Flugblätter, die ___ . The pensioner complained about the author of the fliers that ___ .

  12. Syntax or Pragmatics? The score of the candidate that had reached 1000 points impressed us. *The score of the candidate when it/she had reached 1000 points impressed us. S VP NP VP They V NP S’ announced PP NP when {it , she } had reached … 2 1 the score prep NP 1 the candidate of 2

  13. Results • No reliable priming! • Simply referring back to either NP1 or NP2 in the prime is not enough

  14. Summary • RC-attachments are subject to priming • also replicated in Dutch, and from Dutch to English in bilinguals (Desmet & Declercq, 2006) • Priming of global syntactic configurations • Not explainable in terms of lexical choices • Not explainable in terms of re-using individual rules • Not explainable in terms of focus structure or anaphoric binding • What exactly is being primed, then? • My original suggestion: Preservation of rule sequences…

  15. NP NP 1. NP  NP RC NP RC PP 1. NP  NP PP NP NP a friend NP NP PP PP NP NP NP RC prep 2. PP  prep NP 2. NP  NP PP a friend of a friend NP NP 3. NP  NP RC 3. PP  prep NP NP PP PP NP NP RC prep prep NP NP NP RC a friend of a friend of a colleague … a colleague … Rule Sequences HA LA

  16. Rule Sequences? • If exact rule sequences are being primed, one should not observe cross-structural priming, e.g. • From PP-attachment primes to RC-attachment targets • From complex genitive primes to RC-attachment targets • If we do observe cross-structural priming, then maintained syntactic representations must be more abstract / general than rule sequences

  17. Cross-Structural Priming • Scheepers (to appear), Exp 1: PP-attachment primes • HA Primes: • The cobbler examined the shoes of the old man with their ____ . • (… broken soles). • LA Primes: • The cobbler examined the shoes of the old man from____ . • (… down the street). • BL Primes: • The cobbler examined the shoes of the old man before ____ . • (… lunch) • Targets: The minister saw the bodyguard of the diplomats who ____ .

  18. Cross-Structural Priming • Clear cross-structural priming from PP- to RC-attachment • recently replicated in Dutch by Loncke, van Laere, & Desmet

  19. Cross-Structural Priming • Scheepers (to appear), Exp2: Genitive primes • HA Primes: • The knights jousted for the daughter of the King’s____ . • (… hand in marriage) • LA Primes: • The knights jousted for the hand of the King’s ____ . • (… beautiful daughter) • BL Primes: • The knights jousted for the daughter of the King during____ . • (… the tournament ) • Targets: The minister saw the bodyguard of the diplomats who ____ .

  20. Relative Clauses H H M M … a friend of a colleague who lived in Spain. … a friend of a colleaguewho lived in Spain. PPs H H M M … a friend of a colleague from Spain. … a friend of a colleaguefrom Spain. Genitives H M M H … a friendof a colleague’sacquaintance. … a friend of a colleague’sacquaintance. Head-Modifier Relations

  21. Cross-Structural Priming • Clear cross-structural priming from Genitives to RC-attachment!!

  22. Summary • Evidence for cross-structural priming effects • RC-attachment can be primed by syntactic configuration within a complex genitive NP or a high- vs. low attached PP • Clearly inconsistent with rule sequencing • Interesting side-aspect: • Complex genitive primes imply reverse head-modifier relations compared to RC-attachment targets • Priming cannot be explained in terms of maintaining such relations • Rather, what appears to be primed is the syntactic chunking/bracketing of the ‘NP-of-NP’ string • [the noun of the noun] ‘s / with / who … • the noun of [the noun] ‘s / with / who …

  23. Cross-Domain Priming • If it has to do with syntactic chunking/bracketing, it might even work with mathematical equationsas primes 3 + ( 4 – 2 )  2 vs.3 + 4 – 2  2 + +   3 3   2 4 2 2 2 4

  24. Cross-Domain Priming • Indeed, evidence from neuroscience already point to the possibility that language shares processing resources in the brain with other highly structured representational domains, e.g. • Musical cognition (e.g. Patel, 2003) • Sequential processing (e.g. Lelekovet al., 2000) • Mathematical cognition (e.g. Deheane et al., 1999) • There is also behavioural evidence showing • that concurrent mathematical tasks interfere with the processing of linguistic structures with high memory demands (Fedorenko et al., 2007) • that domain-general memory resources associated with chunking are predictive of RC-attachment preferences (Swets et al., 2007) • Structural priming from maths to language might work

  25. Cross-Domain Priming • Scheepers et al. (2011), Exp 1 • HA Primes: • 80 – ( 9 + 1 )  5 = • LA Primes: • 80 – 9 + 1  5 = • BL Primes: • 80 – 22 = • Targets: The minister saw the bodyguard of the diplomats who ____ .

