Manuel Gimenes

When a missing verb makes a French sentence more acceptable

Using an off-line complexity judgement task, Gibson and Thomas (1999) demonstrated that people found sentences with double centre-embedded relative clauses as easy to understand when the second verb phrase (VP) was omitted as when there were the three required verb phrases. This paper reports a self-paced reading experiment testing this syntactic illusion in French language. The results showed that readers rated the sentences where the second VP was omitted as easier to understand than the grammatical versions, even though the reading time of the last VP was longer for the ungrammatical version. The overall results support theories predicting that the sentence acceptability rating can be enhanced when a syntactically required word with an excessive integration cost is removed. The results are consistent with resource-based theories of sentence processing.

How long does it take to find a cause? An online investigation of implicit causality in sentence production

Some interpersonal verbs show an implicit causality bias in favour of their subject or their object. Such a bias is generally seen in offline continuation tasks where participants are required to finish a fragment containing the verb (e.g., Peter annoyed Jane because …). The implicit causality bias has been ascribed to the subjects focusing on the initiator of the event denoted by the verb. According to this “focusing theory” the implicit cause has a higher level of activation, at least after the connective “because” has been read. Recently, the focusing theory has been criticized by researchers who used a probe recognition or reading-time methodology. However no clear alternative has been proposed to explain the offline continuation data. In this paper, we report three experiments using an online continuation task, which showed that subjects took more time to imagine an ending when the fragment to be completed contained an anaphor that was incongruent with the verbal bias (e.g., Peter annoyed Jane because she …). This result suggests that the offline continuation data could reflect the cognitive effort associated with finding a predicate with an agent incongruent with the implicit causality bias of a verb. In the discussion, we suggest that this effort could be related to the number of constraints that an incongruent clause must satisfy to be consistent with the causal structure of the discourse.

Worldlex: Twitter and blog word frequencies for 66 languages

Lexical frequency is one of the strongest predictors of word processing time. The frequencies are often calculated from book-based corpora, or more recently from subtitle-based corpora. We present new frequencies based on Twitter, blog posts, or newspapers for 66 languages. We show that these frequencies predict lexical decision reaction times similar to the already existing frequencies, or even better than them. These new frequencies are freely available and may be downloaded from http://worldlex.lexique.org.

The effect of noun phrase type on working memory saturation during sentence comprehension

Double centre-embedded structures such as “the rat the cat the boy chased ate was brown” seem ungrammatical to many human subjects. Using an offline complexity judgement task, Gibson and Thomas (1999) demonstrated that people found such sentences no more difficult to understand when the second verb phrase (VP) was omitted, relative to a condition where all the required VPs were present. According to the Syntactic Prediction Locality Theory (SPLT; Gibson, 1998), this syntactic illusion is determined by the high working memory cost associated with the integration of the second VP. This cost could be reduced by replacing the third noun phrase (the boy) by a pronoun, making the reader more sensitive to the omission of the second VP. This hypothesis was tested in two experiments using French sentences. Both experiments confirmed the syntactic illusion when the second VP was not a pronoun. The second experiment measured the reading times of the VPs and showed that the pronoun induced a longer reading time of the final VP when the second VP was omitted. The overall results indicate a condition under which human subjects could process the most complex part of a sentence with more than one embedded relative clause. The overall results are consistent with most of the hypotheses derived from the SPLT although offline complexity judgements could not be the most sensitive measure to test some of these hypotheses.

Sentence plausibility influences the link between action words and the perception of biological human movements

The present study aimed to assess the role of sentence plausibility in the functional link between action words and visual judgments of point-light human actions. Following the oral presentation of action verbs included in a plausible or implausible sentence, participants were asked to detect the presence of congruent or incongruent biological movements. Sentence plausibility was manipulated by inverting the positions of the subject and the complement (e.g., the neighbor is running in the garden vs the garden is running in the neighbor). The results showed that for both plausible and implausible sentences, the detection of human movements is greater following presentation of congruent action verbs. These results suggest that the presentation of action verbs affects the subsequent perception of point-light human movements, regardless of the associated semantic context. However, the link between action verbs and judgment of biological movements is strengthened when plausible sentences are presented, as illustrated by the increase in visual detection capacity in plausible congruent conditions. Concerning the analysis of the detection speed, the performance is only affected in plausible sentences with slower response times associated with the presentation of an incongruent action verb. These findings are discussed in light of an embodied mechanism and the domain of biological movement perception.

Short-Term Upper Limb Immobilization Affects Action-Word Understanding.

