Article published in:
Linguistics in the Netherlands 2018
Edited by Bert Le Bruyn and Janine Berns
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 35] 2018
► pp. 65–78

Processing delays

The late reactivation of the argument of unaccusative verbs

| Macquarie University
| University College London
An eye-tracking experiment using the Visual World Paradigm (VWP) shows that in on-line sentence processing in English the argument of an unaccusative verb reactivates late after verb offset. In contrast to previous studies, this VWP experiment establishes the exact time course of this effect, which matches the time course previously found for Dutch, despite differences in word order between the two languages. Furthermore, it uncovers an early reactivation of the argument of unergative verbs that has previously gone unnoticed. Such an effect has previously been observed for Dutch, but not for English. Moreover, the effect seems to occur earlier in English than in Dutch. We suggest that this difference may be due to the more rigid word order of English, which provides the parser with more informative cues.
Keywords: unaccusativity, language processing, Visual World Paradigm (VWP), argument reactivation
Published online: 03 December 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00005.kor
References

[ p. 75 ]References

Agnew, Zarinah K., Hans van de Koot, Carolyn McGettigan & Sophie K. Scott
2014 “Do sentences with unaccusative verbs involve syntactic movement? Evidence from neuroimaging.” Language, cognition and neuroscience 29 (9): 1035–1045. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Altmann, Gerry T.
1998 “Ambiguity in sentence processing.” Trends in cognitive sciences 2 (4): 146–152. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Altmann, Gerry T. & Yuki Kamide
2007 “The real-time mediation of visual attention by language and world knowledge: Linking anticipatory (and other) eye movements to linguistic processing.” Journal of Memory and Language 57: 502–518. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Altmann, Gerry & Mark J. Steedman
1988 “Interaction with context during human sentence processing.” Cognition 30: 191–238. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Burkhardt, Petra, Maria M. Pinango & Keng Wong
2003 “The role of the anterior left hemisphere in real-time sentence comprehension: Evidence from split intransitivity.” Brain and Language 86: 9–22. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Burzio, Luigi
1986 Italian syntax: A government-binding approach. Dordrecht: Reidel. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, Roger. M.
1974 “The control of eye fixation by the meaning of spoken language. A new methodology for the real-time investigation of speech perception, memory, and language processing.” Cognitive Psychology 6: 84–107. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Crain, Stephen & Mark J. Steedman
1985 “On not being led up the garden path: the use of context by the psychological parser.” Natural language parsing: Psychological, computational, and theoretical perspectives ed. by D. Dowty, L. Karttunen and A. Zwicky, 320–358. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Frazier, Lyn
1979 On comprehending sentences: Syntactic parsing strategies. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Friedmann, Naama
2007 “Young children and A-chains: The acquisition of Hebrew unaccusatives.” Language Acquisition 14: 377–422. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Friedmann, Naama, Gina Taranto, Lewis P. Shapiro, & David Swinney
2008 “The leaf fell (the leaf): The online processing of unaccusatives.” Linguistic Inquiry 39: 355–377. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Huettig, Falk & Gerry T. Altmann
2005 “Word meaning and the control of eye fixation: Semantic competitor effects and the visual world paradigm.” Cognition 96: 23–32. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kimball, John
1973 “Seven principles of surface structure parsing in natural language.” Cognition, 2 (1): 15–47. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Koring, Loes, Pim Mak & Eric J. Reuland
2012 “The time course of argument reactivation revealed: Using the visual world paradigm.” Cognition 123 (3): 361–379. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Levin, Beth & Malka Rappaport Hovav
1995 Unaccusativity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Mirman, Daniel
2014 Growth curve analysis and visualization using R. Chapman and Hall / CRC.Google Scholar
Mirman, Daniel, James A. Dixon, & James S. Magnuson
2008 “Statistical and computational models of the visual world paradigm: Growth curves and individual differences.” Journal of Memory and Language 59: 475–494. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 76 ]
Momma, Shotta, L. Robert Slevc, & Colin Phillips
2018 “Unaccusativity in sentence production.” Linguistic Inquiry 49: 181–194. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Perlmutter, David M.
1978 “Impersonal passives and the unaccusative hypothesis.” Proceedings of the fourth annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society ed. by J. J. Jaeger, A. C. Woodbury, F. Ackerman, C. Chiarello, O. D. Gensler, J. Kingston, E. E. Sweetser, H. Thompson, & K. W. Whistler, 157–189. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Perlmutter, David M., & Paul Postal
1984 “The 1-advancement exclusiveness law.” Studies in relational grammar 2: 81–125.Google Scholar
Perraudin, Sandrine & Pierre Mounoud
2009 “Contribution of the priming paradigm to the understanding of the conceptual developmental shift from 5 to 9 years of age.” Developmental Science 12: 956–977. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Poirier, Josée, Matthew Walenski & Lewis P. Shapiro
2012 “The role of parallelism in the real-time processing of anaphora.” Language and cognitive processes 27 (6): 868–886. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya
2000 “The theta system: Syntactic realization of verbal concepts.” OTS working papers in linguistics.Google Scholar
2002 “The theta system: An overview.” Theoretical Linguistics 28: 229–290.Google Scholar
Rosen, Carol
1981 “The relational structure of reflexive clauses: Evidence from Italian.” PhD Diss., Harvard.Google Scholar
Shetreet, Einat, Naama Friedmann & Uri Hadar
2010 “The Neural Correlates of Linguistic Distinctions: Unaccusative and Unergative Verbs.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 22 (10): 2306–2315. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Shetreet, Einat and Naama Friedmann
2012 “Stretched, jumped, and fell: An fMRI investigation of reflexive verbs and other intransitives.” NeuroImage 60: 1800–1806. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Szekely, Anna, Thomas Jacobsen, Simona D’Amico, Antonella Devescovi, Elena Andonova, Dan Herron, et al.
2004 “A new on-line resource for psycholinguistic studies.” Journal of Memory and Language 51: 247–250. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tanenhaus, Michael K., Michael J. Spivey-Knowlton, Kathleen M. Eberhard & Julie C. Sedivy
1995 “Integration of visual and linguistic information in spoken language comprehension.” Science 268: 1632–1634. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Yee, Eiling & Julie C. Sedivy
2006 “Eye movements to pictures reveal transient semantic activation during spoken word recognition.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 32: 1–14. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 77 ]