Barbara Hemforth

Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution In German

This chapter discusses sentence processing research from differential perspective and from universal perspective. It argues the ways in which the peculiarities of German give the opportunity to provide a new test ground for theories of sentence processing in general. The chapter explains evidence on constructions which are highly comparable, not only in German and English, but also many other languages. It discusses constraints on models of human sentence processing in general which can be derived from experiments on German. The chapter talks about attachment preferences and the principle of parameterized head attachment based on experiments on PP- and NP attachment as well as extensions of the models which have proven to be necessary to explain relative clause attachment preferences. Keywords: clause attachment preferences; English; German; parameterized head attachment; sentence processing research

Linking Syntactic Functions with Thematic Roles: Psych-Verbs and the Resolution of Subject-Object Ambiguity

Subject-object ambiguities like in (1a-d), where the first NP can either be interpreted as the subject or as the direct object of the sentence, are one of the most intensively studied phenomena of German sentence processing, as is reflected by the number of contributions on this topic in the current volume (cf. the chapters of Markus Bader, Paul Gorrell, Lars Konieczny et al., and Matthias Schlesewsky et al.).

Modifier Attachment: Relative Clauses and Coordinations

In this paper, we will discuss accounts of cross-linguistic differences in attachment preferences for relative clauses. In the first section, we will present an overview of data from two-site attachment ambiguities like (1). We will argue for a modular model of sentence processing where a discourse-based preference for a salient antecedent of the relative pronoun and a syntax-based recency preference contribute to empirically observable attachment preferences. n n(1) n nthe daughter of the teacher who lived in France n nIn the second section, we will extend this account to three-site ambiguities like (13,3) which were first investigated by Gibson et al. (1996a, b), based on three German questionnaire experiments. n n n n n(2) n nthe lamp near the painting in the house that was damaged in the flood (Gibson et al., 1996a) n n n n n(3) n nthe customer with the child with the dirty face and n n nthe wet diaper n n nthe one with the wet diaper n n nthe one with the baby with the wet diaper

Modifier Attachment in German: Relative Clauses and Prepositional Phrases

Abstract In this chapter, we present new results from an eye-tracking experiment on NP1–NP2-modifier attachment in German. We will focus on attachment preferences across modifier types, namely relative clauses (RCs) and semantically highly comparable prepositional phrases (PPs), showing that different preferences hold for these two types of constructions. Whereas PP attachment follows recency-based principles, resulting in low attachment, RCs are preferentially attached high. These data provide an on-line confirmation of results from various questionnaire studies presented in Hemforth, Konieczny and Scheepers (in press; see also Hemforth, Konieczny and Scheepers, 1994). Furthermore, the effects for RCs and PPs showed up most clearly either in regression-sensitive (regression path durations) and regression-insensitive (first-pass reading times) measures, respectively. To provide the means for analysing the re-reading process, we established a new measure (load contribution).

Case Matching and Relative Clause Attachment

Two accounts of relative clause attachment will be discussed, the case-matching hypothesis proposed by Sauerland and Gibson (1998) and the attachment-binding dualism (Hemforth et al., in press a, b). While the case-matching hypothesis predicts that relative clauses are preferentially attached to NPs whose case matches that of the relative pronoun, attachment binding predicts that NPs are preferentially attached to the most salient host, that is NP1 in constructions with two NPs. We conducted two off-line studies, one sentence completion task and one magnitude estimation experiment using subject (nominative pronoun) and object (accusative pronoun) relative clauses that can be attached to either of the two nouns in a complex subject (NP1 = nominative, NP2 = genitive) or object NP (NP1 = accusative, NP2 = genitive). While attachment binding predicts an across-the-board NP1 preference, the case-matching hypothesis predicts an NP1 prefence only in the case of subject (object) NPs followed by subject (object) relative clauses. The results of both experiments provide evidence for attachment binding and against case matching.

