Eye tracking sentences in language education

The present study reports and discusses the use of eye tracking qualitative data (static and dynamic gaze plots and heatmaps) in reading workshops in a middle school and in Generative Syntax and Sentence Processing courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Both endeavors take the sentential level as the proper object to be metacognitively explored in language education in order to develop innate science forming capacity and knowledge of language. In both projects non-discrepant qualitative eye tracking data collected and quantitatively analyzed in psycholinguistic studies carried out in LAPEX-UFRJ (Experimental Psycholinguistics Laboratory of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) were displayed to students as a point of departure, triggering discussions. Active, problem-solving based methodologies were employed with the objective of stimulating student participation. The article also discusses the importance of developing full literacy, epistemic vigilance and intellectual self-defense in an infodemic world.The present study reports and discusses the use of eye tracking qualitative data (static and dynamic gaze plots and heatmaps) in reading workshops in a middle school and in Generative Syntax and Sentence Processing courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Both endeavors take the sentential level as the proper object to be metacognitively explored in language education in order to develop innate science forming capacity and knowledge of language. In both projects non-discrepant qualitative eye tracking data collected and quantitatively analyzed in psycholinguistic studies carried out in LAPEX-UFRJ (Experimental Psycholinguistics Laboratory of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) were displayed to students as a point of departure, triggering discussions. Active, problem-solving based methodologies were employed with the objective of stimulating student participation. The article also discusses the importance of developing full literacy, epistemic vigilance and intellectual self-defense in an infodemic world

Processamento de frases e contexto discursivo

The time course of the subprocesses of sentence comprehension is investigated, in order to determine if the processor is strictly syntactic in its initial analysis or if it already accesses information of semantic and discursive nature in time to influence the syntactic analysis. Two experimental studies are reviewed with speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, to assess the effects of discursive context in processing. The first revisits ambiguous Prepositional Phrases and finds effect of the previous context only in the final measures, which monitor the interpretation. The second uses the eye-tracking technique to gauge the antecedent search for the subject of clauses with a verb in the inflected infinitive, finding effect of the previous discourse both in the off-line and in the online measures. Possible reasons for the differences between the discourse effects in the two experiments are discussed.Investiga-se o curso temporal dos subprocessos da compreensão de frases, procurando-se determinar se o processador é estritamente sintático em sua análise inicial ou se já acessa informações de natureza semântica e discursiva a tempo de influenciar a análise sintática. São reportados dois estudos com falantes de português brasileiro, para aferir efeitos de contexto discursivo no processamento. O primeiro revisita o processamento de Sintagmas Preposicionais ambíguos e encontra efeito do discurso prévio apenas nas medidas finais, que monitoram a interpretação. O segundo usa a técnica de rastreamento ocular (eye-tracking) para aferir a busca de antecedente para o sujeito de oração com verbo no infinitivo flexionado, encontrando efeito do discurso prévio tanto na medida final ou off-line, quanto na medida on-line. Discutem-se possíveis razões para as diferenças entre os efeitos de informações discursivas nos dois experimentos

Apresentação

Este oitavo número da Revista LinguiStica é dedicado ao tema “métodos de pesquisa”. A especialização cada vez maior das diferentes subáreas da Linguística acaba por dificultar que se mantenha uma perspectiva mais abrangente e integrativa, que possa garantir alguma unidade na diversidade de abordagens, de modo que, em um panorama necessariamente complexo, se consiga ainda encontrar complementaridade e diálogo, ao invés de conflito irremediável. Em um momento de ciência em crise, em que a diversidade de angulações teóricas em Linguística recorta uma multiplicidade de objetos - físicos, biológicos, neuropsicológicos, sócio-culturais -  colocando em cheque a própria unidade da disciplina, é oportuno, portanto, apreciarem-se os alcances e os limites de seus distintos modi operandi

