Itziar Laka

Subject Relative Clauses Are Not Universally Easier to Process: Evidence from Basque.

Studies from many languages consistently report that subject relative clauses (SR) are easier to process than object relatives (OR). However, Hsiao and Gibson (2003) report an OR preference for Chinese, a finding that has been contested. Here we report faster OR versus SR processing in Basque, an ergative, head-final language with pre-nominal relative clauses. A self-paced reading task was used in Experiments 1 and 2, while ERPs were recorded in Experiment 3. We used relative clauses that were ambiguous between an object or subject-gap interpretation and disambiguated later in the sentence. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 showed that SR took longer to read than OR in the critical disambiguating region. In addition, Experiment 3 showed that SR produced larger amplitudes than OR in the P600 window immediately after reading the critical disambiguating word. Our results suggest that SR are not universally easier to process. They cast doubts on universal hypotheses and suggest that processing complexity may depend on language-specific aspects of grammar.

Syntactic complexity and ambiguity resolution in a free word order language: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidences from Basque

In natural languages some syntactic structures are simpler than others. Syntactically complex structures require further computation that is not required by syntactically simple structures. In particular, canonical, basic word order represents the simplest sentence-structure. Natural languages have different canonical word orders, and they vary in the degree of word order freedom they allow. In the case of free word order, whether canonical word order plays any role in processing is still unclear. In this paper, we present behavioral and electrophysiological evidence that simpler, canonical word order preference is found even in a free word order language. Canonical and derived structures were compared in two self-paced reading and one ERPs experiment. Non-canonical sentences required further syntactic computation in Basque, they showed longer reading times and a modulation of anterior negativities and P600 components providing evidence that even in free word order, case-marking grammars, underlying canonical word order can play a relevant role in sentence processing. These findings could signal universal processing mechanisms because similar processing patterns are found in typologically very distant grammars. We also provide evidence from syntactically fully ambiguous sequences. Our results on ambiguity resolution showed that fully ambiguous sequences were processed as canonical sentences. Moreover, when fully ambiguous sequences were forced to complex interpretation by means of the world knowledge of the participants, a frontal negativity distinguished simple and complex ambiguous sequences. Thus the preference of simple structures is presumably a universal design property for language processing, despite differences on parametric variation of a given grammar.

Is Milkman a superhero like Batman? Constituent morphological priming in compound words

In the present study, we examined morphological decomposition of Basque compound words in a series of masked priming lexical decision experiments. In Experiment 1, Basque compound words could be briefly preceded by other compounds that shared either the first or second constituent, or by unrelated noncompound words. Results showed a significant priming effect for words that shared a constituent, independently of its position. In Experiment 2, compound words were preceded by other compound words that shared one of their constituents, but in a different lexeme position (e.g., the first constituent of the compound that acted as a prime was the second constituent of the compound that acted as a target). Results again showed a constituent priming effect (i.e., location in the string is not necessary for priming to occur). In Experiment 3, we demonstrated that these priming effects were not due to mere form overlap: pairs of noncompound words that shared either the beginning or the ending chunk did not produce a priming effect. Taken together, the present results converge with previous data on orthographic/morphological priming and provide evidence favouring early morphological decomposition.

Electrophysiological correlates of the masked translation priming effect with highly proficient simultaneous bilinguals

In the present study, we examined whether there is a symmetrical masked translation priming effect for non-cognate words in a group of highly proficient (native-like) Basque-Spanish simultaneous bilinguals using event-related brain potentials. Participants were presented with a set of Spanish and Basque words that could be preceded by their repetitions (an identity condition), their translations in the other language, or by two unrelated words (one in each language). Results showed a significant masked repetition effect for Spanish as well as for Basque targets, mainly evident in the N250 and N400 components. Interestingly, a masked translation priming effect was also found in the N400 component in both language directions (L1-to-L2 and L2-to-L1). Furthermore, the magnitude of the N400 modulation for the translation priming effect was similar in the two directions. Finally, we also found a language switch cost effect in the N250 and N400 components, associated with primes (related and unrelated) that did not match the target words language. This language switch cost effect was also highly similar across the two language directions.

