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A subset of German control verbs allows for the discontinuous linearization of their infinitival complements, a word-order pattern known as the “third construction” pattern. Compared to alternative word-order options (notably, extraposition), third constructions are very rare in present-day German. Here we ask whether the third construction pattern’s low occurrence frequency can be accounted for by processing factors. We report the results from a self-paced reading task and a production priming task investigating whether third constructions are difficult to comprehend, difficult to produce, or both. Our results show that the third construction pattern’s local structural ambiguity impedes comprehension, and that the pattern is also resistant to priming. We conclude that this word-order pattern is an example of a “latent” construction that is grammatically licensed but strongly dispreferred in language use because easier-to-process word-order variants are available.
Personal pronouns can potentially be resolved in logical syntax by means of variable binding (VB) or at the discourse-representational level through coreference assignment (CR). Previous research suggests that real-time reference resolution is guided more strongly by discourse-level cues in a non-native language (L2) than in a native language (L1). Here we use the VB/CR distinction to further test this hypothesis. Using eye-movement monitoring during reading and a complementary questionnaire task, we compared L1 German and L1 Russian/L2 German speakers’ resolution of object pronouns. While both our participant groups ultimately preferred CR over VB interpretations, only the L2 participants showed evidence of favouring a sentence-external CR antecedent from early on during processing. Our L1 group, by contrast, favoured a VB antecedent during processing. The observed L1/L2 processing differences reveal divergent antecedent search strategies, with L2 but not L1 speakers being primarily guided by discourse-level cues during real-time comprehension.
This chapter focuses on experimental psycholinguistic techniques that tap into real-time sentence processing by measuring moment-by-moment reading times or eye-gaze patterns. Data recorded during real-time reading or listening can provide implicit measures of grammatical sensitivity and are a valuable source of evidence for grammatical distinctions, operations, and constraints proposed within the theoretical linguistic literature. A selective review of recent reading-time and eye-movement monitoring studies illustrates how these techniques can help us investigate theoretical linguistic issues and hypotheses, and provide insights into the nature of syntactic derivations and representations. Charting comprehenders' sentence processing profiles over time can help reveal the sources of unacceptability and of grammatical illusions, the point in time at which grammatical violations are detected, the point in time at which grammatical constraints are applied, and can also reveal processing reflexes of a sentence's derivational history.
This study investigates native German speakers’ and bilingual Turkish/German speakers’ sensitivity to constraints on verbal agreement with pseudo-partitive subjects such as eine Packung Tabletten (“a pack of pills”). Although number agreement with the first noun phrase (headed by a container noun) is considered to be the norm, agreement with the second (containee) noun phrase is also possible. We combined scalar acceptability ratings with a stochastic constraint-based grammatical framework to model the relative strength of the constraints that determine speakers’ agreement preferences and subsequently tested whether these models could correctly predict speakers’ verb choices in a production task. For both participant groups, number match between the container noun phrase and the verb was the strongest determinant of both acceptability and production choices. The relative ranking of the constraints that we identified was the same for both groups, and the lack of age-of-acquisition effects suggests that constraints on variable subject–verb agreement, and their relative strength, are acquirable by both early and later learners of German. Group differences were seen in the absolute constraint weightings, however, with the bilinguals’ agreement preferences being more strongly influenced by number match with the containee phrase, indicating a comparatively greater reliance on surface-level cues to agreement (such as noun proximity) among the bilingual group.
Research in thermoelectric (TE) quantum structures was greatly propelled by the prediction in the early 1990s of a significant boost in TE efficiency by quantum size effects. Recently, research interest has shifted from quantum size effects in conventional semiconductors toward new types of quantum materials (e.g., topological insulators [TIs], Weyl and Dirac semimetals) characterized by their nontrivial electronic topology. Bi2Te3, Sb2Te3, and Bi2Se3, established TE materials, are also TIs exhibiting a bulk bandgap and highly conductive and robust gapless surface states. The signature of the nontrivial electronic band structure on TE transport properties can be best verified in transport experiments using nanowires and thin films. However, even in nanograined bulk, the typical peculiarities in the transport properties of TIs can be seen. Finally, the remarkable transport properties of Dirac and Weyl semimetals are discussed.
