Understanding acceptability judgments: Additivity and working memory effects

Linguists build theories of grammar based largely on acceptability contrasts. But these contrasts can reflect grammatical constraints and/or constraints on language processing. How can theorists determine the extent to which the acceptability of an utterance depends on functional constraints? In a series of acceptability experiments, we consider two factors that might indicate processing contributions to acceptability contrasts: (1) the way constraints combine (i.e., additively or super-additively), and (2) the way a comprehender’s working memory resources influence acceptability judgments. Results suggest that multiple sources of processing difficulty combine to produce super-additive effects, but multiple grammatical violations do not. Furthermore, when acceptability judgments improve with higher working memory scores, this appears to be due to functional constraints. We conclude that tests of (super)-additivity and of differences in working memory can help to identify the effects of processing difficulty (due to functional constraints)

How do individual cognitive differences relate to acceptability judgments?: A reply to Sprouse, Wagers, and Phillips

Sprouse, Wagers, and Phillips (2012) carried out two experiments in which they measured individual differences in memory to test processing accounts of island effects. They found that these individual differences failed to predict the magnitude of island effects, and they construe these findings as counterevidence to processing-based accounts of island effects. Here, we take up several problems with their methods, their findings, and their conclusions. First, the arguments against processing accounts are based on null results using tasks that may be ineffective or inappropriate measures of working memory (the n-back and serial-recall tasks). The authors provide no evidence that these two measures predict judgments for other constructions that are difficult to process and yet are clearly grammatical. They assume that other measures of working memory would have yielded the same result, but provide no justification that they should. We further show that whether a working-memory measure relates to judgments of grammatical, hard-to-process sentences depends on how difficult the sentences are. In this light, the stimuli used by the authors present processing difficulties other than the island violations under investigation and may have been particularly hard to process. Second, the Sprouse et al. results are statistically in line with the hypothesis that island sensitivity varies with working memory. Three out of the four island types in their experiment 1 show a significant relation between memory scores and island sensitivity, but the authors discount these findings on the grounds that the variance accounted for is too small to have much import. This interpretation, however, runs counter to standard practices in linguistics, psycholinguistics, and psychology

Islands in the grammar? Standards of evidence

When considering how a complex system operates, the observable behavior depends upon both architectural properties of the system and the principles governing its operation. As a simple example, the behavior of computer chess programs depends upon both the processing speed and resources of the computer and the programmed rules that determine how the computer selects its next move. Despite having very similar search techniques, a computer from the 1990s might make a move that its 1970s forerunner would overlook simply because it had more raw computational power. From the naïve observer’s perspective, however, it is not superficially evident if a particular move is dispreferred or overlooked because of computational limitations or the search strategy and decision algorithm. In the case of computers, evidence for the source of any particular behavior can ultimately be found by inspecting the code and tracking the decision process of the computer. But with the human mind, such options are not yet available. The preference for certain behaviors and the dispreference for others may theoretically follow from cognitive limitations or from task-related principles that preclude certain kinds of cognitive operations, or from some combination of the two. This uncertainty gives rise to the fundamental problem of finding evidence for one explanation over the other. Such a problem arises in the analysis of syntactic island effects – the focu

ROMANIAN LABOUR MIGRATION IN EU AND ITS IMPLICATIONS ON ROMANIAN COMPANIES

Romania is currently facing a labour crisis that has not ever known. The phenomenon is not new but has increased gradually so that companies operating in Romania encounter more difficulties in finding staff required for their activity. The reasons for this phenomenon are economic, plus the lack of national policies, that encourage young and skilled workforce to migrate. The article approach the migration of labour from Romania and focus on how this phenomenon affected companies\u27 activities and solutions they initiated to counter the impact of the phenomenon

Relación entre la producción primaria y bacteriana pelágicas en dos lagunas húmicas vegetadas

En este trabajo se muestra que la producción primaria del fitoplancton (PP) puede exceder la producción bacteriana (BP) en cuerpos de agua húmicos vegetados, dando como resultado una columna de agua autotrófica, a pesar de ser ambientes restringidos lumínicamente y con alta concentración de carbono orgánico disuelto, sustrato de la producción bacteriana. Intuitivamente, estas condiciones favorecerían el desarrollo de una columna de agua heterótrofa. Por el contrario, en este estudio la BP representó entre 1.3 y 5% de la PP durante la mayor parte de los muestreos.Sólo una vez, durante el verano tardío, BP llegó al 71% de la PP. Si bien no podemos determinar el mecanismo detrás de estos resultados, sí podemos hipotetizar acerca de ellos basados en experimentación y estudios previos en el mismo humedal. De este modo, las condiciones de autotrofia se ven favorecidas principalmente por: i) la naturaleza somera de las lagunas, que amortigua el efecto de la atenuación lumínica al considerar tasas integradas de producción en toda la columna de agua, ii) la presencia de bacterias fotosintéticas anaeróbicas y anoxigénicas bajo la cobertura macrofítica, y iii) tasas elevadas de depredación sobre el bacterioplancton por parte de nanoflagelados heterotróficosIn this study, we show that depth-integrated pelagic primary production (PP) can exceed bacterioplankton production (BP) in vegetated humic shallow lakes, giving as a result an autotrophic water column despite light restrictions and availability of organic carbon for lake bacteria. Intuitively, these conditions should favor the development of a heterotrophic water column. Instead, during our survey, BP represented between 1.3 to 5 % of PP most of the time and once, during late summer, BP was ca. 71 % of PP. Although we cannot conclude about the mechanisms behind the observed results, previous surveys and experimentation in the wetland allow us to hypothesize that autotrophic conditions were favored by, i) the shallow nature of the lakes which compensates for light attenuation by organic matter when integrating production in the water column; ii) the presence of anaerobic anoxygenic photosynthetic bacteria below the macrophyte cover and, iii) high predation rates on bacterioplankton by heterotrophic flagellates below the floating plants.Fil: Aguilar Zurita, Alex Ivan. Ministerio de Medioambiente y Desarrollo Sustentable; ArgentinaFil: Rodriguez, Patricia Laura. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Austral de Investigaciones Científicas; Argentin

Processing effects in linguistic judgment data: (super-)additivity and reading span scores

abstractLinguistic acceptability judgments are widely agreed to reflect constraints on real-time language processing. Nonetheless, very little is known about how processing costs affect acceptability judgments. In this paper, we explore how processing limitations are manifested in acceptability judgment data. In a series of experiments, we consider how two factors relate to judgments for sentences with varying degrees of complexity: (1) the way constraints combine (i.e., additively or super-additively), and (2) the way a comprehender’s memory resources influence acceptability judgments. Results indicate that multiple sources of processing difficulty can combine to produce super-additive effects, and that there is a positive linear relationship between reading span scores and judgments for sentences whose unacceptability is attributable to processing costs. These patterns do not hold for sentences whose unacceptability is attributable to factors other than processing costs, e.g., grammatical constraints. We conclude that tests of (super)-additivity and of relationships to reading span scores can help to identify the effects of processing difficulty on acceptability judgments, although these tests cannot be used in contexts of extreme processing difficulty.</jats:p