Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-17T22:23:05.807Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Can NEG placement have negative consequences (for efficient processing)? A bilingual test case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2018

JOHN M. LIPSKI
JOHN M. LIPSKI*
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE John M. Lipski, Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, 442 Burrowes Building, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA. E-mail: jlipski@psu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The present study examines the relative processing efficiency of two typologically diverse configurations of sentential negation: immediately preverbal NEG and unbounded clause-final NEG. In order to effect a head-to-head comparison, the data are drawn from a bilingual speech community in the Afro-Colombian village of San Basilio de Palenque, in which two lexically cognate languages are in contact, differing principally in the placement of the sentential negator: Spanish (preverbal NEG) and the Afro-Hispanic creole language Palenquero (clause-final NEG). The results of a series of experiments suggest that preverbal negation is quite robust, while processing of clause-final negation is degraded under increased cognitive demands. Contextual and pragmatic cues ameliorate the processing of likely negative utterances, while unbounded clause-final negation is more vulnerable in ambiguous utterances. The contrasting behavior of Spanish and Palenquero negation highlights the possible role of processing mechanisms as contributing to typological differences among languages.

Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 39 , Issue 6 , November 2018 , pp. 1147 - 1188
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Altmann, G., & Mirković, J. (2009). Incrementality and prediction in human sentence processing. Cognitive Science, 33, 583–609.Google Scholar
Altmann, G., & Steedman, M. (1988). Interaction with context during human sentence processing. Cognition, 30, 191–238.Google Scholar
Bader, M., & Lasser, I. (1994). German verb-final clauses and sentence processing: Evidence for immediate attachment. In C. Clifton Jr., L. Frazier & K. Rayner (Eds.), Perspectives on sentence processing (pp. 225–242). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2014). lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4. R package version 1.1–12. Retrieved from http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lme4 Google Scholar
Bates, E., McNew, S., MacWhinney, B., Devescovi, A., & Smith, S. (1982). Functional constraints on sentence processing: A cross-linguistic study. Cognition, 11, 245–299.Google Scholar
Bernolet, S., Hartsuiker, R., & Pickering, M. (2007). Shared syntactic representations in bilinguals: Evidence for the role of word-order repetition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33, 931–949.Google Scholar
Bernolet, S., Hartsuiker, R., & Pickering, M. (2012). Effects of phonological feedback on the selection of syntax: Evidence from between-language syntactic priming. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15, 503–516.Google Scholar
Bernolet, S., Hartsuiker, R., & Pickering, M. (2013). From language-specific to shared syntactic representations: The influence of second language proficiency on syntactic sharing in bilinguals. Cognition, 127, 287–306.Google Scholar
Bickerton, D. & Escalante, A. (1970). Palenquero: a Spanish‑based creole of northern Colombia. Lingua, 32, 254–67. Google Scholar
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (1999–2005). PRAAT: Doing phonetics by computer. Retrieved from http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/ Google Scholar
Brown, D. R. (1994). Kresh. In P. Kahrel & R. van den Berg (Eds.), Typological studies in negation (pp. 163–189). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Cásseres Estrada, S. (2005). Diccionario lengua afro palenquero-español. Cartagena de Indias: Ediciones Pluma de Mompox.Google Scholar
Christiansen, M. H., & Chater, N. (2016). The now-or-never bottleneck: A fundamental constraint on language. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39, e62.Google Scholar
