Psycholinguistics

We argue that if a different definition of sentence complexity is adopted and processing capacity is assessed in a way that is consistent with that definition, then the Caplan & Waters distinction between interpretive versus postinterpretive processing is unnecessary insofar that it applies to the thematic role assignment in relative-clause sentences.

Norris, McQueen & Cutler claim that all known speech recognition data can be accounted for with their autonomous model, “Merge.” But this claim is doubly misleading. (1) Although speech recognition is autonomous in their view, the Merge model is not. (2) The body of data which the Merge model accounts for, is not, in their view, speech recognition data. Footnotes1 Author is also affiliated with the Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, irenea@csli.stanford.edu.

In this paper I provide a metatheoretical analysis of speech perception research. I argue that the central turning point in the history of speech perception research has not been well understood. While it is widely thought to mark a decisive break with what I call "the alphabetic conception of speech," I argue that it instead marks the entrenchment of this conception of speech. In addition, I argue that the alphabetic conception of speech continues to underwrite speech perception research today and (...) moreover that it functions as a dogma which ought to be rejected. (shrink)

The suggestion that analytic isomorphism should be rejected applies especially to the domain of speech perception because (1) the guiding assumption that solving the lack of invariance problem is the key to explaining speech perception is a form of analytic isomorphism, and (2) after nearly half a century of research there is virtually no empirical evidence of isomorphism between perceptual experience and lower-level processing units.

Pickering & Garrod (P&G) claim that the automatic mechanisms that underlie language processing in dialogue are absent in monologue. We disagree with this claim, and argue that dialogue simply provides a different context in which the same basic processes operate.

In setting a framework for the papers that follow, I have explored some of the major characteristics of disciplines and the factors that breed ethnocentrism among disciplines, considered what factors can lead researchers to cross disciplinary boundaries, and explored the kinds of conceptual as well as social and institutional products that result from cross-disciplinary work. While drawing out the significance of these various considerations for psycholinguistics, I have presented a fairly general conceptual analysis that is not restricted to this case. (...) The following papers consider in much more detail the particular features of the historical and current endeavors in developing psycholinguistics. (shrink)

In setting a framework for the papers that follow, I have explored some of the major characteristics of disciplines and the factors that breed ethnocentrism among disciplines, considered what factors can lead researchers to cross disciplinary boundaries, and explored the kinds of conceptual as well as social and institutional products that result from cross-disciplinary work. While drawing out the significance of these various considerations for psycholinguistics, I have presented a fairly general conceptual analysis that is not restricted to this case. (...) The following papers consider in much more detail the particular features of the historical and current endeavors in developing psycholinguistics. (shrink)

Frost's claim that universal models of reading require linguistically diverse data is relevant and justified. We support it with evidence demonstrating the extent of the bias towards some Indo-European languages and alphabetic scripts in scientific literature. However, some of his examples are incorrect, and he neglects the complex interaction of writing system and language structure with history and cultural environment.

Psycholinguistic experiments show that pronouns tend to be resolved differently depending on whether they occur in main or subordinate clauses. If a pronoun in a subordinate clause has more than one potential antecedent in the main clause, then the pronoun tends to refer to the antecedent which has a certain thematic role (depending on the verb and on the subordinating conjunction). In contrast, pronouns in main clauses tend to refer back to the subject of the previous main clause, and this (...) tendency is not affected by any verbs or conjunctions. In natural language processing, these findings have recently led to a proposal that pronoun resolution systems should have a split architecture, i.e. that they should use different mechanisms for pronoun resolution in the two cases. With the help of two parsed and coreference-annotated corpora, this paper estimates the impact of the split-architecture proposal. The findings of this work are as follows: (1) Subject pronouns in authentic texts behave the same way in main and subordinate clauses. (2) The number of sentences in which a split architecture would behave differently than a system that treats both cases the same way is close to zero. Therefore, a separate treatment of resolution within and across units is unlikely to improve the performance of any system. This result casts a doubt on the split-architecture proposal, and more generally on approaches that directly incorporate psycholinguistic results into performance-oriented algorithms for anaphora resolution without assessing the relative importance of the phenomena that underlie them. (shrink)

Lexicalized theories of syntax often assume that verb-structure regularities are mediated by lemmas, which abstract over variation in verb tense and aspect. German syntax seems to challenge this assumption, because verb position depends on tense and aspect. To examine how German speakers link these elements, a structural priming study was performed which varied syntactic structure, verb position, and verb overlap.structural priming was found, both within and across verb position, but priming was larger when the verb position was the same between (...) prime and target. Priming was boosted by verb overlap, but there was no interaction with verb position. The results can be explained by a lemma model where tense and aspect are linked to structural choices in German. Since the architecture of this lemma model is not consistent with results from English, a connectionist model was developed which could explain the cross-linguistic variation in the production system. Together, these findings support the view that language learning plays an important role in determining the nature of structural priming in different languages. (shrink)

Both children and adults predict the content of upcoming language, suggesting that prediction is useful for learning as well as processing. We present an alternative model which can explain prediction behaviour as a by-product of language learning. We suggest that a consideration of language acquisition places important constraints on Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) theory.

Probabilistic methods are providing new explanatory approaches to fundamental cognitive science questions of how humans structure, process and acquire language. This review examines probabilistic models defined over traditional symbolic structures. Language comprehension and production involve probabilistic inference in such models; and acquisition involves choosing the best model, given innate constraints and linguistic and other input. Probabilistic models can account for the learning and processing of language, while maintaining the sophistication of symbolic models. A recent burgeoning of theoretical developments and online (...) corpus creation has enabled large models to be tested, revealing probabilistic constraints in processing, undermining acquisition arguments based on a perceived poverty of the stimulus, and suggesting fruitful links with probabilistic theories of categorization and ambiguity resolution in perception. (shrink)

Michael Dummett, Neil Tennant, and Crispin Wright all appeal to a priori restrictions on a philosophical explanation of linguistic competence to criticize classical logic and semantics. They also use these restrictions to defend verificationsim. In the negative part of my project I uncover interesting structural analogies between the Dummettian arguments for logical revision to show that they all require the truth of a stronger, and less plausible, form of verificationism than even the logical positivists were willing to countenance. This result, (...) I argue, genuinely is a modus tollens from which we should conclude that the explanatory demands Dummett and others place on the theory of meaning are mistaken. I then draw from the linguistic, lexicographic, and psychological literature to undermine the Dummettian view that an explanation of competence should recursively correlate dispositions necessary and sufficient for grasp of meaning with the aspects of meanings generated by a compositional semantics. Thus is eliminated the Dummettian impetus to identify such dispositions with the ability to recognize verifications. ;In the positive discussion I: characterize and defend a conception of tacit knowledge which renders the postulation of the mental reality of classical semantics both explanatory and plausible, show that many traditional philosophical questions concerning the epistemology of language can and should be recast as questions concerning how the theory of sentence meaning interacts with the theory of word meaning , and defend a roughly Davidsonian alternative to Dummett's theory of grasp of meaning. (shrink)