Second language speakers often struggle to apply grammatical constraints such as subject–verb agreement. One hypothesis for this difficulty is that it results from problems suppressing syntactically unlicensed constituents in working memory. We investigated which properties of these constituents make them more likely to elicit errors: their grammatical distance to the subject head or their linear distance to the verb. We used double modifier constructions (e.g., the smell of the stables of the farmers), where the errors of native speakers are modulated by the linguistic relationships between the nouns in the subject phrase: second plural nouns, which are syntactically and semantically closer to the subject head, elicit more errors than third plural nouns, which are linearly closer to the verb (2nd-3rd-noun asymmetry). In order to dissociate between grammatical and linear distance, we compared embedded and coordinated modifiers, which were linearly identical but differed in grammatical distance. Using an attraction paradigm, we showed that German native speakers and proficient Russian speakers of German exhibited similar attraction rates and that their errors displayed a 2nd-3rd-noun asymmetry, which was more pronounced in embedded than in coordinated constructions. We suggest that both native and second language learners prioritize linguistic structure over linear distance in their agreement computations.
Since the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH) was first put forward in 2006, it has inspired a growing body of research on grammatical processing in nonnative (L2) speakers. More than 10 years later, we think it is time for the SSH to be reconsidered in the light of new empirical findings and current theoretical assumptions about human language processing. The purpose of our critical commentary is twofold: to clarify some issues regarding the SSH and to sketch possible ways in which this hypothesis might be refined and improved to better account for L1 and L2 speakers’ performance patterns.
We report the results from an eye-movement monitoring study that investigated late German–English bilinguals’ sensitivity to parasitic gaps inside subject islands. The online reading experiment was complemented by an offline scalar judgement task. The results from the offline task confirmed that for both native and non-native speakers, subject island environments must normally be non-finite in order to host a parasitic gap. The analysis of the reading-time data showed that, while native speakers posited parasitic gaps in non-finite environments only, the non-native group initially overgenerated parasitic gaps, showing delayed sensitivity to island-inducing cues during online processing. Taken together, our findings show that non-native comprehenders are sensitive to exceptions to island constraints that are not attested in their native language and also rare in the L2 input. They need more time than native comprehenders to compute the linguistic representations over which the relevant restrictions are defined, however.
Language is often ambiguous. For instance, verb-preposition strings such as look up can be interpreted either as a single verb + preposition combination leading to a literal interpretation (e.g., to look up the chimney), or can be interpreted as a so-called phrasal verb that requires a figurative interpretation (e.g., to look up the number). Past research has primarily used behavioral methodologies to investigate how first (L1) and second language (L2) learners deal with this phenomenon. However, event-related potentials (ERPs) are highly time sensitive and may shed additional light on this issue. In this chapter, we will first provide an overview of evidence on phrasal verb processing in L1 and L2 speakers. We will then present some of our own ERP data exploring phrasal verb processing in native speakers of English and native Arabic-speaking L2 learners of English. We will conclude with directions for future ERP research in this domain.
Keywords: bilingualism, event-related potentials (ERPs), figurative language, phrasal verbs, second language acquisition
Psycholinguistic research has a long tradition in exploring how native speakers successfully master the complexities encountered in everyday language. Lexical and structural ambiguities form a vital part of this complexity and are a frequent feature of language. For instance, multiword expressions such as phrasal verbs (e.g.,run into), which can have a figurative interpretation (e.g.,to meet), have been estimated by some to form about one-third of the English verb vocabulary (Li, Zhang, Niu, Jiang, & Srihari, 2003).
It is well established that symmetry has an important influence on the properties of materials, but the topology of electronic states might be an even more fundamental property. Topological insulators (TIs) are new states of matter based on the topology in the electronic band structure. Relativistic effects are the origin of the topologically non-trivial electronic structure, and the new state of matter has been realized in two-dimensional quantum well structures and three-dimensional bulk crystals of heavy elements and compounds. TI materials have an insulating gap in the bulk, and robust metallic edge/surface states on the boundary, which is robust against disorder and leads to unique spin and charge transport properties. Examples of TIs include HgTe/CdTe quantum wells, Bi-Sb-alloys, Bi2Se3, and half-Heusler compounds.
This article investigates the nature of preposition copying and preposition pruning structures in present-day English. We begin by illustrating the two phenomena and consider how they might be accounted for in syntactic terms, and go on to explore the possibility that preposition copying and pruning arise for processing reasons. We then report on two acceptability judgement experiments examining the extent to which native speakers of English are sensitive to these types of ‘error’ in language comprehension. Our results indicate that preposition copying creates redundancy rather than ungrammaticality, whereas preposition pruning creates processing problems for comprehenders that may render it unacceptable in timed (but not necessarily in untimed) judgement tasks. Our findings furthermore illustrate the usefulness of combining corpus studies and experimentally elicited data for gaining a clearer picture of usage and acceptability, and the potential benefits of examining syntactic phenomena from both a theoretical and a processing perspective.