  26. Cross-Domain Priming • 108 participants • 36 Psychology students (pre-screened for mathematical ability and reminded of the rules if necessary [extra training for ca. 60%]) • 36 Business students (no extra mathematical training) • 36 Maths/Informatics/Physics students (no extra mathematical training) • 24 prime (equation) – target (sentence fragment) pairs • Fillers between prime-target pairs were randomly taken from a set of 26 sentence fragments and 25 equations • No regular sequence of equations and sentences detectable • Task: Solve equations by hand foot and provide hand-written completions to sentence fragments

  27. Results • Clear cross-domain structural priming! • Comparable in magnitude to previous, language-specific RC-attachment priming effects • Relative to baseline: • Fewer LA / more HA sentence completions after correctly solving HA equations like 90 + ( 5 + 15 ) / 5 = • More LA / fewer HA sentence completions after correctly solving LA equations like 90 +5 + 15 / 5 = • Doesn’t work that well with (mathematically trained) Psychology undergrads… Scheepers C., Sturt P., Martin C.J., Myachykov A., Teevan K. & Viskupova I. (2011). Structural priming across cognitive domains: From simple arithmetic to relative clause attachment. Psychological Science, 22(10), 1319-1326.

  28. Results Scheepers et al. (2011), Exp2 • Same as before, except • Only Psychology students (N=27 no mathematical training!) • HA and LA prime equations comprised redundant brackets HA: 90 + ( ( 5 + 15 ) / 5 ) = LA: 90 + 5 + ( 15 / 5 ) = • Psychology students do show cross-domain priming if they are helped with redundant brackets instead of mathematical training Scheepers C., Sturt P., Martin C.J., Myachykov A., Teevan K. & Viskupova I. (2011). Structural priming across cognitive domains: From simple arithmetic to relative clause attachment. Psychological Science, 22(10), 1319-1326.

  29. Discussion • First piece of evidence for cross-domainstructural priming from arithmetic to language • Priming of syntax in its ‘purest’ form, concerning the hierarchical chunking of elements • Algebra and language have no “semantics” in common • Highlights the importance of global syntactic representations at a very high level of abstraction • But what could be the actual mechanisms behind these (and the previous language-internal) priming effects?

  30. Potential Mechanisms • Possibility 1: Representational Isomorphism • Participants retain (in memory) an abstract global structure representation of the prime, and process a subsequent sentence in such a way that its global structure is isomorphic to that of the prime • The exact level of abstraction would need to be specified

  31. Potential Mechanisms • Possibility 2: (Incremental) Procedural Isomorphism • Expressions (sentences and equations) are processed from ‘left to right’ • When the final combinatorial element is encountered (“ / ” respectively “ that ”), a previous computation has to be un-done, combined with that element, and re-integrated into the previous structure • Priming relies on whether the final element combines with a simple (LA) or a more complex (HA) expression on its left + + / / 110 110 ?? ?? + + 90 90 HA LA 5 5 20 20 5 15 ( 5 15 ) 1

  32. Potential Mechanisms • Possibility 2: (Incremental) Procedural Isomorphism • Expressions (sentences and equations) are processed from ‘left to right’ • When the final combinatorial element is encountered (“ / ” respectively “ that ”), a previous computation has to be un-done, combined with that element, and re-integrated into the previous structure • Priming relies on whether the final element combines with a simple (LA) or a more complex (HA) expression on its left + + / / 90 95 ?? ?? + 90 90 HA LA 5 5 5 5 2 + 20 15 ( 5 15 )

  33. Potential Mechanisms • Possibility 2: (Incremental) Procedural Isomorphism • Expressions (sentences and equations) are processed from ‘left to right’ • When the final combinatorial element is encountered (“ / ” respectively “ that ”), a previous computation has to be un-done, combined with that element, and re-integrated into the previous structure • Priming relies on whether the final element combines with a simple (LA) or a more complex (HA) expression on its left + + 90 95 + 90 90 HA LA / 5 4 5 3 / + 5 3 20 15 5 ( 5 15 )

