The real-time status of strong and weak islands

In two eye-tracking reading experiments, we used a variant of the filled gap technique to investigate how strong and weak islands are processed on a moment-to-moment basis during comprehension. Experiment 1 provided a conceptual replication of previous studies showing that real time processing is sensitive to strong islands. In the absence of an island, readers experienced processing difficulty when a pronoun appeared in a position of a predicted gap, but this difficulty was absent when the pronoun appeared inside a strong island. Experiment 2 showed an analogous effect for weak islands: a processing cost was seen for a pronoun in the position of a predicted gap in a that-complement clause, but this cost was absent in a matched whether clause, which constitutes a weak island configuration. Overall, our results are compatible with the claim that active dependency formation is suspended, or reduced, in both weak and strong island structures

The Pronominal bu-şu and this-that: Rhetorical Structure Theory

This study presents a contrastive analysis of the pronominal uses of bu and şu and this and that in written academic discourse within the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory (Mann and Thompson, 1988; Marcu 2000). The comparative analysis of these pronominals is done with respect to the rhetorical relations in which they are used. Data for this study were retrieved from journal articles on linguistics and education. The results show that bu-şu and this-that are sensitive to rhetorical relations. Although bu and this are used in similar rhetorical functions (i.e. interpretation, explanation and reason relations), in some occurrences they are used in different rhetorical relations (i.e textual organisation and hypothetical relations). On the other hand, şu is used differently from that and this in the establishment of rhetorical relations. Şu is used in the subtypes of elaboration relation (i.e. elaboration-set-member, elaboration part-whole), while that is not used in elaboration relations. That is used in antithesis, list and contrast relations, where occurrences of şu are not seen. While this is used in addition, interpretation, hypothetical, summarisation and concession relations, şu is not

Modeling Brain Representations of Words' Concreteness in Context Using GPT-2 and Human Ratings

The meaning of most words in language depends on their context. Understanding how the human brain extracts contextualized meaning, and identifying where in the brain this takes place, remain important scientific challenges. But technological and computational advances in neuroscience and artificial intelligence now provide unprecedented opportunities to study the human brain in action as language is read and understood. Recent contextualized language models seem to be able to capture homonymic meaning variation (“bat”, in a baseball vs. a vampire context), as well as more nuanced differences of meaning—for example, polysemous words such as “book”, which can be interpreted in distinct but related senses (“explain a book”, information, vs. “open a book”, object) whose differences are fine-grained. We study these subtle differences in lexical meaning along the concrete/abstract dimension, as they are triggered by verb-noun semantic composition. We analyze functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activations elicited by Italian verb phrases containing nouns whose interpretation is affected by the verb to different degrees. By using a contextualized language model and human concreteness ratings, we shed light on where in the brain such fine-grained meaning variation takes place and how it is coded. Our results show that phrase concreteness judgments and the contextualized model can predict BOLD activation associated with semantic composition within the language network. Importantly, representations derived from a complex, nonlinear composition process consistently outperform simpler composition approaches. This is compatible with a holistic view of semantic composition in the brain, where semantic representations are modified by the process of composition itself. When looking at individual brain areas, we find that encoding performance is statistically significant, although with differing patterns of results, suggesting differential involvement, in the posterior superior temporal sulcus, inferior frontal gyrus and anterior temporal lobe, and in motor areas previously associated with processing of concreteness/abstractness

The language profile of formal thought disorder

Formal thought disorder (FTD) is clinically manifested as disorganized speech, but there have been only few investigations of its linguistic properties. We examined how disturbance of thought may relate to the referential function of language as expressed in the use of noun phrases (NPs) and the complexity of sentence structures. We used a comic strip description task to elicit language samples from 30 participants with schizophrenia (SZ), 15 with moderate or severe FTD (SZ + FTD), and 15 minimal or no FTD (SZ−FTD), as well as 15 first-degree relatives of people with SZ (FDRs) and 15 neurotypical controls (NC). We predicted that anomalies in the normal referential use of NPs, sub-divided into definite and indefinite NPs, would identify FTD; and also that FTD would also be linked to reduced linguistic complexity as specifically measured by the number of embedded clauses and of grammatical dependents. Participants with SZ + FTD produced more referential anomalies than NC and produced the fewest definite NPs, while FDRs produced the most and thus also differed from NC. When referential anomalies were classed according to the NP type in which they occurred, the SZ + FTD group produced more anomalies in definite NPs than NC. Syntactic errors did not distinguish groups, but the SZ + FTD group exhibited significantly less syntactic complexity than non-SZ groups. Exploratory regression analyses suggested that production of definite NPs distinguished the two SZ groups. These results demonstrate that FTD can be identified in specific grammatical patterns which provide new targets for detection, intervention, and neurobiological studies

Akadem,k yazılı söylemde adıl konumdaki this ve that'in karşılaştırmalı çözümlemesi

This study presents a contrastive analysis of the pronominal uses of this and that in academic written discourse. As data, the pronominal uses of this and that are retrieved from journal articles on linguistics. From these journals, 586 articles are scanned for the pronominal uses of this and that and 198 tokens are analysed. The contrastive analysis is done in terms of the kind and span of referents this and that pick out in discourse, the types of centering transitions they signal and the rhetorical relations in which they are used. In order to investigate the types of transition they signal, the version of centering theory proposed by Grosz and Sidner (1986) and Grosz, Joshi and Weinstein (1995) is used. Also, Marcu̕s version (2000) of Rhetorical Structure Theory is used to analyze the rhetorical relations in which the expressions are used. The study also investigate the possible factors that lead an addresser to select one deictic expression instead of the other. The study concludes that this and that are cue phrases rather than discourse markers that construct local and global coherence.M.A. - Master of Art

This, that ve it metin işaretleyicilerinin anadili İngilizce ve yabancı dlil İngilizce Türk katılımcılarla çevrimiçi ve çevrimdışı işlemlenmesi.

This thesis explores the online processing of this, it and that in English and compares the processing strategies of Turkish non-native speakers (NNSs) with those of native speakers of English (NSs) by running three independent groups of online reading and norming experiments. The first group of eye-tracking experiments, together with Turkish and English corpus studies, test the deictic access of this and that to the left and right frontiers. The results for the NSs indicated that (1) with both this and that there is a preference for events on the right frontier as antecedents; and (2) the reliance of existing theories of textual deixis on an analogy with spatial deixis in spoken discourse may be flawed. However, NNSs were shown to employ a strategy of analogy with spatial deixis in processing textual deixis. The second group of experiments tested the antecedent preferences of it, this and that. In online reading, NSs did not show strong preferences, whereas NNSs performed form-function mappings. The third group of experiments tested the role of noun phrase statuses in the antecedent preferences of this and it. In contrast, NSs and NNSs had the same preferences but used different processing strategies. The findings of NNSs could be explained with respect to the interface hypothesis and residual indeterminacy at the level of discourse, with a distinction between prescriptive and descriptive rules, and in terms of competition between implicit and explicit knowledges. Finally, a sliding scale ranging from the uninterpretable to the most interpretable features was introduced to explain differences in the processing involved in reading and writing.Ph.D. - Doctoral Progra