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Syntactic complexity versus concatenation in a verbal production task

  • Marjorie Barker and Eric Pederson
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Syntactic Complexity
This chapter is in the book Syntactic Complexity

Abstract

We tested whether the speaker’s communicative intent drives the selection of grammatical constructions. Participants viewed complex human action video stimuli and were asked to respond in detail to a single question for each video concerning either what had happened (eliciting descriptions) or why a particular event had occurred (eliciting explanations). We predicted that responses to the why questions would contain more syntactically complex constructions (specifically verbal complements), while responses to the what questions would be more concatenated. The experimental results with these stimuli did not uphold the first part of the hypothesis: complexity in the form of syntactic embedding was statistically equivalent under both conditions. However, there was significantly more concatenation in the form of coordination in the what condition.

Abstract

We tested whether the speaker’s communicative intent drives the selection of grammatical constructions. Participants viewed complex human action video stimuli and were asked to respond in detail to a single question for each video concerning either what had happened (eliciting descriptions) or why a particular event had occurred (eliciting explanations). We predicted that responses to the why questions would contain more syntactically complex constructions (specifically verbal complements), while responses to the what questions would be more concatenated. The experimental results with these stimuli did not uphold the first part of the hypothesis: complexity in the form of syntactic embedding was statistically equivalent under both conditions. However, there was significantly more concatenation in the form of coordination in the what condition.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction 1
  4. Part I. Diachrony
  5. From nominal to clausal morphosyntax 23
  6. Re(e)volving complexity 53
  7. Multiple routes to clause union 81
  8. On the origins of serial verb constructions in Kalam 119
  9. A quantitative approach to the development of complex predicates 145
  10. Elements of complex structures, where recursion isn’t 163
  11. Nominalization and the origin of subordination 199
  12. The co-evolution of syntactic and pragmatic complexity 215
  13. Two pathways of grammatical evolution 239
  14. Part II. Child language
  15. On the role of frequency and similarity in the acquisition of subject and non-subject relative clauses 251
  16. ‘ Starting small ’ effects in the acquisition of early relative constructions in Spanish 277
  17. The ontogeny of complex verb phrases 311
  18. Part III. Cognition and neurology
  19. Syntactic complexity versus concatenation in a verbal production task 391
  20. The emergence of linguistic complexity 405
  21. Cognitive and neural underpinnings of syntactic complexity 433
  22. Neural mechanisms of recursive processing in cognitive and linguistic complexity 461
  23. Syntactic complexity in the brain 491
  24. Part IV. Biology and evolution
  25. Neural plasticity 509
  26. Recursion 531
  27. Index 545
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.85.14syn

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction 1
  4. Part I. Diachrony
  5. From nominal to clausal morphosyntax 23
  6. Re(e)volving complexity 53
  7. Multiple routes to clause union 81
  8. On the origins of serial verb constructions in Kalam 119
  9. A quantitative approach to the development of complex predicates 145
  10. Elements of complex structures, where recursion isn’t 163
  11. Nominalization and the origin of subordination 199
  12. The co-evolution of syntactic and pragmatic complexity 215
  13. Two pathways of grammatical evolution 239
  14. Part II. Child language
  15. On the role of frequency and similarity in the acquisition of subject and non-subject relative clauses 251
  16. ‘ Starting small ’ effects in the acquisition of early relative constructions in Spanish 277
  17. The ontogeny of complex verb phrases 311
  18. Part III. Cognition and neurology
  19. Syntactic complexity versus concatenation in a verbal production task 391
  20. The emergence of linguistic complexity 405
  21. Cognitive and neural underpinnings of syntactic complexity 433
  22. Neural mechanisms of recursive processing in cognitive and linguistic complexity 461
  23. Syntactic complexity in the brain 491
  24. Part IV. Biology and evolution
  25. Neural plasticity 509
  26. Recursion 531
  27. Index 545
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