Constraining mismatch in grammar and in sentence comprehension
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Elaine J. Francis
Abstract
This chapter presents psycholinguistic evidence for “default correspondences” – canonical mappings between semantic roles and constituent ordering – in the comprehension of two types of noun phrase mismatch: possessive free relatives and quantificational nouns. Experiments showed that possessive free relatives were processed more slowly and comprehended less accurately than normal possessive relatives, whereas quantificational nouns were processed more quickly and understood more accurately than normal binominal noun phrases. Following Townsend & Bever (2001), possessive free relatives cause processing difficulty because the position of the head violates the default, leading to confusion in semantic role assignment. Quantificational nouns do not violate the default in this way. One implication is that default correspondences may help limit mismatch in languages through their role in sentence comprehension.
Abstract
This chapter presents psycholinguistic evidence for “default correspondences” – canonical mappings between semantic roles and constituent ordering – in the comprehension of two types of noun phrase mismatch: possessive free relatives and quantificational nouns. Experiments showed that possessive free relatives were processed more slowly and comprehended less accurately than normal possessive relatives, whereas quantificational nouns were processed more quickly and understood more accurately than normal binominal noun phrases. Following Townsend & Bever (2001), possessive free relatives cause processing difficulty because the position of the head violates the default, leading to confusion in semantic role assignment. Quantificational nouns do not violate the default in this way. One implication is that default correspondences may help limit mismatch in languages through their role in sentence comprehension.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction xiii
- Almost forever 3
- Sadock and the Performadox 23
- Expressing regret and avowing belief 35
- A story of Jerry and Bob 59
- Conventionalization in indirect speech acts 77
- Pseudo-apologies in the news 93
- Towards an intonational-illocutionary interface 107
- Atkan Aleut “unclitic” pronouns and definiteness 125
- Nominalization affixes and multi-modularity of word formation 143
- No more phology! 163
- Wait’ll (you hear) the next one 175
- Aleut case matters 193
- English derived nominals in three frameworks 213
- Out of control 229
- An automodular perspective on the frozenness of pseudoclefts, and vice versa 243
- Negation as structure building in a home sign system 261
- Constraining mismatch in grammar and in sentence comprehension 279
- Evidence for grammatical multi-modularity from a corpus of non-native essays 299
- Autolexical Grammar and language processing 315
- Topic index 337
- Name index 339
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction xiii
- Almost forever 3
- Sadock and the Performadox 23
- Expressing regret and avowing belief 35
- A story of Jerry and Bob 59
- Conventionalization in indirect speech acts 77
- Pseudo-apologies in the news 93
- Towards an intonational-illocutionary interface 107
- Atkan Aleut “unclitic” pronouns and definiteness 125
- Nominalization affixes and multi-modularity of word formation 143
- No more phology! 163
- Wait’ll (you hear) the next one 175
- Aleut case matters 193
- English derived nominals in three frameworks 213
- Out of control 229
- An automodular perspective on the frozenness of pseudoclefts, and vice versa 243
- Negation as structure building in a home sign system 261
- Constraining mismatch in grammar and in sentence comprehension 279
- Evidence for grammatical multi-modularity from a corpus of non-native essays 299
- Autolexical Grammar and language processing 315
- Topic index 337
- Name index 339
