Using the Web to Overcome Data Sparseness

This paper shows that the web can be employed to obtain frequencies for bigrams that are unseen in a given corpus. We describe a method for retrieving counts for adjective-noun, noun-noun, and verbobject bigrams from the web by querying a search engine. We evaluate this method by demonstrating that web frequencies and correlate with frequencies obtained from a carefully edited, balanced corpus

Event-related brain potentials index cue-based retrieval interference during sentence comprehension

Successful language use requires access to products of past processing within an evolving discourse. A central issue for any neurocognitive theory of language then concerns the role of memory variables during language processing. Under a cue-based retrieval account of language comprehension, linguistic dependency resolution (e.g., retrieving antecedents) is subject to interference from other information in the sentence, especially information that occurs between the words that form the dependency (e.g., between the antecedent and the retrieval site). Retrieval interference may then shape processing complexity as a function of the match of the information at retrieval with the antecedent versus other recent or similar items in memory. To address these issues, we studied the online processing of ellipsis in Castilian Spanish, a language with morphological gender agreement. We recorded event-related brain potentials while participants read sentences containing noun-phrase ellipsis indicated by the determiner otro/a (‘another’). These determiners had a grammatically correct or incorrect gender with respect to their antecedent nouns that occurred earlier in the sentence. Moreover, between each antecedent and determiner, another noun phrase occurred that was structurally unavailable as an antecedent and that matched or mismatched the gender of the antecedent (i.e., a local agreement attractor). In contrast to extant P600 results on agreement violation processing, and inconsistent with predictions from neurocognitive models of sentence processing, grammatically incorrect determiners evoked a sustained, broadly distributed negativity compared to correct ones between 400 and 1000 ms after word onset, possibly related to sustained negativities as observed for referential processing difficulties. Crucially, this effect was modulated by the attractor: an increased negativity was observed for grammatically correct determiners that did not match the gender of the attractor, suggesting that structurally unavailable noun phrases were at least temporarily considered for grammatically correct ellipsis. These results constitute the first ERP evidence for cue-based retrieval interference during comprehension of grammatical sentences

Neural Mechanisms for Combinatorial Semantics in Language and Vision: Evidence From FMRI, Patients, and Brain Stimulation

Throughout our daily experience, humans make nearly constant use of semantic knowledge. Over the last 20-30 years, the majority of work on the neural basis of semantic memory has examined the representation of semantic categories (e.g., animate versus inanimate). However, a defining aspect of human cognition is the ability to integrate this stored semantic information to form complex combinations of concepts. For example, humans can comprehend “plaid” and “jacket” as separate concepts, but can also effortlessly integrate this information to create the idea of a “plaid jacket.” This process is essential to human cognition, but little work has examined the neural regions that underlie conceptual combination. Many models of semantic memory have proposed that convergence zones, or neural hubs, help to integrate the semantic features of word meaning to form coherent representations from stored semantic knowledge. However, few studies have specifically examined the integrative semantic functions that these high-level hub regions carry out. This thesis presents three experiments that examine lexical-semantic combinatorial processing (as in the “plaid jacket” example above): 1) a study in healthy adults using fMRI, 2) a study in healthy adults using brain stimulation, and 3) a study examining impairments of lexical-semantic integration in patients with neurodegenerative disease. The fourth and final experiment of this thesis examines semantic aspects of combinatorial codes for visual-object representation. This study identifies neural regions that encode the feature combinations that define an object’s meaning. The findings from these four experiments elucidate specific cortical hubs for semantic-feature integration during language comprehension and visual-object processing, and they advance our understanding of the role of heteromodal brain regions in semantic memory

An empirical study on word order in predicates: on syntax, processing and information in native and learner English

[EN] This study focuses on the linearisation of verbal complements (or arguments) and adjuncts (or modifiers) in learner advanced English. The analysis is based on minimal pairs of sequences of complements and adjuncts in predicates, as in He will investigate [the construction] [in a somewhat strange way which will lead to odd results] versus He will investigate [in a somewhat strange way which will lead to odd results] [the construction]. Constituent linearisation has been claimed to be potentially subject to lexical, syntactic, processing and informative determinants. This paper analyses the influence of the verbal heads and the principles ‘complements-first’, ‘end-weight’ and ‘given-new’ on the production of predicates containing two dependents. The study has two objectives: first, to determine in which areas the ordering of such constituents in English by non-native speakers is particularly influenced by their first language (Spanish); second, to assess the plausibility of the Interface Hypothesis in a pattern which affects the so-called internal and external interfaces. Results show that internal constraints such as the length of the dependents (end-weight) and the learner’s source language (i.e. compliance with complements-first) are strong predictors of ordering choices.I am grateful to the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (grant no. FFI2016-77018-P) and Xunta de Galicia (grant no. ED431C 2017/50) for generous financial support.Pérez-Guerra, J. (2018). An empirical study on word order in predicates: on syntax, processing and information in native and learner English. 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