Language effects in addition: How you say it counts

This study aimed to investigate the role of language in calculation. Two populations were compared, one with a base-10 language, and another (Basque) in which number words are constructed by combining multiples of 20 and units or teens (e.g., “35” is said “twenty and fifteen”). Experiment 1 asked participants to verbally solve additions presented as Arabic digits. Basque participants solved the additions that consisted of a multiple of 20 and a teen (e.g., 20 + 15) faster than controls with identical answers (e.g., 25 + 10). No differences were found in the base-10 language group. Experiment 2 replicated this result even if participants had to type the answer on a numerical keypad, instead of saying it. Hence, the structure of number words in each of the languages influenced the way additions were solved, even if language was not necessary for conducting the task. Finally, in Experiment 3, both language groups performed a numerical comparison task in which no effects of the structure of number words were obtained. Results of the three experiments are discussed in light of current models of numerical cognition.

Deriving Split Ergativity in the Progressive

This paper explores the relationship between Aspect and case in ergative grammars, and the syntactic structure of sentences with a progressive meaning. It suggests an explanation for aspectually driven split-ergativity phenomena, based on an account of progressive sentences in Basque. The contrast between canonical transitive sentences and their progressive equivalents found in Basque is shown in (1), where glosses are deliberately vague for the moment:

Language distance and non-native syntactic processing: Evidence from event-related potentials

In this study, we explore native and non-native syntactic processing, paying special attention to the language distance factor. To this end, we compared how native speakers of Basque and highly proficient non-native speakers of Basque who are native speakers of Spanish process certain core aspects of Basque syntax. Our results suggest that differences in native versus non-native language processing strongly correlate with language distance: native/non-native processing differences obtain if a syntactic parameter of the non-native grammar diverges from the native grammar. Otherwise, non-native processing will approximate native processing as levels of proficiency increase. We focus on three syntactic parameters: (i) the head parameter, (ii) argument alignment (ergative/accusative), and (iii) verb agreement. The first two diverge in Basque and Spanish, but the third is the same in both languages. Our results reveal that native and non-native processing differs for the diverging syntactic parameters, but not for the convergent one. These findings indicate that language distance has a significant impact in non-native language processing.

ERP correlates of inhibitory and facilitative effects of constituent frequency in compound word reading.

In the process of reading compound words, those with high-frequency second constituents are recognized faster than the ones with low-frequency second constituents. However, the role of the first constituent still remains unclear. In the present study, the time course of the frequency effects for both constituents was assessed using Basque compound words embedded in sentences while electrophysiological measures (ERPs) were recorded (Basque is a language with a high frequency of compound words, both right and left-headed). Subjects responded to comprehension questions that were not focused on the compound words. The results revealed that high-frequency first constituents elicited larger negativities starting very early (100-300 ms time window), while low-frequency second constituents elicited larger N400 amplitudes than high-frequency second constituents. Following an activation-verification framework, we argue that the early negativity difference reflects candidate triggering, whereas the N400 difference for the second constituent reflects the cost of its selection and integration for the whole-word meaning to be accessed.

Aphasia manifestations in Basque

Abstract This paper presents a description of the main symptoms of agrammatism found in a corpus of spontaneous speech production of 59 Basque-speaking aphasic patients. The main symptoms relate to deficits in the production of inflectional morphology. From the standpoint of grammatical structure, the deficits involve the production of the syntactic category Infl, that heads the sentence (IP). Basque has a morphologically complex Inflection, containing up to three agreement markers, plus tense and modality specifications. The most outstanding symptom of agrammatism is the absence of inflected verbs, or its extremely low frequency, correlated with a high frequency of uninflected participial forms. The study of the inflected forms produced in aphasic speech reveals a significant number of errors in the selection of appropriate morphemes, particularly number and dative agreement markers, and a considerable number of newly coined impossible forms, resulting form the combination of morphemes from conflicting paradigms. However, the relative order of the morphemes in the auxiliary is correct, which could indicate that the basic structure of Inflection is not affected, at least in the case of patients that produce inflected forms. Errors in case-marking also appear, mostly involving ergative and absolutive markers.

EHME: a New Word Database for Research in Basque Language

This article presents EHME, the frequency dictionary of Basque structure, an online program that enables researchers in psycholinguistics to extract word and nonword stimuli, based on a broad range of statistics concerning the properties of Basque words. The database consists of 22.7 million tokens, and properties available include morphological structure frequency and word-similarity measures, apart from classical indexes: word frequency, orthographic structure, orthographic similarity, bigram and biphone frequency, and syllable-based measures. Measures are indexed at the lemma, morpheme and word level. We include reliability and validation analysis. The application is freely available, and enables the user to extract words based on concrete statistical criteria 1 , as well as to obtain statistical characteristics from a list of words