2,250 research outputs found

    The processing of ambiguous sentences by first and second language learners of English

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    This study compares the way English-speaking children and adult second language learners of English resolve relative clause attachment ambiguities in sentences such as The dean liked the secretary of the professor who was reading a letter. Two groups of advanced L2 learners of English with Greek or German as their L1 participated in a set of off-line and on-line tasks. While the participants ' disambiguation preferences were influenced by lexical-semantic properties of the preposition linking the two potential antecedent NPs (of vs. with), there was no evidence that they were applying any structure-based ambiguity resolution strategies of the type that have been claimed to influence sentence processing in monolingual adults. These findings differ markedly from those obtained from 6 to 7 yearold monolingual English children in a parallel auditory study (Felser, Marinis, & Clahsen, submitted) in that the children's attachment preferences were not affected by the type of preposition at all. We argue that whereas children primarily rely on structure-based parsing principles during processing, adult L2 learners are guided mainly by non-structural informatio

    EEG analysis based on dynamic visual stimuli: best practices in analysis of sign language data

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    This paper reviews best practices for experimental design and analysis for sign language research using neurophysiological methods, such as electroencephalography (EEG) and other methods with high temporal resolution, as well as identifies methodological challenges in neurophysiological research on natural sign language processing. In particular, we outline the considerations for generating linguistically and physically well-controlled stimuli accounting for 1) the layering of manual and non-manual information at different timescales, 2) possible unknown linguistic and non-linguistic visual cues that can affect processing, 3) variability across linguistic stimuli, and 4) predictive processing. Two specific concerns with regard to the analysis and interpretation of observed event related potential (ERP) effects for dynamic stimuli are discussed in detail. First, we discuss the “trigger/effect assignment problem”, which describes the difficulty of determining the time point for calculating ERPs. This issue is related to the problem of determining the onset of a critical sign (i.e., stimulus onset time), and the lack of clarity as to how the border between lexical (sign) and transitional movement (motion trajectory between individual signs) should be defined. Second, we discuss possible differences in the dynamics within signing that might influence ERP patterns and should be controlled for when creating natural sign language material for ERP studies. In addition, we outline alternative approaches to EEG data analyses for natural signing stimuli, such as the timestamping of continuous EEG with trigger markers for each potentially relevant cue in dynamic stimuli. Throughout the discussion, we present empirical evidence for the need to account for dynamic, multi-channel, and multi-timescale visual signal that characterizes sign languages in order to ensure the ecological validity of neurophysiological research in sign languages

    Neurocognitive Informatics Manifesto.

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    Informatics studies all aspects of the structure of natural and artificial information systems. Theoretical and abstract approaches to information have made great advances, but human information processing is still unmatched in many areas, including information management, representation and understanding. Neurocognitive informatics is a new, emerging field that should help to improve the matching of artificial and natural systems, and inspire better computational algorithms to solve problems that are still beyond the reach of machines. In this position paper examples of neurocognitive inspirations and promising directions in this area are given

    German Demonstrative Pronouns in Contrast

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    German has two demonstrative pronouns: the der, die, das paradigm and the dieser, diese, dies(es) paradigm. Previous studies mainly compared the anaphoric use of der with the personal pronoun er and observed that der refers to less prominent antecedents. However, there are only very few studies that have investigated the differences between these two demonstrative pronouns. We hypothesize that they differ in signaling topic persistence and in accessing contrastive antecedents. We tested these hypotheses in short texts that manipulated the contrast of the antecedent by inducing the expression ‘in contrast to’ vs. ‘together with’ (e.g., the cellist in contrast to the flautist vs. the cellist together with the flautist). Results from our eye-tracking reading Experiment (Experiment 1), in which participants’ eye- movements were monitored while reading sentences, show that (i) readers preferred dieser when referring to the topic of a sentence, and (ii) dieser caused less processing difficulties than der in both contrast and no-contrast contexts. Our sentence completion Experiment (Experiment 2) also confirmed that der and dieser are both used for anaphoric reference to a topical antecedent. Collectively, our experiments provide evidence that dieser functions as inducing topic persistence. These results suggest that there is a need for further experimental investigation into the semantic factors and informational structures influencing the usage of demonstrative pronouns in German.

