Reevaluating the role of innate linking rules in the acquisition of verb argument structure

2010 ◽  
pp. 325-344
Author(s):  
Sigal Uziel-Karl
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Verb Argument Structure

scholarly journals The role of performance limitations in the acquisition of verb-argument structure: an alternative account

2001 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNA L. THEAKSTON ◽  
ELENA V. M. LIEVEN ◽  
JULIAN M. PINE ◽  
CAROLINE F. ROWLAND
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Verb Argument Structure ◽  
Performance Limitations

Affectedness and direct objects: The role of lexical semantics in the acquisition of verb argument structure

Cognition ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 41 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 153-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jess Gropen ◽  
Steven Pinker ◽  
Michelle Hollander ◽  
Richard Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Lexical Semantics ◽  
Verb Argument Structure ◽  
Direct Objects

scholarly journals The wrong horse was bet on – The Effects of Argument Structure versus Argument Adjacency on the Processing of Idiomatic Sentences

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Reimer ◽  
Eva Smolka
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Sentence Completion ◽  
Button Press ◽  
Passive Voice ◽  
Figurative Meaning ◽  
Verb Argument Structure ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Structure Versus ◽  
Idiom Processing

Psycholinguistc research remains puzzled by the question under what circurmstances syntactically transformed idioms keep their figurative meaning. In this study we examined the effects of verb argument structure and argument adjacency on the processing of idiomatic and literal sentences in German. In two sentence-completion experiments, participants listened to idiomatic and literal sentences, both in active and passive voice, without the sentence-final verb. They indicated via button-press, which of three visually presented verbs best completed the sentence.In both experiments, idiomatic sentences were processed faster than literal ones, and active sentences faster than passive ones. In passivized sentences, the patterns of argument structure and argument adjacency reversed across experiments: In Experiment 1, sentences with ditransitive verbs were processed faster than sentences with transitive verbs, and vice versa in Experiment 2. This pattern corresponds to faster processing of adjacent than of nonadjacent arguments and thus points to the dominating role of argument adjacency rather than argumentstructure in the processing of passivized sentences. With respect to idiom processing, we conclude that the adjacency of the verb and its arguments determines whether passivized idioms keep their figurative meaning.

scholarly journals Syntactic language processing: ERP lesion data on the role of the basal ganglia

2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 1053-1060 ◽  
Author(s):  
SONJA A. KOTZ ◽  
STEFAN FRISCH ◽  
D. YVES VON CRAMON ◽  
ANGELA D. FRIEDERICI
Keyword(s):  
Basal Ganglia ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Thematic Role ◽  
Neurologically Impaired ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Verb Argument Structure ◽  
Extended Duration

The role of the basal ganglia in syntactic language processing was investigated with event-related brain potentials in fourteen neurologically impaired patients. Seven of these patients had basal ganglia lesions while 7 other patients primarily had lesions of the left temporo–parietal region excluding the basal ganglia. All patients listened to sentences that were either correct or included a verb argument structure violation. In previous experiments this type of violation elicited a biphasic pattern of an N400–P600 complex in young healthy participants. While the N400 may result from incorrect semantic-thematic role assignment, the P600 reflects the fact that verb information does not license the syntactic structure at present. Results of the patient experiment revealed a double dissociation: patients with left temporo–parietal lesions only show a P600, whereas patients with lesions of the basal ganglia showed no P600, but a negativity with extended duration that resembled an N400. The latter pattern not only confirms previous reports that the basal ganglia modulate the P600 but extends these results by showing that the N400 as a late semantic–thematic integration process appears partially modulated by the basal ganglia. (JINS, 2003, 9, 1053–1060.)

scholarly journals Effects of Both Preemption and Entrenchment in the Retreat from Verb Overgeneralization Errors: Four Reanalyses, an Extended Replication, and a Meta-Analytic Synthesis

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Ambridge ◽  
Libby Barak ◽  
Elizabeth Wonnacott ◽  
Colin Bannard ◽  
Giovanni Sala
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Frequency Of Occurrence ◽  
Chi Square ◽  
Verb Argument Structure ◽  
Predictor Models ◽  
Child Language Acquisition ◽  
As Effects ◽  
Single Predictor

