Diogo Almeida

A problem for the preposition stranding generalization

A PROBLEM FOR THE PREPOSITION STRANDING GENERALIZATION Diogo A. de A. Almeida University of Maryland, College Park Masaya Yoshida University of Maryland, College Park Lobeck, Anne. 1995. Ellipsis: Functional heads, licensing, and identification. New York: Oxford University Press. Mark, Colin. 1986. Gaelic verbs. Glasgow: University of Glasgow, Roinn nan Cànan Ceilteach. McCloskey, James. 1991. Clause structure, ellipsis and proper government in Irish. Lingua 85:259–302. McCloskey, James. 1999. On the right edge in Irish. Syntax 2:189–209. McCloskey, James. 2001. The distribution of subject properties in Irish. In Objects and other subjects, ed. by William D. Davies and Stanley Dubinsky, 157–192. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Merchant, Jason. 2001. The syntax of silence: Sluicing, islands, and the theory of ellipsis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The empirical status of data in syntax: A reply to Gibson and Fedorenko

This is a commentary in response to The need for quantitative methods in syntax and semantics research, by Edward Gibson and Evelina Fedorenko.

Representing number in the real-time processing of agreement: self-paced reading evidence from Arabic.

In the processing of subject-verb agreement, non-subject plural nouns following a singular subject sometimes “attract” the agreement with the verb, despite not being grammatically licensed to do so. This phenomenon generates agreement errors in production and an increased tendency to fail to notice such errors in comprehension, thereby providing a window into the representation of grammatical number in working memory during sentence processing. Research in this topic, however, is primarily done in related languages with similar agreement systems. In order to increase the cross-linguistic coverage of the processing of agreement, we conducted a self-paced reading study in Modern Standard Arabic. We report robust agreement attraction errors in relative clauses, a configuration not particularly conducive to the generation of such errors for all possible lexicalizations. In particular, we examined the speed with which readers retrieve a subject controller for both grammatical and ungrammatical agreeing verbs in sentences where verbs are preceded by two NPs, one of which is a local non-subject NP that can act as a distractor for the successful resolution of subject-verb agreement. Our results suggest that the frequency of errors is modulated by the kind of plural formation strategy used on the attractor noun: nouns which form plurals by suffixation condition high rates of attraction, whereas nouns which form their plurals by internal vowel change (ablaut) generate lower rates of errors and reading-time attraction effects of smaller magnitudes. Furthermore, we show some evidence that these agreement attraction effects are mostly contained in the right tail of reaction time distributions. We also present modeling data in the ACT-R framework which supports a view of these ablauting patterns wherein they are differentially specified for number and evaluate the consequences of possible representations for theories of grammar and parsing.

Word-specific repetition effects revealed by MEG and the implications for lexical access

This magnetoencephalography (MEG) study investigated the early stages of lexical access in reading, with the goal of establishing when initial contact with lexical information takes place. We identified two candidate evoked responses that could reflect this processing stage: the occipitotemporal N170/M170 and the frontocentral P2. Using a repetition priming paradigm in which long and variable lags were used to reduce the predictability of each repetition, we found that (i) repetition of words, but not pseudowords, evoked a differential bilateral frontal response in the 150-250ms window, (ii) a differential repetition N400m effect was observed between words and pseudowords. We argue that this frontal response, an MEG correlate of the P2 identified in ERP studies, reflects early access to long-term memory representations, which we tentatively characterize as being modality-specific.

No place for /h/: an ERP investigation of English fricative place features

ABSTRACT The representational format of speech units in long-term memory is a topic of debate. We present novel event-related brain potential evidence from the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) paradigm that is compatible with abstract, non-redundant feature-based models like the Featurally Underspecified Lexicon (FUL). First, we show that the fricatives /s/ and /f/ display an asymmetric pattern of MMN responses, which is predicted if /f/ has a fully specified place of articulation ([Labial]) but /s/ does not ([Coronal], which is lexically underspecified). Second, we show that when /s/ and /h/ are contrasted, no such asymmetric MMN pattern occurs. The lack of asymmetry suggests both that (i) oral and laryngeal articulators are represented distinctly and that (ii) /h/ has no oral place of articulation in long-term memory. The lack of asymmetry between /s/ and /h/ is also in-line with traditional feature-geometric models of lexical representations.