Comrie, B. (1989). Language universals and linguistic typology: Syntax and morphology (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cornish, E., & Wason, P. C. (1970). The recall of affirmative and negative sentences in an incidental learning task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 22, 109–114.Google Scholar
Correa, J. A. (2012). La entonación del criollo palenquero y del kateyano de San Basilio de Palenque (Colombia). In G. Maglia & A. Schwegler (Eds.), Palenque Colombia: Oralidad, identidad y resistencia (pp. 31–56). Bogotá: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana.Google Scholar
Dahl, Ö. (1979). Typology of sentential negation. Linguistics, 17, 79–106.Google Scholar
Dahl, Ö. (2010). Typology of negation. In L. Horn ((Ed.)), The expression of negation (pp. 9–38). Berlin: Mouton.Google Scholar
Dale, R., & Duran, N. (2011). The cognitive dynamics of negated sentence verification. Cognitive Science, 35, 983–996.Google Scholar
Desmet, T., & Declercq, M. (2006). Cross-linguistic priming of syntactic hierarchical configuration information. Journal of Memory and Language, 54, 610–632.Google Scholar
de Swart, H. (2010). Expression and interpretation of negation: An OT typology. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Deutsch, R., Kordts-Freudinger, R., Gawronski, B., & Strack, F. (2009). Fast and fragile: A new look at the automaticity of negation processing. Experimental Psychology, 56, 434–446.Google Scholar
Dieck, M. (2000). La negación en palenquero. Frankfurt: Vervuert/Iberoamericana.Google Scholar
Dieck, M. (2007). Los criollos con negación post-oracional: Estudio comparativo. Sociolinguistic Studies, 1(2), 297–308. Google Scholar
Dryer, M. (2009). Verb-object-negative order in Central Africa. In N. Cyffer, E. Eberman & G. Ziegelmeyer (Eds.), Negation patterns in West Africa (pp. 307–362). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Dryer, M. S. (1988). Universals of negative position. In M. Hammond, E. Moravcsik & J. Wirth (Eds.), Studies in syntactic typology (pp. 93–124). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Escalante, A. (1954). Notas sobre el Palenque de San Basilio, una comunidad negra en Colombia. Divulgaciones Etnológicas (Barranquilla), 3, 207–359. Google Scholar
Ferreira, F., Bailey, K. G., & Ferraro, V. (2002). Good-enough representations in language comprehension. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 11–15.Google Scholar
Friedemann, N. S. de & Patiño Rosselli, C. (1983). Lengua y sociedad en el Palenque de San Basilio. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo. Google Scholar
Forster, K. I., & Stevenson, B. J. (1987). Sentence-matching and well-formedness. Cognition, 26, 171–186.Google Scholar
Fox, J., & Weisberg, S. (2011). An {R} companion to applied regression (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Retrieved from http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Books/Companion Google Scholar
Freedman, S. A., & Forster, K. I. (1985). The psychological status of overgenerated sentences. Cognition, 19, 101–131.Google Scholar
Gibson, E. (1998). Linguistic complexity: Locality of syntactic dependencies. Cognition, 78, 1–76.Google Scholar
Gibson, E. (2000). The dependency locality theory: A distance-based theory of linguistic complexity. In Y. Miyashita, A. Marantz & T. Warren (Eds.), Image language and brain (pp. 95–126). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Greenberg, J. (1966). Language universals, with special reference to feature hierarchies . The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Grosjean, F. (1985). The recognition of words after their acoustic offset: Evidence and implications. Perception & Psychophysics, 38, 299–310.Google Scholar
Grosjean, F., & Gee, J. P. (1987). Prosodic structure and spoken word recognition. Cognition, 25, 135–155.Google Scholar
Gullberg, M., Indefrey, P., & Muysken, P. (2009). Research techniques for the study of code-switching. In B. Bullock & A. J. Toribio (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic code-switching (pp. 21–39). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hald, L., Kutas, M., Urbach, T. P., & Parhizkari, B. (2005). The N400 is not a brainwave. Negation and N400 effects for true and false sentences. Paper presented at the 12th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, New York, April 2005.Google Scholar