How do speakers avoid producing verb overgeneralization errors such as *She covered paint onto the wall or *She poured the cup with water? Five previous papers have found seemingly contradictory results concerning the role of statistical preemption (competition from acceptable alternatives such as She covered the wall with paint or She poured water into the cup) and entrenchment (a mechanism sensitive to all uses of the relevant verb). Here, we use more appropriate measures of preemption and entrenchment (attraction measures based on the chi-square statistic, as opposed to using only the frequency of occurrence in favoured constructions) as well as more appropriate statistical analyses and, in one case, a larger corpus to reanalyse the data from these studies. We find that for errors of verb argument structure overgeneralization (as in the examples above), preemption/entrenchment effects are almost always observed in single-predictor models, but are rarely dissociable, due to collinearity. Fortunately, this problem is much less acute for errors of reversative un- prefixation (e.g., *unsqueeze; *uncome), which could in principle be blocked by (a) non-reversative uses of the same verb root (e.g., squeeze, come; entrenchment), and/or (b) lexically-unrelated verbs with similar meanings to the relevant un- forms (e.g., release, go; preemption). Across a reanalysis of two previous studies of un- prefixation, and a new extended replication with adults, we find dissociable effects of both preemption and entrenchment. A meta-analytic synthesis revealed that, across the studies, both effects are reliable, though preemption appears to increase with age. We conclude that a successful account of the retreat from verb overgeneralization is likely to be one that yields preemption and entrenchment as effects that fall naturally out of the learner’s attempts to communicate meaning, rather than one that treats these effects as mechanisms in their own right, and discuss current accounts that potentially meet this criterion. Finally, we set out some methodological recommendations that can be profitably applied not only to corpus-based experimental studies, but studies of child language acquisition in general.

Niuean

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Massam
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Noun Incorporation ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Theta Role ◽  
Predicate Argument Structure

This book presents a detailed descriptive and theoretical examination of predicate-argument structure in Niuean, a Polynesian language within the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family, spoken mainly on the Pacific island of Niue and in New Zealand. Niuean has VSO word order and an ergative case-marking system, both of which raise questions for a subject-predicate view of sentence structure. Working within a broadly Minimalist framework, this volume develops an analysis in which syntactic arguments are not merged locally to their thematic sources, but instead are merged high, above an inverted extended predicate which serves syntactically as the Niuean verb, later undergoing movement into the left periphery of the clause. The thematically lowest argument merges as an absolutive inner subject, with higher arguments merging as applicatives. The proposal relates Niuean word order and ergativity to its isolating morphology, by equating the absence of inflection with the absence of IP in Niuean, which impacts many aspects of its grammar. As well as developing a novel analysis of clause and argument structure, word order, ergative case, and theta role assignment, the volume argues for an expanded understanding of subjecthood. Throughout the volume, many other topics are also treated, such as noun incorporation, word formation, the parallel internal structure of predicates and arguments, null arguments, displacement typology, the role of determiners, and the structure of the left periphery.

scholarly journals Frequency Sensitivity of Neural Responses to English Verb Argument Structure Violations

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jona Sassenhagen ◽  
Ryan Blything ◽  
Elena V. M. Lieven ◽  
Ben Ambridge
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Learning ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Online Processing ◽  
Verb Argument Structure ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Intransitive Verbs

How are verb-argument structure preferences acquired? Children typically receive very little negative evidence, raising the question of how they come to understand the restrictions on grammatical constructions. Statistical learning theories propose stochastic patterns in the input contain sufficient clues. For example, if a verb is very common, but never observed in transitive constructions, this would indicate that transitive usage of that verb is illegal. Ambridge et al. (2008) have shown that in offline grammaticality judgements of intransitive verbs used in transitive constructions, low-frequency verbs elicit higher acceptability ratings than high-frequency verbs, as predicted if relative frequency is a cue during statistical learning. Here, we investigate if the same pattern also emerges in on-line processing of English sentences. EEG was recorded while healthy adults listened to sentences featuring transitive uses of semantically matched verb pairs of differing frequencies. We replicate the finding of higher acceptabilities of transitive uses of low- vs. high-frequency intransitive verbs. Event-Related Potentials indicate a similar result: early electrophysiological signals distinguish between misuse of high- vs low-frequency verbs. This indicates online processing shows a similar sensitivity to frequency as off-line judgements, consistent with a parser that reflects an original acquisition of grammatical constructions via statistical cues. However, the nature of the observed neural responses was not of the expected, or an easily interpretable, form, motivating further work into neural correlates of online processing of syntactic constructions.

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