Interview: Uli Sauerland

Uli Sauerland became the leader of the semantics-pragmatics research group of the Center of General Linguistics (ZAS) in Berlin, Germany in 2005. Sauerland received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1998 and has taught as a visiting professor at a number of universities including Harvard University, Stanford University and the University of Vienna. He authored more than 80 reviewed publications in semantics, pragmatics and syntax including articles in Linguistic Inquiry, Natural Language Semantics, and the International Journal of American Linguistics. Sauerland’s work has been funded by a number of different grant agencies, such as the EU Commission and the European Science Foundation. Currently he is funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF grant, Grant Nr. 01UG1411) and coordinates the national priority program XPrag.de (SPP 1727) that involves about 50 researchers and advances pragmatic and semantic theory by the use of experimental evidence. Since 2007, Sauerland has been involved in fieldwork on specific phenomena in underdescribed languages in Eastern Indonesia (Teiwa), Peru (Matses), and Brazil (Pirahã, Karitiana, and Kaingang). He hopes to continue to work intensively on Brazilian indigenous languages in the future.</p

EntreviSta com Manuel Carreiras (BCBL)

At least since the eighties, proponents of two classes of models have been lively debating in Psycholinguistics, with interesting claims in the field of anaphoric resolution. On the one hand, structural models assume an early role for grammatical information in coreference resolution and, on the other hand, interactive models predict early and simultaneous use of both grammatical and context-based information. How do you currently evaluate this debate? How does the debate stand in the light of the sophisticated methodologies now available?</p

Efeitos do status argumental e de segmentação no processamento de sintagmas preposicionais em português brasileiro

A questionnaire study and a self paced reading experiment investigate the off-line and on-line comprehension of adjunct and argument prepositional phrases (PP) in Brazilian Portuguese. The first study compares NP-attached adjunct and argument PPs and VP-attached adjunct and argument PPs and show a general preference for argument PPs in both cases. The second study presents an experimental design crossing the argument status of PPs (argument or adjunct) and the segmentation type of the sentences that contain the PPs (short or long). Results do not indicate differences in reading times (RT) between adjunct and argument PPs in the first pass of the parser, in contrast with models of sentence processing that predict a rapid initial access to lexical information. Nonetheless, RT differences between adjunct and argument PPs are found in a garden-path configuration, something which is attributed to the reanalysis stage. Segmentation effects are also found and discussed with relation to the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis (Fodor, 1998; 2002)

Old Story, New Results and Analyses: An Eye-Tracking and ERP Evaluation of a Classical Ambiguity Involving the Attachment Point of Relative Clause and Prepositional Phrase Modifiers

An eye-tracking and an electrophysiological experiment using&nbsp; a sentence/picture matching task were carried out in order to assess whether there would be significant differences between semantic restrictiveness properties of Prepositional Phrases (PPs) vis-à-vis those of Relative Clauses (RCs), attached as modifiers respectively to a local PP or to a non-local DP (e.g. the horse with the parrot with brown spots/the horse with the parrot that has brown spots). Two hypotheses were entertained, namely, (i) an operator construction such as an RC would be construed non-locally, that is, would&nbsp;&nbsp; attach high as a default, even if there is semantic bias attracting it to a low attachment; (ii) a light constituent (PP) has no prosodic autonomy and will be more available to local attachment and therefore would tend to attach locally as a default, even if there is semantic bias attracting it to a high attachment. Results in both experiments were in favor of the hypotheses and we speculate whether they could be more deeply grounded into the representational alternatives projected by linguistic theory itself.Reportam-se um experimento de rastreamento ocular e um experimento eletrofisiológico utilizando uma tarefa de compatibilidade entre frase / imagem, para avaliar se haveria diferenças significativas entre as propriedades de restrição semântica de Sintagmas Preposicionais (SPs) comparativamente a Orações Relativas (ORs), ligados como modificadores, respectivamente, a um SP local ou a um DP não local (por exemplo, o cavalo com o papagaio com manchas marrons / o cavalo com o papagaio que tem manchas marrons). Duas hipóteses foram consideradas, a saber: (i) uma construção de operador, com uma OR, seria interpretada não localmente, isto é, seria preferencialmente analisada como aposta não localmente, mesmo que haja viés semântico atraindo-a para aposição local; (ii) um constituinte mais leve (SP) não tem autonomia prosódica e estará mais disponível para a ligação local e, portanto, tenderá a se fixar localmente como default, mesmo se houver viés semântico atraindo-o para aposição sintática alta. Os resultados em ambos os experimentos foram a favor das hipóteses e especula-se se eles poderiam ser mais profundamente fundamentados nas alternativas representacionais projetadas pela própria teoria linguística