Amy J. Schafer

Focus in Relative Clause Construal

Two auditory comprehension studies investigated the role of focus, as conveyed by a pitch accent, in the comprehension of relative clauses preceded by a complex NP (e.g. the propeller of the plane that . . .). In the e rst experiment, accenting N1 (propeller) or N2 (plane) increased the probability that the accented NP would be taken as head of the relative clause. This supported the predictions of a Focus Attraction Hypothesis as applied to relative clauses. The second experiment manipulated the prosodic status of the relative clause (accented or unaccented) as well as the type of accent on a potential head of the relative clause. It demonstrated that focus on a potential head of a relative clause attracts both accented relative clauses, presumed to convey new information, and unaccented relative clauses, presumed to convey given information. This supported a straightforwa rd version of the Focus Attractio n Hypothesis as opposed to a Congruence Hypothesis, which claims that only modie ers marked as conveying new information preferentially are related to other phrases that are marked as new. The experiment also demonstrated that a contrastive accent on a potential head of a relative clause attracts relative clauses even more than a focal accent that is appropriate for new information.

Focus and the Interpretation of Pitch Accent: Disambiguating Embedded Questions.

It has been suggested that prosodic disambiguation of sentences is largely a matter of prosodic phrasing. Ambiguities can be resolved if a prosodic break aligns with a major syntactic boundary of one structure but not another. The placement of pitch accents is viewed as playing only a supporting role (cf. Price, Ostendorf, Shattuck-Huffnagel, & Fong, 1991). This view of prosodic disambiguation does not apply tho all structures of a language. We report five experiments studying ambiguous sentences like (i) and (ii): (i) I asked the pretty little girl WHO is cold. I asked the pretty little girl who is COLD. (ii) Joshua began to wonder WHEN his girlfriend got a tattoo. Joshua began to wonder when his girl friend got a TATTOO. The presence of a prominent pitch accent on the interrogative constituent (who, when) biased listeners to a emmbedded question interpretation whereas its absence biased thhem to a relative clause(i) or temporal adjunct(ii) analysis. The results suggest that accent, like prosodic breaks, can play a central role in guiding sentence comprehension.

Constituent Length Affects Prosody and Processing for a Dative NP Ambiguity in Korean

Two sentence processing experiments on a dative NP ambiguity in Korean demonstrate effects of phrase length on overt and implicit prosody. Both experiments controlled non-prosodic length factors by using long versus short proper names that occurred before the syntactically critical material. Experiment 1 found that long phrases induce different prosodic phrasing than short phrases in a read-aloud task and change the preferred interpretation of globally ambiguous sentences. It also showed that speakers who have been told of the ambiguity can provide significantly different prosody for the two interpretations, for both lengths. Experiment 2 verified that prosodic patterns found in first-pass pronunciations predict self-paced reading patterns for silent reading. The results extend the coverage of the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis [Fodor, J Psycholinguist Res 27:285–319, 1998; Prosodic disambiguation in silent reading. In M. Hirotani (Ed.), NELS 32 (pp. 113–132). Amherst, MA: GLSA Publications, 2002] to another construction and to Korean. They further indicate that strong syntactic biases can have rapid effects on the formulation of implicit prosody.

One word at a time: Mental representations of object shape change incrementally during sentence processing

Abstract We report on two experiments that ask when and under what linguistic conditions comprehenders construct detailed shape representations of mentioned objects, and whether these can change over the course of a sentence when new information contradicts earlier expectations. We used Japanese because the verb-final word order of Japanese presented a revealing test case where information about objects can radically change with a subsequent verb. The results show that language understanders consistently generate a distinct and detailed shape for an object by integrating the semantic contributions of different sentential elements. These results first confirm that the tendency to generate specific shape information about objects that are involved in described events is not limited to English, but is also present in Japanese, a typologically and genetically distinct language. But more importantly, they shed light on the processing mechanism of object representation, showing that mental representations are initiated sentence medially, and are rapidly revised if followed by a verb that implies a change to an object shape. This work contributes to ongoing research on incremental language processing – comprehenders appear to construct extremely detailed semantic representations early in a sentence, and modify them as needed.

The influence of prosodic phrasal boundaries on the resolution of semantic lexical ambiguity

Two experiments explored the effect of two levels of prosodic phrasing, the intonational phrase (IPh), and phonological phrase (PPh), on the interpretation of ambiguous words in sentences. In experiment 1, polysemous words were presented in semantically neutral sentence‐initial clauses, followed by either an IPh or PPh boundary. A second clause resolved the ambiguity. End‐of‐sentence judgment times showed that reanalysis to the subordinate meaning of the ambiguous word took longer following IPh than PPh boundaries, suggesting that more extensive interpretive processing had taken place following the higher‐level boundary. In experiment 2, strongly‐biased polysemous words were presented in clauses weakly biased toward their subordinate interpretation, followed by either an IPh or PPh boundary. Following IPh boundaries, visually presented semantic associates of the subordinate meaning of the polysemous word were named faster than targets associated with the dominant meaning. This difference was not found for...