Hartsuiker, R., Pickering, M., & Veltkamp, E. (2004). Is syntax separate or shared between languages? Cross linguistic syntactic priming in Spanish-English bilinguals. Psychological Science, 15, 409–414.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. (2001). Why are categories adjacent? Journal of Linguistics, 37, 1–34.Google Scholar
Horn, L. R. (1989). A natural history of negation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hualde, J. I., & Schwegler, A. (2008). Intonation in Palenquero. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 23, 1–31.Google Scholar
Hugdahl, K. (2011). Fifty years of dichotic listening research: Still going and going and …. Brain and Cognition, 76, 211–213.Google Scholar
Idiatov, D. (2010). Clause-final negative markers as a Macro-Sudan areal feature. Paper presented at the Syntax of the World’s Languages 4, Lyon, France.Google Scholar
Idiatov, D. (2012). Clause-final negative markers in southeastern Bamana dialects: A contact-induced evolution. Africana Linguistica, 18, 169–191.Google Scholar
Idiatov, D. (2015). Clause-final negative markers in Bobo and Samogo: Parallel evolution and contact. Journal of Historical Linguistics, 5, 235–266.Google Scholar
Isel, F., Alter, K., & Friederici, A. (2005). Influence of prosodic information on the processing of split particles: ERP evidence from spoken German. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 154–167.Google Scholar
Jaeger, T. F., & Tily, H. (2011). On language “utility”: Processing complexity and communicative efficiency. Wiley Interdiscipliunary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 2, 323–335.Google Scholar
Jespersen, O. (1917). Negation in English and other languages. Copenhagen: A.F. Høst. Reprinted in Selected writings of Otto Jespersen (1962, pp. 3–151). London: George.Google Scholar
Jespersen, O. (1924). The philosophy of grammar. London: George Allen & Urwin.Google Scholar
Kaiser, E., & Trueswell, J. C. (2004). The role of discourse context in the processing of a flexible word-order language. Cognition, 94, 113–147.Google Scholar
Kamide, Y. (2008). Anticipatory processes in sentence processing. Language and Linguistics Compass, 2, 647–670.Google Scholar
Kamide, Y., Altmann, G. T., & Haywood, S. L. (2003). The time-course of prediction in incremental sentence processing: Evidence from anticipatory eye movements. Journal of Memory and Language, 49, 133–156.Google Scholar
Kantola, L., & van Gompel, R. (2011). Between- and within-language priming is the same: Evidence for shared bilingual syntactic representations. Memory and Cognition, 39, 276–290.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, P., & Condoravdi, C. (2004). Tracking Jespersen’s cycle. Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory, 2, 172–197.Google Scholar
Konieczny, L. (2000). Locality and parsing complexity. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29, 627–645.Google Scholar
Kuperberg, G. R., & Jaeger, T. F. (2016). What do we mean by prediction in language comprehension? Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 31, 32–59. doi: 10.1080/23273798.2015.1102299 Google Scholar
Kuznetsova, A., Bruun Brockhoff, P., & Haubo Bojesen Christensen, R. (2014). lmerTest: Tests for random and fixed effects for linear mixed effect models (lmer objects of lme4 package). R package version 2.0-6. Retrieved from http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lmerTest Google Scholar
Lewis, A. (1970). A descriptive analysis of the Palenquero dialect (a Spanish-based creole of northern Colombia, South America) (Unpublished master’s thesis, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica).Google Scholar
Lipski, J. (2010). Pitch polarity in Palenquero: A possible locus of H tone. In S. Colina ((Ed.)), Linguistic studies in Romance languages (pp. 111–127). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Lipski, J. (2011). El “nuevo” palenquero y el español afroboliviano: ¿es reversible la descriollización? In L. Ortiz López (Ed.), Selected proceedings of the 13th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 1–16). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Lipski, J. (2012). The “new” Palenquero: Revitalization and re-creolization. In R. File-Muriel & R. Orozco (Eds.), Varieties of Colombian Spanish (pp. 21–41). Frankfurt: Vervuert.Google Scholar
Lipski, J. (2013). Mapping the psycholinguistic boundaries between Spanish and Palenquero. Papia, 23, 7–38.Google Scholar