Using the eye-movement monitoring technique in two reading comprehension experiments, this study investigated the timing of constraints on wh-dependencies (so-called island constraints) in first- and second-language (L1 and L2) sentence processing. The results show that both L1 and L2 speakers of English are sensitive to extraction islands during processing, suggesting that memory storage limitations affect L1 and L2 comprehenders in essentially the same way. Furthermore, these results show that the timing of island effects in L1 compared to L2 sentence comprehension is affected differently by the type of cue (semantic fit versus filled gaps) signaling whether dependency formation is possible at a potential gap site. Even though L1 English speakers showed immediate sensitivity to filled gaps but not to lack of semantic fit, proficient German-speaking learners of English as a L2 showed the opposite sensitivity pattern. This indicates that initial wh-dependency formation in L2 processing is based on semantic feature matching rather than being structurally mediated as in L1 comprehension.
We report the results from two eye-movement monitoring experiments examining the processing of reflexive pronouns by proficient German-speaking learners of second language (L2) English. Our results show that the nonnative speakers initially tried to link English argument reflexives to a discourse-prominent but structurally inaccessible antecedent, thereby violating binding condition A. Our native speaker controls, in contrast, showed evidence of applying condition A immediately during processing. Together, our findings show that L2 learners’ initial focusing on a structurally inaccessible antecedent cannot be due to first language influence and is also independent of whether the inaccessible antecedent c-commands the reflexive. This suggests that unlike native speakers, nonnative speakers of English initially attempt to interpret reflexives through discourse-based coreference assignment rather than syntactic binding.
Half-Heusler (HH) and especially TiNiSn-based alloys have shown high potential as thermoelectric (TE) materials for power generation applications. The reported transport properties show, however, a significant spread of results, due mainly to the difficulty in fabricating single-phase HH samples in these multicomponent and multiphased systems. In particular, little attention has been paid to the influence of the various minority phases on the TE performance of these compounds. A clear understanding of these issues is mandatory for the design of improved and stable TE HH-based composites. This study examines the structural and compositional influence of the residual metallic (Sn) and intermetallic phases (mainly Ti6Sn5 and the Heusler compound TiNi2Sn) on the TE properties of the TiNiSn HH compounds processed by spark plasma sintering.
In this study, the influence of plausibility information on the real-time processing of locally ambiguous (“garden path”) sentences in a nonnative language is investigated. Using self-paced reading, we examined how advanced Greek-speaking learners of English and native speaker controls read sentences containing temporary subject–object ambiguities, with the ambiguous noun phrase being either semantically plausible or implausible as the direct object of the immediately preceding verb. Besides providing evidence for incremental interpretation in second language processing, our results indicate that the learners were more strongly influenced by plausibility information than the native speaker controls in their on-line processing of the experimental items. For the second language learners an initially plausible direct object interpretation lead to increased reanalysis difficulty in “weak” garden-path sentences where the required reanalysis did not interrupt the current thematic processing domain. No such evidence of on-line recovery was observed, in contrast, for “strong” garden-path sentences that required more substantial revisions of the representation built thus far, suggesting that comprehension breakdown was more likely here.
We report the results from two experiments investigating proficient Japanese-speaking learners' processing of reflexive object pronouns in English as a second language (L2). Experiment 1 used a timed grammaticality judgement task to assess learners' sensitivity to binding Principle A under processing pressure, and Experiment 2 investigated the time-course of reflexive anaphor resolution during L2 reading using the eye-movement monitoring technique. Taken together, our results show that despite having demonstrated native-like knowledge of reflexive binding in corresponding untimed tasks, the learners processed English reflexives differently from native speakers in that they took into consideration a matching discourse-prominent but binding-theoretically inappropriate antecedent when first encountering a reflexive. This suggests that unlike what has been reported in corresponding monolingual processing research (Sturt, 2003), initial antecedent search in L2 English is not constrained by binding Principle A.
In German, complex wh-interrogatives can optionally be formed by inserting the 3rd person neuter w h-pronoun was in the matrix [Spec, CP] position instead of long-distance wh-raising. It is generally assumed that “expletive” was serves as a placeholder for a contentful wh-expression lower down in the sentence that substitutes for it at the level of semantic interpretation. It can be shown, however, that the putative wh-expletive was in German is actually a CP-proform basegenerated in matrix object position, and that it is not subject to expletive replacement at LF. As an alternative to previous accounts, I propose a complex predicate analysis of the German was … w construction according to which was is a [thetas]-marked object pronoun capable of licensing a predicative CP in V-complement position. This analysis is consistent with Rothstein's (1995) claim that true object expletives do not exist.*