The present study aimed to investigate whether well-established associations between action and language can be altered by short-term upper limb immobilization. The dominant arm of right-handed participants was immobilized for 24 hours with a rigid splint fixed on the hand and an immobilization vest restraining the shoulder, arm, and forearm. The control group did not undergo such immobilization. In 2 experiments, participants had to judge whether a verb involved movements of the hands or feet. In Experiment 1, the response times for controls were shorter for hand-action verbs than for foot-action verbs, whereas there was no significant difference in the immobilized group. Experiment 2 confirmed these results with a pre/posttest procedure. Shorter response times were shown for hand-action verbs than for foot-action verbs in the pretests and posttests for the control group and in the pretest for the immobilized group (i.e., before immobilization). This difference was not observed for participants undergoing 24 hr of hand immobilization, who showed little progress in assessing hand-action verbs between pretest and posttest. Moreover, participants with the highest motor imagery capacities clearly demonstrated shorter response times in Experiment 2 for both hand-action and foot-action verbs, regardless of hand immobilization. Overall, these findings demonstrate for the first time that short-term sensorimotor deprivation can affect action verb processing. We discuss our results in light of the embodiment view, which considers that cognition is grounded in sensorimotor experiences.

Painful semantic context modulates the relationship between action words and biological movement perception

ABSTRACT Studies have revealed a close relationship between action–word processing and the detection of point-light biological movements and that this effect can be modulated by the context of action-verb presentation. The goal of the present study was to further examine the extent to which motor representation activation plays a role in this relationship by testing the influence of painless/painful sentence understanding during a listening task. Participants judged the presence or absence of a point-light biological movement that was embedded in a scrambled mask after a congruent or incongruent action sentence was presented. The sentences varied according to the context of action-verb presentation (painful, painless). Perceptual judgments of human movements improved after a prior presentation of a congruent action sentence but only in the painless context. Thus, our findings show that pain included in a semantic context of sentence presentation can preclude the relationship between action–word understanding and point-light biological movement judgments.

Reducing user linguistic variability in speech interaction through lexical and syntactic priming

Motivation -- To reduce user linguistic variability in human-system interaction. Research approach -- An experiment was conducted in which 72 participants interacted over the phone with a simulated natural language dialogue system. The main manipulation concerned the lexical content and the structure of the message prompts. Findings/Design -- The results confirm that users align with the system on the lexical and structural levels in human-system dialogue. However, the strength of the syntactic alignment depends on the content of the prime. Research limitations/Implications -- This experiment should be replicated user a greater number of different prime system messages. Originality/Value -- By manipulating prime content, this study allows investigating alignment strength as a function of word frequency and user preferences. Take-away message -- Lexical and syntactic priming can be used to reduce user linguistic variability in human-system interaction, but the strength of these phenomena depends on the content of the prime.

Quand une phrase complexe n’est pas si difficile à comprendre : le cas des propositions relatives

EnglishNumerous psycholinguistic studies have shown that object relative clauses are more difficult to process than subject relative clauses. The literature review presented here shows that these complex sentences are relatively easy to understand when specific linguistic factors are manipulated (phonological factors as well as semantic or discursive factors). The experimental results are interpreted in the light of the two major theoretical frameworks: frequency and memory based accounts. francaisDe nombreuses etudes en psycholinguistique ont montre que les phrases contenant une proposition relative objet sont plus complexes que les phrases contenant une proposition relative sujet. A travers une revue de la litterature, nous montrons que ces phrases complexes peuvent etre relativement simples a comprendre si certains facteurs linguistiques sont manipules. Ces facteurs vont du niveau phonologique au niveau discursif, en passant par le lexique et la semantique. Les resultats experimentaux presentes sont interpretes dans le cadre des deux conceptions theoriques actuellement dominantes : celle basee sur la frequence et celle basee sur la memoire.

Le rôle de la similarité des informations en mémoire de travail dans le traitement des phrases grammaticalement très complexes

La syntaxe des langues naturelles est caracterisee par la possibilite d’une recursivite, permettant d’ajouter une proposition enchâssee a l’interieur d’une proposition de meme type. Cependant, une phrase contenant deux propositions relatives enchâssees centralement semble tres difficile a comprendre. Cette difficulte pourrait refleter la restriction d’une capacite de calcul impliquee dans le traitement des phrases. Pour verifier dans quelle mesure cette restriction est liee a la limitation de la memoire de travail, nous avons realise deux experiences ou les participants devaient maintenir des mots tout en traitant des phrases a double enchâssement. Nous avons manipule un facteur affectant la memoire de travail : la similarite entre informations maintenues et informations traitees. Pour les phrases a double enchâssement, le maintien de mots similaires etait plus difficile que le maintien de mots differents. Cet effet n’etait pas constate pour des phrases plus courtes et jugees moins complexes par les lecteurs. Ce resultat etait reproduit dans une seconde experience ou la duree de retention de la charge etait equivalente pour les phrases jugees simples et pour les phrases a double enchâssement. Les resultats confirment le role des ressources de memoire de travail dans le traitement des phrases a double enchâssement.