On the Screen, In the Mind: An ERP Investigation into the Interaction Between Visuo-Spatial Information and Spatial Language During On-Line Processing

This project used Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to explore neurophysiological brain responses to prepositional phrases involving concrete and abstract reference nouns (e.g., plate and moment , respectively) after the presentation of objects with varying spatial features. Prepositional phrases were headed by in or on and were either matching (e.g., in the plate/moment ) or mismatching (e.g., on the plate/moment ). Conjunction phrase matches and fillers were also presented. Before half of the concrete-phrase items, a photographic depiction of the reference noun was presented. In these photographs, objects were displayed in a way that was either more appropriate for in or for on. Similarly, before half of the abstract-phrase trials, photographs of nonce objects with spatial features that were either more appropriate for in or for on were presented. For the remaining trials, either no picture was displayed, or a picture of a random object was displayed. Results indicated that linguistic and visual context impacted ERPs to words in these phrases. Beginning with linguistic context, all prepositional phrases yielded negative slow-wave activity in parietal and occipital sites, while conjunction phrases did not. Because this negativity is modulated by processes involved in the generation and manipulation of spatial imagery, this finding indicates that a similar spatial-image-formation process is involved in the processing of both concrete and abstract prepositional phrases. There were differences between responses to concrete and abstract phrases as well. Mismatching concrete reference nouns yielded a relatively large centro-parietal N400 response, suggesting that these nouns were semantically unexpected. Mismatching abstract nouns, on the other hand, yielded a late, marginally significant positivity, showing that the presentation of these nouns required phrase reanalysis and/or reconstruction. The latter result casts doubt on accounts of polysemy claiming that abstract uses of prepositions are cognitively and metaphorically linked to their spatial senses. Visual stimuli also impacted responses to the phrases. The type of object presented in the picture before the phrase impacted N400 responses to prepositions, where pictures of in objects yielded smaller N400 responses to in and vice versa for on, no matter the configuration of the object in the picture. This suggests that an object’s category – rather than its specific visual in a particular context– primes a preposition’s lexical denotation. The impact of object type was also observable downstream from the N400 to prepositions. Parieto-occipital slow-wave negativity increased after the presentation of random objects and after the presentation of no picture as compared to responses to phrases presented after pictures of in or on objects. This result implies increased reliance on internal image-formation processes to scaffold linguistic processing when external visual information does not facilitate phrasal interpretation and/or recollection. While the configuration of the object presented in the picture before the phrase did not impact responses to prepositions, it did impact responses to concrete reference nouns. Pictures of objects in spatially mismatching configurations elicited frontal N400 effects, which are believed to index the amodal incorporation of image-mediated information into on-line semantic processing. Frontal N400s were also impacted by phrase type (match versus mismatch), where frontal N400s to matching nouns after spatially mismatching pictures dissipated earlier than for mismatching nouns, suggesting that processes involved in integrating visual context are completed more quickly (and perhaps less effortfully) when the noun is primed by semantic context than when it is not. This is similar to the response pattern for prepositions – when prepositions were unprimed by semantic (visual) context, there was increased effort involved in spatial-image formation. Together, results reveal a multifaceted interaction between phrasal expectations and visual priming during the processing of natural spatial language about real-world objects and abstract concepts. More broadly, findings imply that the processing of all language, even simple phrases containing words that are believed to have limited semantic content, engages a complex neural network involving linguistic and non-linguistic representations

Talking about Relations:Factors Influencing the Production of Relational Descriptions

In a production experiment (Experiment 1) and an acceptability rating one (Experiment 2), we assessed two factors, spatial position and salience, which may influence the production of relational descriptions (such as the ball between the man and the drawer). In Experiment 1, speakers were asked to refer unambiguously to a target object (a ball). In Experiment 1a, we addressed the role of spatial position, more specifically if speakers mention the entity positioned leftmost in the scene as (first) relatum. The results showed a preference to start with the left entity, however, only as a trend, which leaves room for other factors that could influence spatial reference. Thus, in the following studies, we varied salience systematically, by making one of the relatum candidates animate (Experiment 1b), and by adding attention capture cues, first subliminally by priming one relatum candidate with a flash (Experiment 1c), then explicitly by using salient colors for objects (Experiment 1d). Results indicate that spatial position played a dominant role. Entities on the left were mentioned more often as (first) relatum than those on the right (Experiment 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d). Animacy affected reference production in one out of three studies (in Experiment 1d). When salience was manipulated by priming visual attention or by using salient colors, there were no significant effects (Experiment 1c, 1d). In the acceptability rating study (Experiment 2), participants expressed their preference for specific relata, by ranking descriptions on the basis of how good they thought the descriptions fitted the scene. Results show that participants preferred most the description that had an animate entity as the first mentioned relatum. The relevance of these results for models of reference production is discussed