Lipski, J. (2014). La lengua palenquera juvenil: Contacto y conflicto de estructuras gramaticales. UniverSOS, 11, 191–207.Google Scholar
Lipski, J. (2015a). From “more” to “less”: Spanish, Palenquero (Afro-Colombian creole) and gender agreement. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30, 1144–1155.Google Scholar
Lipski, J. (2015b). How many “grammars” per “language”? Mapping the psycholinguistic boundaries between Spanish and Palenquero. In J. Smith & T. Ihsane (Eds.), Romance linguistics 2012: Papers from the 42nd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (pp. 43–60). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Lipski, J. (2016a). Palenquero and Spanish: A first psycholinguistic exploration. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 31, 42–81.Google Scholar
Lipski, J. (2016b). Palenquero and Spanish: What’s in the mix? In A. Schwegler, J. McWhorter & L. Strobel (Eds.), The Iberian challenge: Creoles beyond the plantation setting (pp. 153–180). Frankfurt: Vervuert/Iberoamericana.Google Scholar
Loebell, H., & Bock, K. (2003). Structural priming across languages. Linguistics, 41, 791–824.Google Scholar
Lüdtke, J., Friedrich, C. K., De Filippis, M., & Kaup, B. (2005). ERP correlates of negation in a sentence-picture-verification paradigm. Poster presented at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Toronto, Canada.Google Scholar
Lüdtke, J., Friedrich, C. K., De Filippis, M., & Kaup, B. (2008). Event-related potential correlates of negation in a sentence–picture verification paradigm. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 1355–1370.Google Scholar
Marslen-Wilson, W. (1985). Speech shadowing and speech comprehension. Speech Communication, 4, 55–73.Google Scholar
Martínez, C. (2012). Negation in vernacular Brazilian Portuguese (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Texas at Austin).Google Scholar
Miller, G., & Isard, S. (1963). Some perceptual consequences of linguistic rules. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 2, 217–228.Google Scholar
Moñino, Y. (2012). Pasado, presente y futuro de la lengua de Palenque. In G. Maglia & A. Schwegler (Eds.), Palenque Colombia: Oralidad, identidad y resistencia (pp. 221–255). Bogotá: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana.Google Scholar
Morton, T. (2005). Sociolinguistic variation and language change in El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia) (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania).Google Scholar
Mueller, S. T., & Piper, B. J. (2014). The Psychology Experiment Building Language (PEBL) Test Battery. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 222, 250–259.Google Scholar
Navarrete, M. C. (2008). San Basilio de Palenque: memoria y tradición. Cali: Programa Editorial, Universidad del Valle. Google Scholar
Payne, J. R. (1985). Negation. In T. Shopen ((Ed.)), Language typology and syntactic description: Vol. 1. Clause structure (pp. 197–242). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pickering, M., & Garrod, S. (2007). Do people use language production to make predictions during comprehension? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 105–110.Google Scholar
R Core Team. (2014). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.Google Scholar
Reesink, G. (2002). Clause-final negation: Structure and interpretation. Functions of Language, 9, 239–268.Google Scholar
Schoonbaert, S., Hartsuiker, R. J., & Pickering, M. J. (2007). The representation of lexical and syntactic information in bilinguals: Evidence from syntactic priming. Journal of Memory & Language, 56, 153–171.Google Scholar
Schwegler, A. (1991). Negation in Palenquero: Synchrony. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 6, 165–214.Google Scholar
Schwegler, A. (2011a). Palenque(ro): The search for its African substrate. In C. Lefebvre ((Ed.)), Creoles, their substrates, and language typology (pp. 225–249). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Schwegler, A. (2011b). On the extraordinary revival of a creole: Palenquero (Colombia). In M. Haboud & N. Ostler (Eds.), Endangered languages—Voices and images (pp. 153–165). Bath, UK: Foundation for Endangered Languages.Google Scholar
Schwegler, A. (2012). Sobre el origen africano de la lengua criolla de Palenque (Colombia) [On the African origins of the creole language of Palenque (Colombia)]. In G. Maglia & A. Schwegler (Eds.), Palenque Colombia: Oralidad, identidad y resistencia [Palenque Colombia: Orality, identity, and resistance] (pp. 107–179). Santafé de Bogotá: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana.Google Scholar
