La conception du traitement syntaxique en compréhension de phrases

The present review aims at discussing current theoretical models of syntactic processing involved in sentence comprehension. On the basis of the hypothetized importance and autonomy of syntax in sentence comprehension, three types of models will be considered: (1) Autonomist models according to which syntactic processing is mandatory, taking place before any kind of interpretation and completely autonomous; (2) Interactivist models which preserve the compulsory character of syntactic processing but greatly reduce its autonomy, considering that both syntactic and semantic processing occur in parallel with mutual exchange of information ; (3) > models according to which a conceptual representation of an utterance is immediatly built up through the integration of linguistic and non linguistic information; these models do not postulate any intermediate representation which would be syntactic in nature : syntactic information may or may not be useful for the interpretation of the utterance, depending on various circumstances. Two aspects of the recent literature on this topic will be analysed in the discussion : (a) on a theoretical ground, the relative lack of precision of these models, and (b) on an empirical ground, a lack of interest for interindividual differences

Definiteness and prepositional phrase attachment in sentence processing

The research presented here aimed at studying the processing of syntactically ambiguous Prepositional Phrases (PP) following a Noun Phrase Object (NPO). The ambiguity lies in the fact that the PP could be attached either to the verb (VP-attachment, ''The boy broke the window with a rock'') or to the NPO (NP-attachment, ''The boy broke the window with the curtain''). The conditions on the NPO were the following. First, the NPO always played the role of Result of the predicate, a condition which was supposed to favor NP-attachment. Second, the NPO began either with an indefinite article, a definite article, or a demonstrative adjective. In the first case, NP-attachment was assumed to be more natural and less costly than VP-attachment because of the presence of expectations and the absence of inferences. In the other two cases, NP-attachment was assumed to be less natural and more costly than in the first case (particularly in the demonstrative condition) because, in these cases, it was required to infer a set of referents. An off-line choice task (Experiment 1) and a self-paced reading task (Experiment 2) both produced results in accordance with the predictions

L'assignation des fonctions grammaticales en compréhension de phrases

Doctorat en psychologie -- Université catholique de Louvain, 199

Word-finding difficulties in French-speaking children with SLI: a case STUDY.

This study presents the case of a 9-year-old boy, Jeoffrey, with word-finding difficulties. In an attempt to investigate the cause(s) of these difficulties, an in-depth evaluation of his semantic and phonological skills was carried out, in which lexical and phonological variables such as age of acquisition or phonological complexity were controlled. Jeoffrey's performance was compared to a child matched for age. Although Jeoffrey showed no apparent phonological deficit, our results revealed deficits in semantic processes. We argue that this boy's word-finding difficulties are the result of imprecise and unspecified semantic representations. Therefore, as this case demonstrates, it is essential to determine the origin(s) of children's word-finding difficulties, which could be different and specific for each child presenting such a lexical deficit

Le manque du mot dans les troubles spécifiques du langage chez l’enfant

A word-finding difficulty is a language disorder whereby an individual knows the word he wants to use but is sporadically unable to retrieve it. It corresponds to a pathological increase of having a word on the "tip of the tongue" because it occurs quite frequently and for relatively common words. This type of deficit may appear in adults but also in children. Even though the notion of word-finding disorder is well established for adults, it is less acknowledged for children. This paper presents the characteristics of word-finding disorders and discusses the hypotheses on the origin of this disorder in children, taken into account actual findings on lexical access in adults and also specificities about lexical development.Le manque du mot est un trouble langagier dans lequel l’individu connaît le mot qu’il souhaite utiliser mais est sporadiquement incapable de le retrouver. Il s’agit en fait d’un accroissement pathologique des états de « mots sur le bout de la langue » dans le sens où ils surviennent à une fréquence élevée et pour des mots fréquents. Ce type de déficit peut se manifester chez l’adulte aphasique mais également chez l’enfant présentant un trouble spécifique du langage. Alors que la notion de manque du mot est bien établie dans le domaine adulte, chez l’enfant, ce trouble est encore peu connu. Cette revue critique de la littérature présente les caractéristiques du manque du mot dans les troubles spécifiques du développement du langage oral et discute des diverses hypothèses émises sur l’origine de ce trouble chez l’enfant en se basant sur les données actuelles de l’accès lexical chez l’adulte mais également sur les spécificités du développement lexical