Differential Difficulty : Second Language Acquisition of English Prepositions

Article信州大学人文社会科学研究 10: 52-67(2016)departmental bulletin pape

Variation in the Use of Prepositions in Quebec French

Using the combined approach of Variationist Sociolinguistics and Cognitive Linguistics, this thesis undertakes the classification and analysis of certain prepositions in spoken Quebec French. The study examines 21 interviews that make up part of the Corpus de français parlé au Québec (CFPQ). The aim of this thesis is to examine the use of the variables expressing the concept of ‘possession’, and those equivalent to English before/in front of and after/behind. These three variables are represented as (POSS), (ANTE) and (POST). An initial quantification of the variants is carried out, which establishes the contexts of production, and helps determine the areas of linguistic analysis to be explored. For the (POSS) variable, the data is examined in terms of linguistic factors such as the reference of the possessor, the avoidance of hiatus, and inalienable/alienable possession. Interpersonal variation is also considered, including age and gender in addition to level of education. From the Cognitive Linguistic perspective, we investigate ‘reference point theory’ and how it can shed light on the alternation between the variants. The (ANTE) and (POST) variables are studied in terms of the type of reference (i.e. locative or temporal), the locating noun category, and the age, sex, and level of education of the speakers. The Cognitive Linguistic theory of ‘subjectification’ is also considered for these two variables. For the (POSS) variable, the reference of the possessor and the level of education are seen to be important factors for the use of possessive à. In addition, the ‘reference point theory’ contributes to our understanding of the use of this variant. With the (ANTE) and (POST) variables certain variants are seen to be employed both with and without an overt complement. The variant devant is predominantly found in contexts involving narrative discourse, and the variants en avant and en avant de are preferred for locative reference. Once again, the Cognitive Sociolinguistic approach highlights the possibility that the difference in variant choice is linked to the speakers’ cognitive construal of the situation.Arts and Humanities Research Counci

Possessive expressions in Danish and Swedish in a diachronic and synchronic perspective

Wydział NeofilologiiPrzedmiotem rozprawy są nominalne wyrażenia dzierżawcze w językach duńskim i szwedzkim analizowane w ujęciu diachronicznym i synchronicznym. Do analizowanych konstrukcji dzierżawczych należą: dopełniacz -s, konstrukcja dzierżawcza z przyimkami, zaimki dzierżawcze zwykłe oraz zwrotne. Głównym celem naukowym projektu jest zbadanie dystrybucji oraz cech charakterystycznych wymienionych konstrukcji dzierżawczych ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem czynników, które mogą wpływać na wybór między dopełniaczem -s a konstrukcją przyimkową w językach duńskim i szwedzkim. Do badanych czynników należą między innymi żywotność, określoność, topikalność, długość grupy nominalnej oraz typ relacji dzierżawczej. Tło teoretyczne dysertacji opiera się na założeniach Gramatyki Funkcjonalnej, w szczególności zastosowane zostały pojęcia hierarchii żywotności, ikoniczności i ekonomii w języku oraz topikalności. Badania oparte zostały na korpusach duńskich i szwedzkich tekstów historycznych spisanych w latach 1250–1700 oraz tekstów współczesnych. Korpus tekstów liczy ok. 315 000 słów. Wyniki jednoznacznie wskazują na to, że konstrukcja z dopełniaczem -s i konstrukcja przyimkowa występują w znacznej mierze w dystrybucji komplementarnej. Referent ludzki, określony i znany występuje częściej z dopełniaczem, natomiast referent nieżywotny, nieokreślony i nieznany występuje częściej w konstrukcji przyimkowej. Taki układ czynników odzwierciedla motywację ekonomiczną w języku.The aim of this dissertation is to examine the distribution and characteristics of adnominal possessive constructions in Danish and Swedish from both a diachronic and synchronic perspective. The constructions in question are the following: the s-genitive, the prepositional construction, and pronominal constructions with both regular and reflexive possessive pronouns. The main research objective is to examine the factors that may influence the selection of the s-genitive vs. the prepositional construction. Among the factors taken into consideration are animacy, definiteness, topicality, length of an NP and type of possessive relation. The theoretical approach taken in this dissertation is based on various tenets of Functional Grammar; in particular the concepts of animacy hierarchy, iconicity and economy in language and topicality are invoked. The research is based on a corpus of Danish and Swedish historical texts written between 1250 and 1700 and a corpus of contemporary texts. The length of the corpora is ca. 315,000 words. Results indicate that the s-genitive and the prepositional construction are largely in a complementary distribution in Danish and Swedish. While a human, definite and familiar referent will frequently occur in an s genitive construction, an inanimate, indefinite and new referent will frequently occur in a prepositional construction. Such an array of factors reflects the economic motivation in language