Schwegler, A. (2013a). Palenquero. In S. M. Michaelis, P. Maurer, M. Haspelmath & M. Huber (Eds.), The atlas and survey of pidgin and creole language structures: Vol. 2. Portuguese-based, Spanish-based and French-based languages (pp. 182–192). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schwegler, A. (2013b). Palenquero structure data set. In S. M. Michaelis, P. Maurer, M. Haspelmath & M. Huber (Eds.), The atlas of pidgin and creole language structures [online] (chapter 28). Munich: Max Planck Digital Library, Retrieved from http://apics-online.info/contributions/48 Google Scholar
Schwegler, A. (2016). Truth reset: Pragmatics in Palenquero negation. In A. Schwegler, J. McWhorter & L. Ströbel (Eds.), The Iberian challenge: Creole languages beyond the plantation setting (pp. 231–268). Frankfurt: Vervuert/Iberoamericana.Google Scholar
Schwegler, A. (forthcoming). Negation in Palenquero: Syntax, pragmatics, and change in progress. In V. Deprez & F. Henri (Eds.), Negation and negative concord in creole languages . Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Schwegler, A., & Morton, T. (2003). Vernacular Spanish in a microcosm: Kateyano in El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, 1, 97–159.Google Scholar
Schwenter, S. A. (2005). The pragmatics of negation in Brazilian Portuguese. Lingua, 115, 1427–1456.Google Scholar
Shin, J.-A., & Christianson, K. (2009). Syntactic processing in Korean–English bilingual production: Evidence from cross-linguistic structural priming. Cognition, 112, 175–180.Google Scholar
Steele, S. (1975). On some factors that affect and effect word order. In C. Li ((Ed.)), Word order and word order change (pp. 197–268). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Teixeira de Sousa, L. (2012). Sintaxe e interpretação de negativas sentenciais no português brasileiro (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Universidade Estadual de Campinas).Google Scholar
Teixeira de Sousa, L. (2015). Three types of negation in Brazilian Portuguese. Lingua, 159, 27–46.Google Scholar
Tesnière, L. (1969). Éléments de syntaxe structurale (2nd ed.). Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar
Thompson, S. (1998). A discourse explanation for the cross-linguistic differences in the grammar of interrogation and negation. In A. Siewierska & J. J. Song (Eds.), Case typology and grammar: In honor of Barry J. Blake (pp. 309–341). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Van Berkum, J. J. A., Brown, C. M., Zwitserlood, P., Kooijman, V., & Hagoort, P. (2005). Anticipating upcoming words in discourse: Evidence from ERPs and reading times. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 31, 443–467.Google Scholar
Vasishth, S., & Lewis, R. (2006). Argument-head distance and processing complexity: Explaining both locality and antilocality effects. Language, 82, 767–794.Google Scholar
Vinther, T. (2002). Elicited imitation: A brief overview. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 12, 54–73.Google Scholar
Vossen, F. (2011). The Jespersen Cycle in South-East Asia, Oceania and Australia. Studies van de BKL–Travaux du CBL, 6, 1–14.Google Scholar
Vossen, F., & van der Auwera, J. (2014). The Jespersen cycles seen from Austronesian. In M.-B. Mosegaard Hansen & J. Visconti (Eds.), The diachrony of negation (pp. 47–82). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Weber, K., & Indefrey, P. (2009). Syntactic priming in German–English bilinguals during sentence comprehension. NeuroImage, 46, 1164–1172.Google Scholar
Weyerts, H., Penke, M., Münte, T. F., Heinze, H. J., & Clahsen, H. (2002). Word order in sentence processing: An experimental study of verb placement in German. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 31, 211–268.Google Scholar
Wojtecka, M., Koch, C., Grimm, A., & Schultz, P. (2011). Production and comprehension of sentence negation in child German. In A. Grimm, A. Müller, C. Hamman & E. Ruigendijk (Eds.), Production-comprehension asymmetries in child language (pp. 217–245). Berlin: Mouton.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Lipski supplementary material

Appendix

Download Lipski supplementary material(File)
File 98.8 KB