Where should pitch accents and phrase breaks go? a syntax tree transducer solution

Abstract While monolingual speakers can use contrastive pitch accents to predict upcoming referents, bilingual speakers do not always use this cue predictively in their L2. The current study examines the role of recent exposure for predictive processing in native German (L1) second language learners of English (L2). In Experiment 1, participants followed instructions to click on two successive objects, for example, Click on the red carrot/duck. Click on the green/GREEN carrot (where CAPS indicate a contrastive L + H* accent). Participants predicted a repeated noun following a L + H* accent in the L1, but not in the L2, where processing was delayed. Experiment 2 shows that after an exposure period with highly consistent prosodic cues, bilinguals engaged in predictive processing in both their L1 and L2. However, inconsistent prosodic cues showed different effects on bilinguals’ L1 and L2 predictive processing. The results are discussed in terms of exposure-based and resource-deficit models of processing.

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Focus Attracts Attachment

Language and Speech ◽

10.1177/00238309211033321 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 002383092110333

Author(s):

Katy Carlson ◽

David Potter

Keyword(s):

Information Structure ◽

Focus Position ◽

Auditory Comprehension ◽

Perceptual Salience ◽

Wh Questions ◽

Prosodic Boundaries ◽

Sentence Interpretation ◽

Pitch Accents

There is growing evidence that pitch accents as well as prosodic boundaries can affect syntactic attachment. But is this an effect of their perceptual salience (the Salience Hypothesis), or is it because accents mark the position of focus (the Focus Attraction Hypothesis)? A pair of auditory comprehension experiments shows that focus position, as indicated by preceding wh-questions instead of by pitch accents, affects attachment by drawing the ambiguous phrase to the focus. This supports the Focus Attraction Hypothesis (or a pragmatic version of salience) for both these results and previous results of accents on attachment. These experiments show that information structure, as indicated with prosody or other means, influences sentence interpretation, and suggests a view on which modifiers are drawn to the most important information in a sentence.

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The Role of Prosodic Breaks and Pitch Accents in Grouping Words during On-line Sentence Processing

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn.2010.21587 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 23 (9) ◽

pp. 2447-2467 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Sara Bögels ◽

Herbert Schriefers ◽

Wietske Vonk ◽

Dorothee J. Chwilla

Keyword(s):

Sentence Processing ◽

Information Structure ◽

Pitch Accent ◽

Semantic Interpretation ◽

N400 Effect ◽

Cambridge University ◽

On Line ◽

Group Words ◽

Pitch Accents

The present study addresses the question whether accentuation and prosodic phrasing can have a similar function, namely, to group words in a sentence together. Participants listened to locally ambiguous sentences containing object- and subject-control verbs while ERPs were measured. In Experiment 1, these sentences contained a prosodic break, which can create a certain syntactic grouping of words, or no prosodic break. At the disambiguation, an N400 effect occurred when the disambiguation was in conflict with the syntactic grouping created by the break. We found a similar N400 effect without the break, indicating that the break did not strengthen an already existing preference. This pattern held for both object- and subject-control items. In Experiment 2, the same sentences contained a break and a pitch accent on the noun following the break. We argue that the pitch accent indicates a broad focus covering two words [see Gussenhoven, C. On the limits of focus projection in English. In P. Bosch & R. van der Sandt (Eds.), Focus: Linguistic, cognitive, and computational perspectives. Cambridge: University Press, 1999], thus grouping these words together. For object-control items, this was semantically possible, which led to a “good-enough” interpretation of the sentence. Therefore, both sentences were interpreted equally well and the N400 effect found in Experiment 1 was absent. In contrast, for subject-control items, a corresponding grouping of the words was impossible, both semantically and syntactically, leading to processing difficulty in the form of an N400 effect and a late positivity. In conclusion, accentuation can group words together on the level of information structure, leading to either a semantically “good-enough” interpretation or a processing problem when such a semantic interpretation is not possible.

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