    The Processing of Emotional Sentences by Young and Older Adults: A Visual World Eye-movement Study

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    Carminati MN, Knoeferle P. The Processing of Emotional Sentences by Young and Older Adults: A Visual World Eye-movement Study. Presented at the Architectures and Mechanisms of Language and Processing (AMLaP), Riva del Garda, Italy

    Syntactic structure assembly in human parsing: A computational model based on competitive inhibition and a lexicalist grammar

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    We present the design, implementation and simulation results of a psycholinguistic model of human syntactic processing that meets major empirical criteria. The parser operates in conjunction with a lexicalist grammar and is driven by syntactic information associated with heads of phrases. The dynamics of the model are based on competition by lateral inhibition ('competitive inhibition'). Input words activate lexical frames (i.e. elementary trees anchored to input words) in the mental lexicon, and a network of candidate 'unification links' is set up between frame nodes. These links represent tentative attachments that are graded rather than all-or-none. Candidate links that, due to grammatical or 'treehood' constraints, are incompatible, compete for inclusion in the final syntactic tree by sending each other inhibitory signals that reduce the competitor's attachment strength. The outcome of these local and simultaneous competitions is controlled by dynamic parameters, in particular by the Entry Activation and the Activation Decay rate of syntactic nodes, and by the Strength and Strength Build-up rate of Unification links. In case of a successful parse, a single syntactic tree is returned that covers the whole input string and consists of lexical frames connected by winning Unification links. Simulations are reported of a significant range of psycholinguistic parsing phenomena in both normal and aphasic speakers of English: (i) various effects of linguistic complexity (single versus double, center versus right-hand self-embeddings of relative clauses; the difference between relative clauses with subject and object extraction; the contrast between a complement clause embedded within a relative clause versus a relative clause embedded within a complement clause); (ii) effects of local and global ambiguity, and of word-class and syntactic ambiguity (including recency and length effects); (iii) certain difficulty-of-reanalysis effects (contrasts between local ambiguities that are easy to resolve versus ones that lead to serious garden-path effects); (iv) effects of agrammatism on parsing performance, in particular the performance of various groups of aphasic patients on several sentence types

    Linguistic rhythm and sentence comprehension in reading

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    This dissertation is concerned with the role of prosody and, specifically, linguistic rhythm for the syntactic processing of written text. My aim is to put forward, provide evidence for, and defend the following claims: 1. While processing written sentences, readers make use of their phonological knowledge and generate a mental prosodic-phonological representation of the printed text. 2. The mental prosodic representation is constructed in accordance with a syntactic description of the written string. Constraints at the interface of syntax and phonology provide for the compatibility of the syntactic analysis and the (mental) prosodic rendition of the sentence. 3. The implicit prosodic structure readers impose on the written string entails phonological phrasing and accentuation, but also lower level prosodic features such as linguistic rhythm which emerges from the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. 4. Phonological well-formedness conditions accompany and influence the process of syntactic parsing in reading from the very beginning, i.e. already at the level of recognizing lexical categories. At points of underspecified syntactic structure, syntactic parsing decisions may be made on the basis of phonological constraints alone. 5. In reading, the implicit local lexical-prosodic information may be more readily available to the processing mechanism than higher-level discourse structural representations and consequently may have more immediate influence on sentence processing. 6. The process of sentence comprehension in reading is conditioned by factors that are geared towards sentence production. 7. The interplay of syntactic and phonological processes in reading can be explained with recourse to a performance-compatible competence grammar. The evidence from three reading experiments supports these points and suggests a model of grammatical competence in which constraints from various domains (syntax, semantics, pragmatics, discourse structure, and phonology) interact in providing the possible structural, i.e. grammatical descriptions

    CLiFF Notes: Research In Natural Language Processing at the University of Pennsylvania

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    The Computational Linguistics Feedback Forum (CLIFF) is a group of students and faculty who gather once a week to discuss the members\u27 current research. As the word feedback suggests, the group\u27s purpose is the sharing of ideas. The group also promotes interdisciplinary contacts between researchers who share an interest in Cognitive Science. There is no single theme describing the research in Natural Language Processing at Penn. There is work done in CCG, Tree adjoining grammars, intonation, statistical methods, plan inference, instruction understanding, incremental interpretation, language acquisition, syntactic parsing, causal reasoning, free word order languages, ... and many other areas. With this in mind, rather than trying to summarize the varied work currently underway here at Penn, we suggest reading the following abstracts to see how the students and faculty themselves describe their work. Their abstracts illustrate the diversity of interests among the researchers, explain the areas of common interest, and describe some very interesting work in Cognitive Science. This report is a collection of abstracts from both faculty and graduate students in Computer Science, Psychology and Linguistics. We pride ourselves on the close working relations between these groups, as we believe that the communication among the different departments and the ongoing inter-departmental research not only improves the quality of our work, but makes much of that work possible
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