  34. Potential Mechanisms • Possibility 2: (Incremental) Procedural Isomorphism • Expressions (sentences and equations) are processed from ‘left to right’ • When the final combinatorial element is encountered (“ / ” respectively “ that ”), a previous computation has to be un-done, combined with that element, and re-integrated into the previous structure • Priming relies on whether the final element combines with a simple (LA) or a more complex (HA) expression on its left + + 94 98 / + 90 90 HA LA 8 4 / 5 + 5 done 3 20 15 5 ( 5 15 )

  35. Potential Mechanisms • Possibility 2: (Incremental) Procedural Isomorphism • Expressions (sentences and equations) are processed from ‘left to right’ • When the final combinatorial element is encountered (“ / ” respectively “ that ”), a previous computation has to be un-done, combined with that element, and re-integrated into the previous structure • Priming relies on whether the final element combines with a simple (LA) or a more complex (HA) expression on its left + + 94 98 / + 90 90 8 4 / 5 + 5 3 20 15 5 ( 5 15 ) NP S NP S 1 RC RC NP NP VP NP NP VP NP heard NP Peter heard Peter S’ S’ that that PP NP PP NP the bells the bells of NP of NP the church the church HA LA

  36. Potential Mechanisms • Possibility 2: (Incremental) Procedural Isomorphism • Expressions (sentences and equations) are processed from ‘left to right’ • When the final combinatorial element is encountered (“ / ” respectively “ that ”), a previous computation has to be un-done, combined with that element, and re-integrated into the previous structure • Priming relies on whether the final element combines with a simple (LA) or a more complex (HA) expression on its left + + 94 98 / + 90 90 8 4 / 5 + 5 3 20 15 5 ( 5 15 ) NP S NP S 2 RC RC NP NP VP NP NP VP heard NP Peter heard Peter S’ S’ that that PP NP NP the bells of PP NP the bells of NP NP HA LA the church the church

  37. Potential Mechanisms • Possibility 2: (Incremental) Procedural Isomorphism • Expressions (sentences and equations) are processed from ‘left to right’ • When the final combinatorial element is encountered (“ / ” respectively “ that ”), a previous computation has to be un-done, combined with that element, and re-integrated into the previous structure • Priming relies on whether the final element combines with a simple (LA) or a more complex (HA) expression on its left + + 94 98 / + 90 90 8 4 / 5 + 5 3 20 15 5 ( 5 15 ) S S 3 NP VP NP VP heard NP Peter heard Peter NP PP NP RC NP the bells of NP PP NP S’ that the bells of NP RC NP HA LA the church the church S’ that

  38. Potential Mechanisms • Possibility 2: (Incremental) Procedural Isomorphism • Expressions (sentences and equations) are processed from ‘left to right’ • When the final combinatorial element is encountered (“ / ” respectively “ that ”), a previous computation has to be un-done, combined with that element, and re-integrated into the previous structure • Priming relies on whether the final element combines with a simple (LA) or a more complex (HA) expression on its left + + 94 98 / + 90 90 8 4 / 5 + 5 3 20 15 5 ( 5 15 ) S S done NP VP NP VP heard NP NP Peter heard Peter RC NP PP NP the bells NP of PP NP S’ that RC NP the bells of NP the church the church S’ that HA LA

  39. New (Preliminary) Findings • The representational account makes no assumptions about how the equations are being processed (left-to-right, right-to left, etc.) • All that matters is the final syntactic representation • By contrast, the incremental procedural account predicts that the more an equation is processed in a “language-like” fashion (i.e. from left to right), the stronger the priming effect should be • Left-to-right incrementality matters • Eye-tracking experiment (21 participants) in which mathematical prime equations were followed by written sentence fragments for verbal completion • Question:Does the amount of left-to-right processing in the equations predict strength of syntactic priming in the target sentences?

  40. Quantifying Incrementality LRP index (N-global / N-local) = 7/8 = .875

  41. Preliminary Results • Prime condition main effect: • 2subjects(2)= 5.22; p = .074;2items(2)= 6.56; p < .04

  42. Preliminary Results • Prime condition × LRP-index interaction: • 2subjects(2)= 5.31; p = .070;2items(2)= 6.84; p < .04 HA equations are more effective in suppressing LA responses, the more they are processed incrementally from left to right

  43. Thanks! • Collaborators • Patrick Sturt (Edinburgh) • Kay Teevan (Glasgow) • AndriyMyachykov (Glasgow) • Catherine Martin (Glasgow) • IzabelaViskupova (Glasgow)

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