Producing filler-gap dependencies: structural priming evidence for two distinct types of combinatorial processes in production

A previous model of long-distance dependency production claims that speakers compose clause-taking verbs like believe and the complementizer of their complement clauses (that or the null complementizer) differently when there is a cross-clausal filler-gap dependency crossing the complementizer structure (e.g., Who did the breeder believe (that) the dog bit?) than when there is not (e.g., The breeder believed (that) the dog bit them.). This claim implicates two distinct structures headed by clause-taking verbs like believe. Under a certain assumption about the lexical boost effect, this model predicts that the lexical boost effect for the that priming occurs only when prime and target sentences both contain a cross-clausal filler-gap dependency or when neither does. In the current study, a computational model of structural priming implementing the core claims of the previous filler-gap dependency production model was built to show that this prediction coherently follows from the model. The prediction of the model was then tested in five recall based structural priming experiments. Speakers showed a larger complementizer priming when prime and target sentences share a clause-taking verb (i.e., the lexical boost effect). But the lexical boost effect was selective to when both prime and target sentences contained a cross-clausal filler-gap dependency (Experiment 3) and when neither did (Experiment 1). Critically, the lexical boost effect was absent when only either prime or target sentences contained a filler-gap dependency crossing the complementizer structure (Experiments 2, 4, and 5), confirming the prediction of the model.

The Role of Spontaneous Repetitions During Treatment of Morphosyntactic Forms for Children With Developmental Language Disorder

Purpose Children with developmental language disorder sometimes spontaneously repeat clinician models of morphemes targeted for treatment. We examine how spontaneous repeating of clinician models in the form of recasts associates with improved child production of those emerging morphemes. Method Forty-seven preschool children with developmental language disorder participated in Enhanced Conversational Recast therapy and were monitored for spontaneous repetitions of morphemes modeled by the clinician through conversational recasting. We calculated proportion of correct and incorrect productions elicited during treatment and for generalization probes as well as treatment effect sizes. We then used odds ratios to determine the probability that a spontaneous repetition may precede treatment gains and calculated correlations of correct repetitions with correct in-treatment productions of targets and treatment effect sizes. Results Spontaneous repetitions were highly likely to happen just prior to meaningful treatment progress. Children with higher frequencies of correct spontaneous repetitions of morpheme targets also showed higher frequencies of correct productions of these forms during the course of treatment. Furthermore, children with an earlier onset of repetitions and higher frequencies of correct repetitions showed overall larger effect sizes at the end of treatment. Conclusions Children's use of correct forms in their repetitions may serve as a self-scaffold for mastering productions of the correct form via structural priming mechanisms. Tracking spontaneously repeated targets may be a useful milestone for identifying response to treatment.

How do people interpret implausible sentences?

People sometimes interpret implausible sentences non-literally, for example treating The mother gave the candle the daughter as meaning the daughter receiving the candle. But how do they do so? We contrasted a nonliteral syntactic analysis account, according to which people compute a syntactic analysis appropriate for this nonliteral meaning, with a nonliteral semantic analysis account, according to which they arrive at this meaning via purely semantic analysis. The nonliteral syntactic but not semantic reanalysis account postulates that people consider not only a literal-but-implausible double-object (DO) analysis in comprehending The mother gave the candle the daughter, but also a nonliteral-but-plausible prepositional-object (PO) analysis (i.e., including to before the daughter). In three structural priming experiments, participants heard a plausible or implausible DO or PO prime sentence. They then answered a comprehension question first or described a picture of a dative event first. In line with the nonliteral syntactic analysis account, priming was reduced following implausible than plausible sentences and following nonliterally than literally-interpreted implausible sentences. We argue that comprehenders project a plausible analysis before they have encountered the whole sentence (e.g., a PO analysis at the candle for The mother gave the candle the daughter) and that this analysis is often maintained even if it turns to be incorrect.

Lexical and syntactic influences on syntactic encoding in written language production by deaf speakers

It remains unclear whether deaf and hearing speakers differ in the processes and representations underlying written language production. Using the structural priming paradigm, this study investigated syntactic and lexical influences on syntactic encoding in writing by deaf speakers of Chinese in comparison with hearing controls. Experiment 1 showed that deaf speakers tended to re-use a prior syntactic structure in written sentence production (i.e., structural priming) to the same extent as hearing speakers did; in addition, such a tendency was enhanced when the target sentence repeated the verb from the prime sentence (i.e., lexical boost) in both deaf and hearing speakers to the same extent. These results suggest that deaf and hearing speakers are similarly affected by syntactic and lexical factors in syntactic encoding in writing. Experiment 2 revealed comparable boosts in structural priming between prime-target pairs with homographic homophone verbs and prime-target pairs with heterographic homophone verbs in hearing speakers, but a boost for prime-target pairs with homographic homophone verbs but not those with heterographic homophone verbs in deaf speakers. These results suggest that while syntactic encoding in writing is influenced by lemma associations developed for homophones as a result of phonological identity in hearing speakers, it is influenced by lemma associations developed for homographs as a result of orthographic identity in deaf speakers. In all, syntactic encoding in writing seems to employ the same syntactic and lexical representations in hearing and deaf speakers, though lexical representations are shaped more by orthography than phonology in deaf speakers.