Sentence processing selectivity in Broca's area: evident for structure but not syntactic movement

The role of Broca’s area in sentence processing is hotly debated. Hypotheses include that Broca’s area supports sentence comprehension via syntax-specific processes, hierarchical structure building, or working memory. Here we adopt a within-subject functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) approach using sentence-level contrasts and non-sentential comparison tasks to address these hypotheses. Standard syntactic movement distance effects were replicated, but no difference was found between movement and non-movement sentences in Brocas area in the group or consistently in the individual subject analyses. Group and individual results both identify Brocas area subregions that are selective for sentence structure. Group, but not individual subject results, suggest shared resources for sentence processing and articulation in Brocas area. We conclude that Broca’s area is not selectively processing syntactic movement, but that subregions are selectively responsive to sentence structure. Our findings reinforce Fedorenko and Kanwishsers call for individual subject analyses in Brocas area, as group findings can obscure selective responses.

Asymmetries in the perception of Mandarin tones: Evidence from mismatch negativity.

Most investigations of the representation and processing of speech sounds focus on their segmental representations, and considerably less is known about the representation of suprasegmental phenomena (e.g., Mandarin tones). Here we examine the mismatch negativity (MMN) response to the contrast between Mandarin Tone 3 (T3) and other tones using a passive oddball paradigm. Because the MMN response has been shown to be sensitive to the featural contents of speech sounds in a way that is compatible with underspecification theories of phonological representations, here, we test the predictions of such theories regarding suprasegmental phenomena. Assuming T3 to be underspecified in Mandarin (because it has variable surface representations and low pitch), we predicted that an asymmetric MMN response would be elicited when T3 is contrasted with another tone. In 2 of our 3 experiments, this was observed, but in non-Mandarin-speaking participants as well as native speakers, suggesting that the locus of the effect was perceptual (acoustic or phonetic) rather than phonological. In a third experiment, the predicted asymmetry was limited to native speakers. These results highlight the importance of distinguishing phonological and perceptual contributions to MMN asymmetries, but also demonstrate a role of abstract phonological representations in which certain information is underspecified in long-term memory.

Laryngeal Features Are Phonetically Abstract: Mismatch Negativity Evidence from Arabic, English, and Russian

Many theories of phonology assume that the sound structure of language is made up of distinctive features, but there is considerable debate about how much articulatory detail distinctive features encode in long-term memory. Laryngeal features such as voicing provide a unique window into this question: while many languages have two-way contrasts that can be given a simple binary feature account [±VOICE], the precise articulatory details underlying these contrasts can vary significantly across languages. Here, we investigate a series of two-way voicing contrasts in English, Arabic, and Russian, three languages that implement their voicing contrasts very differently at the articulatory-phonetic level. In three event-related potential experiments contrasting English, Arabic, and Russian fricatives along with Russian stops, we observe a consistent pattern of asymmetric mismatch negativity (MMN) effects that is compatible with an articulatorily abstract and cross-linguistically uniform way of marking two-way voicing contrasts, as opposed to an articulatorily precise and cross-linguistically diverse way of encoding them. Regardless of whether a language is theorized to encode [VOICE] over [SPREAD GLOTTIS], the data is consistent with a universal marking of the [SPREAD GLOTTIS] feature.

The processing of biologically plausible and implausible forms in American Sign Language: evidence for perceptual tuning

ABSTRACT The human auditory system distinguishes speech-like information from general auditory signals in a remarkably fast and efficient way. Combining psychophysics and neurophysiology (MEG), we demonstrate a similar result for the processing of visual information used for language communication in users of sign languages. We demonstrate that the earliest visual cortical responses in deaf signers viewing American Sign Language signs show specific modulations to violations of anatomic constraints that would make the sign either possible or impossible to articulate. These neural data are accompanied with a significantly increased perceptual sensitivity to the anatomical incongruity. The differential effects in the early visual evoked potentials arguably reflect an expectation-driven assessment of somatic representational integrity, suggesting that language experience and/or auditory deprivation may shape the neuronal mechanisms underlying the analysis of complex human form. The data demonstrate that the perceptual tuning that underlies the discrimination of language and non-language information is not limited to spoken languages but extends to languages expressed in the visual modality.