15.3390, Diss: Cognitive Science: Demestre: ' Procesamiento...'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-15-3390. Fri Dec 03 2004. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 15.3390, Diss: Cognitive Science: Demestre: ' Procesamiento...'                                                                                                                                                        

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1)
Date: 02-Dec-2004
From: Josep Demestre < josep.demestre at urv.net >
Subject: Procesamiento de frases e información léxica (Sentence Processing and Lexical Information) 
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 16:50:16
From: Josep Demestre < josep.demestre at urv.net >
Subject: Procesamiento de frases e información léxica (Sentence Processing and Lexical Information) 
 

Institution: Rovira i Virgili University
Program: Cognitive Science and Language 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2003 

Author: Josep Demestre

Dissertation Title: Procesamiento de frases e información léxica (Sentence
Processing and Lexical Information) 

Dissertation URL:  http://www.tdx.cesca.es/TESIS_URV/AVAILABLE/TDX-0325104-124559

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science
                     Neurolinguistics
                     Psycholinguistics
                     Syntax

Subject Language(s): Spanish (Language Code: SPN)


Dissertation Director(s):
José Eugenio García-Albea

Dissertation Abstract:

The main aim of this thesis was to examine the influence verb-specific 
information has on sentence processing. We studied two particular sources 
of information that are stored at a verb's lexical entry: (i) the control 
properties of a verb that determine the assignment of an antecedent to the 
null subject of an infinitival complement, and (ii) the information that 
specifies that a verb subcategorizes for a tensed complement in a particular 
verbal mood.

We tested the predictions of the garden-path model (Frazier, 1987) and the 
predictions of constraint-based lexicalist models (MacDonald, et al., 1994; 
Trueswell & Tanenhaus, 1994). The central question we wanted to address 
is whether the sentence processor initially ignores verb-specific 
information -as the garden-path model assumes- or whether such lexical 
information has a rapid influence on the early stages of parsing -as 
assumed by constraint-based lexicalist parsing models.

We run nine experiments -a cross modal naming experiment, two ERPs 
experiments and six self-paced reading experiments- to examine the role 
of control and mood information on the early stages of parsing. There are 
two novel aspects in this thesis that we would like to highlight. On the one 
hand, the relation between verb control information and on-line sentence 
comprehension had received little attention in Spanish. Moreover, in the six 
experiments designed to examine the influence of this type of information 
on sentence processing we manipulated the agreement patterns between 
the null subject of the infinitive and an adjective predicated of it. To date, 
nobody had used such a manipulation to study the assignment of an 
antecedent to the null subject of an infinitival complement. On the other 
hand, the influence of mood information on sentence processing had not 
been studied yet.

The results of the experiments show that the sentence processor accesses 
and uses control- and mood information very rapidly. The experiments that 
examined the influence of control information have shown that the 
processor interprets the null subject of an infinitival complement very 
rapidly. Moreover, we have shown that the processor, rather than initially 
associating the null subject with the most recent filler -as predicted by the 
garden-path model- rapidly uses control information to assign an 
antecedent to this null subject -as predicted by constraint-based lexicalist 
models. The ERP experiments, in addition to show the early influence of 
control information on parsing, have provided further evidence about the 
brain responses to syntactic anomalies in Spanish. We examined a type of 
agreement, that between an NP and an adjective predicated of it, that had 
not been previously studied. The waves elicited by agreement violations in 
Spanish have been shown to be similar to those reported in previous work. 
Furthermore, we have contributed to the demonstration of the feasibility of 
doing ERP studies using continuous, natural speech as the stimulus 
materials.

The experiments that examined the role of mood information on parsing 
have shown that this particular type of lexical information is rapidly used by 
the sentence processor. Moreover, we have shown that this type of 
information is made available as soon as the system recognizes a verb in 
the input string.

In the light of the results, we conclude that, in contrast to the predictions of 
the garden-path model, the information stored at a verb's lexical entry 
plays an important role at the early stages of parsing. The early use of such 
verb-specific information is in accordance with the predictions of 
constraint-based lexicalist parsing models.





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LINGUIST List: Vol-15-3390