Prosodic disambiguation of syntactic ambiguity in discourse context

A cooperative boardgame task was used to examine how native speakers use prosodic structure to resolve syntactic ambiguity in discourse context. The game task required two speakers to use utterances from a predetermined set to negotiate the movement of gamepieces to goal locations. In one condition, the discourse contained two situations that had to be described using the same syntactically ambiguous word sequence. In the other condition, an identical syntactically ambiguous structure was used to describe only one situation. Sentences that could describe two situations had an ambiguous prepositional phrase attachment as in ‘‘I want to move the square with the triangle,’’ in which the move involved either a combined square‐and‐triangle piece or a triangle pushing a square to another position. Sentences describing only one situation involved only a cylinder pushing the square as in ‘‘I want to move the square with the cylinder.’’ Phonological analyses and phonetic analyses of duration and fundamental freque...

Perception of contrastive meaning through the L+H*L−H% contour.

This study establishes empirical evidence regarding listeners’s perceptions of the contrastive tune [L+H*L−H%; e.g., Lee et al. (2007)]. Eighteen native English speakers heard three types of test sentences: (1) contrastive, “The mailbox was(L+H*) full(L−H%),” (2) positive neutral, “The mailbox(H*) was full(H*L−L%);” and (3) negated neutral, “The mailbox(H*) was not(H*) full(H*L−L%).” The participants first scored them by naturalness, and then typed continuation sentences based on the perceived meaning. Three other native English speakers independently coded the continuations to evaluate participants’ interpretations of the test sentences. The results clearly demonstrated that the L+H*L−H% tune generated contrastive meanings (e.g., “…but the mailman took the mail and now it is empty” significantly more often than both the positive and negative neutral counterparts. Moreover, sentences presented in the contrastive tune were perceived as natural utterances. High coder agreement indicated a reliable function ...

Order of presentation asymmetry in intonational contour discrimination in English.

In the work of Hwang et al. (2007), native English speakers showed overall poor accuracy in distinguishing initially rising versus level (e.g., L*L*H‐ H*L‐L% vs L*L*L‐ H*L‐L%) or initially falling versus level (e.g., H*H*L‐ H*L‐L% vs H*H*H‐ H*L‐L%) contour contrasts on English phrases in an AX discrimination task. Results not reported in that paper found that it was easier to discriminate when a more complex F0 contour occurred second than when it occurred first. Several orders of presentation effects in the perception of intonation have been reported (e.g., L. Morton (1997); S. Lintfert (2003); Cummins et al. (2006)] but no satisfying account has been provided. This study investigated these asymmetries more systematically. The order effect was significant for falling‐level contrast pairs: pairs with a more complex F0 contour last were discriminated more easily than the reverse order. Rising versus level contrasts showed a similar tendency. The results thus extend intonational discrimination asymmetries t...

Prosodic phrasal structure and lexical interpretation

In phonological theory, phonological phrases (PPhs) and intonational phrases (IPhs) are distinct levels of prosodic phrasing, with different edge tones, different constraints on well‐formedness, and different acoustic properties. Although many studies have demonstrated prosodic effects on syntactic processing, few studies have examined prosodic effects on semantic processing, and the majority of studies have not compared the effects PPhs and IPhs [but see Kjelgaard (1995)]. It is demonstrated that, with respect to the interpretation of lexical, syntactic, and semantic ambiguities, PPhs and IPhs have distinct processing effects. Results will be presented from several experiments testing lexical ambiguities of several types, using both cross‐modal naming and end‐of‐sentence tasks. For example, it will be shown that reanalysis to the subordinate meaning of a polysemous word presented in a neutral context takes longer when the word is in a preceding IPh than in a preceding PPh, for lexically and syntactically...

Processing Intonationally Implicated Contrast versus Negation in American English

Certain English intonational contours facilitate a conversational implicature that a relevant alternative to the stated proposition does not hold true. We evaluated how frequently and how quickly naïve participants achieved such pragmatically enriched meanings when their attention had not already been drawn to a set of alternatives. Sentences with L+H* L-H% intonational contours, along with broad focus affirmative and negative counterparts, were tested in a pair of experiments. Experiment 1 revealed that most interpretations of the L+H* L-H% sentences evidenced the expected implicature, but a substantial number did not. Experiment 2 mapped the activation levels across time for the asserted state and a contradictory/implicated alternative for the same three sentence types, using a picture-naming paradigm. The results revealed that lexical negation produced a contrast in activation levels between the two alternatives at an earlier time point than the L+H* L-H% contour, and that the relative activation of the two states shifted over time for L+H* L-H% sentences, such that an intonationally implicated alternative was highly activated at a time point when the activation for the asserted meaning had declined. These results further our understanding of the pragmatic processes involved in the interpretation of negation and intonation.