Auf dem Weg zu psychologisch fundierten Modellen menschlicher Sprachverarbeitung: Echtzeitanalysen des Satzverstehens

Das man Sprache als solche wissenschaftlich betrachten und analysieren kann, ist auch von Psychologen nie bestritten worden; dennoch konnte dieses fur die Linguistik konstituierende Vorgehen kaum als psychologischer Ansatz gelten. Schon als der Psychologe Buhler (1934) „Die Sprache“ in den Blick nahm, war er vornehmlich auf deren Funktionen im Gebrauch konzentriert. Wesentlich weiter ging Skinner (1957), als er, der bereits Kerngebieten der Psychologie mit einem gewagten reduktiven Behaviorismus zu Leibe geruckt war, seine Behandlung der Sprache ganz auf Benennung und Aufforderung zuschnitt und mit der dadurch herausgeforderten Kritik durch Chomsky (1959) selbst nicht unerheblich beitrug zur Abkehr vom Behaviorismus in der Linguistik wie in der Psychologie. In der Folge geriet die psychologische Behandlung der Sprache insbesondere im angelsachsischen Bereich vorubergehend zum Appendix der ihr vorauseilenden Syntaxtheorie; als „Psycholinguistik“ diente die Psychologie sich eilfertig an, zur jeweils neuesten linguistischen Vermutung ein Experiment zu liefern, das die „psychologische Realitat“ der postulierten Strukturen und Operationen beweisen sollte (im Gegensatz hierzu stehen naturlich im deutschsprachigen Raum u.a. die Arbeiten von Hormann (z.B. 1976) und Engelkamp (z.B. 1972)). Dieses Verhaltnis der beiden Wissenschaften, Psychologie und Linguistik, zueinander hat sich im Zeichen der Konsolidierung einer als genuin interdisziplinar verstandenen Kognitionswissenschaft gewandelt. Damit aber ist die Psychologie wieder gefordert, einen eigenstandigen Zugang zur Sprache zu entwickeln, der den interdisziplinaren Dialog bereichern kann.

PP-Attachment In German: Results From Eye Movement Studies1

Abstract In this paper we will present preliminary data on PP-attachment in German verb-second and verb-final structures. The results from our eye-movement studies will be shown to contradict the predictions of some well-known principles of human sentence comprehension. Parametrized Head Attachment will be introduced as a principle fully consistent with the data.

Cognitive Parsing in German: An Introduction

Research in human sentence processing is a genuinely cross-linguistic project. Since most theories of human parsing make predictions based on the architecture and the mechanisms of the human sentence processor in general, these predictions are assumed to hold for all human comprehenders irrespective of their mother tongue. Ideally, the only difference between processing phenomena in different languages should be due to different grammatical features of the respective languages. In this view, it should be possible to plug the grammar of a particular language into the sentence processor and have all sorts of syntactic complexity phenomena or preferences in ambiguity resolution fall out (Frazier, 1987). This enterprise can obviously only be pursued if theories of human language processing are applied to and tested in as many languages as possible. Nevertheless, by far the majority of research in human sentence processing has been carried out in English. This picture is now changing, however. More and more cross-linguistic studies on human language processing are being published on a wide variety of languages.

SOUL-Processing: Semantik-orientierte Prinzipien menschlicher Sprachverarbeitung

Prinzipien menschlicher Sprachverarbeitung sind ein zentrales Thema psycholinguistischer Forschung. Es wird gezeigt, das die im Rahmen des Garden-Path-Modells sowie des Licensing-Structure Parsers vorgestellten Prinzipien den empirisch auffindbaren Gegebenheiten bei der Verarbeitung struktureller Ambiguitaten im Englischen und im Deutschen nicht standhalten. Bedeutungs-orientierte Verarbeitung, die darauf abzielt, eine fruhestmogliche semantische Interpretation zu gewahrleisten, stellt eine geeignete Alternative dar. Der SOUL-Prozessor ist schlieslich in der Lage, auf der Basis weniger heuristischer Prinzipien eine grosere Menge der beim Menschen auffindbaren Verarbeitungspraferenzen zu erklaren als die anderen hier diskutierten Ansatze.

Head Position and Clause Boundary Effects in Reanalysis

Reanalysis cost has been demonstrated to be influenced by the distance of the semantic head of the ambiguous phrase to the disambiguating region (Ferreira and Henderson, 1991). F&H’s original account, based on the assumption of decaying activation levels of multiple thematic frames, as well as its recently updated version (Ferreira & Henderson, in press), will be discussed in the light of empirical evidence from an eye-tracking study on German NP- vs. elliptic VP-coordination ambiguities. Head position was varied by using pre-nominal APs and post-nominal PPs or RCs.