Todd R. Ferretti

A basis for generating expectancies for verbs from nouns

We explore the implications of an event-based expectancy generation approach to language understanding, suggesting that one useful strategy employed by comprehenders is to generate expectations about upcoming words. We focus on two questions: (1) What role is played by elements other than verbs in generating expectancies? (2) What connection exists between expectancy generation and event-based knowledge? Because verbs follow their arguments in many constructions (particularly in verb-final languages), deferring expectations until the verb seems inefficient. Both human data and computational modeling suggest that other sentential elements may also play a role in predictive processing and that these constraints often reflect knowledge regarding typical events. We investigated these predictions, using both short and long stimulus onset asynchrony priming. Robust priming obtained when verbs were named aloud following typical agents, patients, instruments, and locations, suggesting that event memory is organized so that nouns denoting entities and objects activate the classes of events in which they typically play a role. These computations are assumed to be an important component of expectancy generation in sentence processing.

Verb aspect and the activation of event knowledge.

The authors show that verb aspect influences the activation of event knowledge with 4 novel results. First, common locations of events (e.g., arena) are primed following verbs with imperfective aspect (e.g., was skating) but not verbs with perfect aspect (e.g., had skated). Second, people generate more locative prepositional phrases as completions to sentence fragments with imperfective than those with perfect aspect. Third, the amplitude of the N400 component to location nouns varies as a function of aspect and typicality, being smallest for imperfective sentences with highly expected locations and largest for imperfective sentences with less expected locations. Fourth, the amplitude of a sustained frontal negativity spanning prepositional phrases is larger following perfect than following imperfective aspect. Taken together, these findings suggest a dynamic interplay between event knowledge and the linguistic stream.

Moment-By-Moment Reading of Proverbs in Literal and Nonliteral Contexts

To date there has been very little research that has examined on-line reading of proverbs. This is surprising given that proverbs offer a unique opportunity to examine how different sources of information combine to constrain the resolution of statements that are ambiguous between a literal and nonliteral interpretation. The purpose of this research was to examine whether context plays an immediate role in constraining the meaning of a proverbial statement, or whether contextual effects come into play at a later stage of processing. Two self-paced moving window studies demonstrated that (a) context influenced resolution of the ambiguous meanings during the act of reading the proverb for both familiar and unfamiliar proverbs; (b) familiar proverbs are read more rapidly than unfamiliar proverbs, an effect that begins to emerge as early as the second word of the trope; and (c) whereas the reading times indicate that ambiguity in comprehension is resolved by the end of the sentence for familiar proverbs, for unfamiliar proverbs effects are still observed into the reading of the next sentence. The results are discussed in relation to existent models of nonliteral language processing, with constraint-based approaches to language processing suggested as a positive alternative.

ERP correlates of online monitoring of auditory feedback during vocalization.

When speakers hear the fundamental frequency (F0) of their voice altered, they shift their F0 in the direction opposite the perturbation. The current study used ERPs to examine sensory processing of short feedback perturbations during an ongoing utterance. In one session, participants produced a vowel at an F0 of their own choosing. In another session, participants matched the F0 of a cue voice. An F0 perturbation of 0, 25, 50, 100, or 200 cents was introduced for 100 ms. A mismatch negativity (MMN) was observed. Differences between sessions were only found for 200-cent perturbations. Reduced compensation when speakers experienced the 200-cent perturbations suggests that this larger perturbation was perceived as externally generated. The presence of an MMN, and no earlier (N100) response suggests that the underlying sensory process used to identify and compensate for errors in mid-utterance may differ from feedback monitoring at utterance onset.

