When errors aren\u27t: How comprehenders selectively violate Binding Theory

It has been claimed that comprehenders use the Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1986) to restrict the search for a reflexive’s antecedent in early stages of comprehension (Dillon, Mishler, Sloggett, & Phillips, 2013; Sturt, 2003; Nicol & Swinney, 1989) However, recent findings challenge this view, demonstrating that comprehenders occasionally access antecedents on the basis of their match with a reflexive’s morphosyntactic features (Chen, Jäger, & Vasishth, 2012; Patil, Lewis, & Vasishth, 2016, Parker, & Phillips, 2017). In this dissertation, I investigate the source of this ’grammatical fallibility’ in the real-time application of Principle A of the Binding Theory. Specifically, I ask whether this pattern of behavior is the direct consequence of an error-prone retrieval mechanism, or if it is instead the result of a discourse-oriented, logophoric interpretation of reflexive forms. This work presents four experiments demonstrating that comprehenders only consider non-Principle A antecedents which act as prominent perspective holders in the discourse. I explain these findings by appealing to local, logophoric center available for reflexive reference

Prosody Disambiguates String-Identical Connected Clauses and Relative Clauses

We investigated whether prosody disambiguates Clefts containing string identical Connected Clauses (CC, 1) and Relative Clauses (RC, 2) in English. RCs in (2) are nested within the element they modify and in focus. CCs (1) carry given information and attach higher in the structure. -Who was laughing? -It was [the editor] [CC that was laughing] -Who called? -It was [the editor [RC that was laughing]] ([CC that called]) Exp1: A Planned Production (N=8) study revealed clear tonal and durational differences at multiple regions. Exp2: To test whether these prosodic cues disambiguate the two readings, 64 participants judged the acceptability of auditorily presented sentences in response to preceding contexts and questions which elicited either a CC or RC reading. The prosody of the target sentences either matched or mismatched the context, leading to a 2(Context: CC vs. RC)*2(Prosody: Match vs. Mismatch) design. Matched prosody was accepted more often (85%) than mismatched prosody (59%; p<.01), indicating listeners’ sensitivity to the prosodic differences between the two structures. This effect was smaller for CC structures than for RC ones (p<.01), which suggests that prosodic disambiguation is more important for nested RCs than for non-nested CC structures

The prosody of Clefted Relatives : A new window into prosodic representations

The well-attested association between information structure and the acoustic properties of sentences can be captured by either assuming a direct mapping between semantics and acoustics or invoking the mediation of phonological processes operating on well-defined prosodic domains (indirect approaches). Although these two accounts’ predictions typically converge, we identified an understudied contrast for which the two views make different predictions. Specifically, through 3 experiments (1 production, 2 comprehension), we tested the prosody of it-clefts containing string-identical Connected Clauses (-Who sang? -It was [the editor] [that sang]) or Relative Clauses (-Who called? -It was [the editor [that sang]] ([that called])) that have semantically focused elements of different structural sizes. Connected Clauses attach high in the structure and are given. Relative Clauses are assumed to convey background information, but here they are nested within the focused element and also in focus. Our production results showed a localized prominence on the rightmost stressable syllable of the Relative Clause, which is in line with indirect accounts. The comprehension studies further showed that i) clefted Relatives trigger garden-path effects in reading, but ii) garden-paths disappear when prosody is present. The studies support indirect accounts by employing more complicated structural configurations