Some Different Kinds of Things You Know as English Speakers What’s wrong with each of the following? !ort sfort bort ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimbel in the wabe. The cats won’t bake the meat loaf. The cats won’t eating the meat loaf.
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Some Different Kinds of Things You Know as English Speakers
Some Different Kinds of Things You Know as English Speakers. What’s wrong with each of the following? !ort sfort bort ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimbel in the wabe. The cats won’t bake the meat loaf. The cats won’t eating the meat loaf. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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Some Different Kinds of Things You Know as English Speakers
What’s wrong with each of the following?
!ort
sfort
bort
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimbel in the wabe.
The cats won’t bake the meat loaf.
The cats won’t eating the meat loaf.
Some ERP Components Related to Language
N400 = ERP component related to meaning - Bigger when word’s meaning doesn’t fit context - Bigger for unfamiliar words - May reflect amount of work required to integrate with context
Can evoke both at once - But not always as nice as here! - Depending on size of each component & timing of P600, can partially or completely cancel each other out
P600 = ERP component related to form - Bigger when word property other than meaning wrong or hard to process - May be a type of P300 - Sometimes called Syntactic Positive Shift (SPS)
Priming in Word Comprehension
A word preceded by something related to it is recognized & understood faster & more easily
tree tree
blanket blanket
job job
doctor sports
nurse Faster nurse Slower
pencil pencil
window window
… …
Coulson, Federmeier, Van Petten, & Kutas (2005)
How do priming effects of lexical & sentence-level context compare, & do they add or interact?
Stimulus Materials:Congruous sentence plus highly associated word:They were truly stuck, since she didn’t have a spare TIRE.
Congruous sentence but no associated word:During the test, Ellen leaned over and borrowed my spare PENCIL.
Incongruous sentence plus highly associated word:During the test, Ellen leaned over and borrowed my spare TIRE.
Incongruous sentence but no associated word:They were truly stuck, since she didn’t have a spare PENCIL.
When a word is at the end of a sentence it fits into well, it doesn’t matter much whether the word right before it is an associate
But out of sentence context, does matter
So, by the end of a sentence, sentence context trumps individual word associations Word associations (& word familiarity) have more
influence for words near the beginnings of sentences
“A University student charged with threatening to kill the President via email was arrested Thursday, following issuance of a complaint and warrant, officials said.”
- Daily Illini, 2/27/94
Relationships Among Words in Sentences
Being Led “Down the Garden Path”
emailemail“A University student charged with threatening to kill the President via XY
A Slightly More Subtle Example
“Marge Schott, managing partner of the Cincinnati Reds, at first did not want to apologize for her remark that Hitler‘was good at the beginning but he just went too far’. Under pressure, she finally said that she regretted her remarks ‘offended many people’.”
- NY Times, 7/21/96, Tannen, I’m sorry, I won’t apologize
What did she regret? Not her remarks, only their consequences
But her choice of wording gives the appearance of expressing regret for what she said
Including an optional that would have made it clearer
"Under pressure, she finally said that she regretted her remarks 'offended many people'."
that
^
The referees warned the spectators would probably get too rowdy.against heckling the other team.
Ambiguity arises because that optional (in English)
that
^
Temporary ambiguity about relationship between the Verb
Is the nounA Direct Object (DO) , orSubject of an Embedded Clause?
Temporary Structural Ambiguity
& the Noun after it
Verb Bias
Verbs differ in how often they're used in particular sentence structures
Compare The referees warned the spectators ...with The bus driver worried the passengers ...