Electrophysiological evidence for the time-course of verifying text ideas

We examined how verb factivity influences the ability of readers to detect and resolve the mismatch of receiving false referents in relation to true referents in discourse contexts. Factive verbs (e.g., know), but not nonfactive verbs (believe), entail the truth of their complements. Recent research by Singer [Singer, M. (2006). Verification of text ideas during reading. Journal of Memory and Language, 54, 574-591] suggests that there are pragmatic costs associated with knowing something that is clearly false and only believing something that is clearly true. However, because Singer measured reading times for full sentences, it could not be determined whether these costs were initiated upon the appearance of the critical target word (i.e., the word that validated or invalidated previous text ideas) or at a later point in the sentences. In the present research we recorded event-related brain potentials while people read the same passages for comprehension and analyzed potentials evoked to the critical target words. Our results demonstrate that the brain distinguishes between true and false target words by at least 200ms after their onset, and that the pragmatic costs identified by Singer lead to interactions between verb factivity and truth in both early (P2) and later occurring brain components (late phase of N400 and late frontal positivity). In general, the results suggest readers had greater difficulty integrating false nouns than true nouns following factive than nonfactive verbs, and that detection of this mismatch also occurred earlier following factive verbs. Our results provide insight into the time-course of the processes that underlie the verification of text ideas, and extend neurocognitive research on anaphoric resolution.

Thematic Role Focusing by Participle Inflections: Evidence From Conceptual Combination

The authors examined how people integrate knowledge of agents and patients of events with the temporal and causal properties of present and past participles to constrain interpretation of isolated participle-noun phrases like arresting cop and arrested crook. Good-agent head nouns were more easily combined with present participles (e.g., arresting cop) than with past participles (e.g., arrested cop), and the reverse was true for good patients. Furthermore, present-participle good-patient phrases (e.g., serving customer) were often interpreted as verb phrases. This research provides further evidence of the interaction between morphosyntactic cues and world knowledge of events in language comprehension.

Processes of Discourse Integration: Evidence from Event-Related Brain Potentials.

We used ERP methodology to investigate how readers validate discourse concepts and update situation models when those concepts followed factive (e.g., knew) and nonfactive (e.g., guessed) verbs, and also when they were true, false, or indeterminate with reference to previous discourse. Following factive verbs, early (P2) and later brain components (N400 and late frontal positivity) revealed that relative to true concepts, both false and indeterminate concepts were more difficult to validate, and only indeterminate concepts were ultimately updated into the situation model. Following nonfactive verbs, there was no evidence of situational model updating for any condition. However, there was a clear N400 gradient that suggests the lower commitment of nonfactive verbs leads to less incongruence with discourse context for the indeterminate condition than the false condition. These results provide novel insight into how pragmatic constraints afforded by verbs influence discourse validation and the updating of situation models.

The recovery of thematic role structure during noun-noun interpretation

We examined how people use their knowledge of events to recover thematic role structure during the interpretation of noun-noun phrases. All phrases included one noun that was a good-agent/poor-patient (prosecutor) in a particular event (accuse), and the other noun was a good-patient/poor-agent (defendant) for the same event. If people interpret the noun-noun phrases by inverting the nouns and applying a thematic relation (see Downing, 1977; Levi, 1978), phrases should be interpreted more easily when the head nouns typically are good agents and the modifiers are good patients for specific events. Two experiments supported these predictions. Furthermore, the results indicated that in the less preferred thematic order (agent-patient), people often generated interpretations in which the modifiers became the focus of the interpretations. This finding suggests that violating thematic role preferences is one constraint on when the inversion process occurs during noun-noun interpretation.

Event‐related potential correlates of online monitoring of auditory feedback during vocalization.

When speakers hear the fundamental frequency (F0) of their voice altered, they shift their F0 in the direction opposite to the perturbation. The neural mechanisms underlying this response are poorly understood. In the present study, event‐related potentials (ERPs) were used to examine the neural mechanisms used to detect alterations in auditory feedback during an ongoing utterance. Participants vocalized for 3 s, and heard their auditory feedback shifted by 0, 25, 50, 100, or 200 cents for 100 ms midutterance. In two sessions, participants either vocalized at their habitual pitch, or matched a target pitch. A mismatch negativity (MMN) was observed, with the amplitude positively related to the size of the perturbations. No differences were found between sessions. The F0 compensation response was found to be smaller for 200 cent shifts than 100 cent shifts, and a positivity was observed in the ERPs for a 200 cent shift. This result suggests that a 200 cent shift may be perceived as externally (rather than i...