The use of spatial terms ‘NEAR’, ‘VERY NEAR, ‘NEXT TO’, ‘SIDE BY SIDE and ‘NEARBY’ in the descriptions of spatial configurations

Spatial relations are words used to describe the existing relationships between elements present in environments. In the Natural Language, that is, that of the representations present geographical spatial organizations often seen in the daily lives of individuals, the user when reporting their location, uses a significant amount of spatial relations. Consequently, one has the difficulty of defining which of these words are suited to be used in spatial descriptions, in the sense of transmitting spatial information in a clear and precise way. Aiming to foster research in this field, an experiment was carried out with volunteers natives Brazilian Portuguese language in which the use of five spatial relations denoting distances in qualitative terms was sought. The results obtained showed that, although they present similar understandings, the incorrect use of one of these spatial relations can transmit to the receiver of the message an erroneous spatial information. In addition, it was observed a tendency in choosing a specific spatial relation as the distance between the reference elements increases with each other

Spatial Reference in Rongga (ISO 639-3: ror), Balinese (ISO 639-3: ban), and Indonesian (ISO 639-3: ind)

Many scholars have proposed concepts relevant to spatial reference. Herskovits (1982) proposed that the topological concepts support, contiguity and containment are basic in English, while Levinson et al.'s (2003) examination of nine unrelated languages revealed that the concept attachment is primary. Neither of these proposals is confirmed in Rongga, Balinese, and Indonesian. My empirical and experimental investigation of these languages showed that the concept expectedness governs the use of topological prepositions in the languages. Non-topologically, it has long been claimed that a relative frame of reference is universal. This claim is also not confirmed in this study. My non-topological relation study reveals that Rongga and Balinese use a landmark system, while Indonesian practices a relative system. The Balinese landmark system changes to an absolute system when speakers leave the island. In short, this study reveals that previous proposals on the concepts relevant to spatial reference are not universally supported

Reference Object Choice in Spatial Language: Machine and Human Models

The thesis underpinning this study is as follows; it is possible to build machine models that are indistinguishable from the mental models used by humans to generate language to describe their environment. This is to say that the machine model should perform in such a way that a human listener could not discern whether a description of a scene was generated by a human or by the machine model. Many linguistic processes are used to generate even simple scene descriptions and developing machine models of all of them is beyond the scope of this study. The goal of this study is, therefore, to model a sufficient part of the scene description process, operating in a sufficiently realistic environment, so that the likelihood of being able to build machine models of the remaining processes, operating in the real world, can be established. The relatively under-researched process of reference object selection is chosen as the focus of this study. A reference object is, for instance, the `table' in the phrase ``The flowers are on the table''. This study demonstrates that the reference selection process is of similar complexity to others involved in generating scene descriptions which include: assigning prepositions, selecting reference frames and disambiguating objects (usually termed `generating referring expressions'). The secondary thesis of this study is therefore; it is possible to build a machine model that is indistinguishable from the mental models used by humans in selecting reference objects. Most of the practical work in the study is aimed at establishing this. An environment sufficiently near to the real-world for the machine models to operate on is developed as part of this study. It consists of a series of 3-dimensional scenes containing multiple objects that are recognisable to humans and `readable' by the machine models. The rationale for this approach is discussed. The performance of human subjects in describing this environment is evaluated, and measures by which the human performance can be compared to the performance of the machine models are discussed. The machine models used in the study are variants on Bayesian networks. A new approach to learning the structure of a subset of Bayesian networks is presented. Simple existing Bayesian classifiers such as naive or tree augmented naive networks did not perform sufficiently well. A significant result of this study is that useful machine models for reference object choice are of such complexity that a machine learning approach is required. Earlier proposals based on sum-of weighted-factors or similar constructions will not produce satisfactory models. Two differently derived sets of variables are used and compared in this study. Firstly variables derived from the basic geometry of the scene and the properties of objects are used. Models built from these variables match the choice of reference of a group of humans some 73\% of the time, as compared with 90\% for the median human subject. Secondly variables derived from `ray casting' the scene are used. Ray cast variables performed much worse than anticipated, suggesting that humans use object knowledge as well as immediate perception in the reference choice task. Models combining geometric and ray-cast variables match the choice of reference of the group of humans some 76\% of the time. Although niether of these machine models are likely to be indistinguishable from a human, the reference choices are rarely, if ever, entirely ridiculous. A secondary goal of the study is to contribute to the understanding of the process by which humans select reference objects. Several statistically significant results concerning the necessary complexity of the human models and the nature of the variables within them are established. Problems that remain with both the representation of the near-real-world environment and the Bayesian models and variables used within them are detailed. While these problems cast some doubt on the results it is argued that solving these problems is possible and would, on balance, lead to improved performance of the machine models. This further supports the assertion that machine models producing reference choices indistinguishable from those of humans are possible