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Sebastian Sauppe - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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word order and voice influence the timing of verb planning in german Sentence Production
Frontiers in Psychology, 2017Co-Authors: Sebastian SauppeAbstract:Theories of incremental Sentence Production make different assumptions about when speakers encode information about described events and when verbs are selected, accordingly. An eye tracking experiment on German testing the predictions from linear and hierarchical incrementality about the timing of event encoding and verb planning is reported. In the experiment, participants described depictions of two-participant events with Sentences that differed in voice and word order. Verb-medial active Sentences and actives and passives with Sentence-final verbs were compared. Linear incrementality predicts that Sentences with verbs placed early differ from verb-final Sentences because verbs are assumed to only be planned shortly before they are articulated. By contrast, hierarchical incrementality assumes that speakers start planning with relational encoding of the event. A weak version of hierarchical incrementality assumes that only the action is encoded at the outset of formulation and selection of lexical verbs only occurs shortly before they are articulated, leading to the prediction of different fixation patterns for verb-medial and verb-final Sentences. A strong version of hierarchical incrementality predicts no differences between verb-medial and verb-final Sentences because it assumes that verbs are always lexically selected early in the formulation process. Based on growth curve analyses of fixations to agent and patient characters in the described pictures, and the influence of character humanness and the lack of an influence of the visual salience of characters on speakers' choice of active or passive voice, the current results suggest that while verb planning does not necessarily occur early during formulation, speakers of German always generate an event representation early.
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symmetrical and asymmetrical voice systems and processing load pupillometric evidence from Sentence Production in tagalog and german
Language, 2017Co-Authors: Sebastian SauppeAbstract:The voice system of Tagalog has been proposed to be symmetrical in the sense that there are no morphologically unmarked voice forms. This stands in contrast to asymmetrical voice systems, which exhibit unmarked and marked voices (e.g. active and passive in German). This article investigates the psycholinguistic processing consequences of the potential (a)symmetries in the voice systems of Tagalog and German by analyzing changes in cognitive load during Sentence Production. Tagalog and German native speakers’ pupil diameters were recorded while they produced Sentences with different voice markings. Growth-curve analyses of the shape of task-evoked pupillary responses revealed that processing-load changes were similar for different voices in the symmetrical voice system of Tagalog. By contrast, actives and passives in the asymmetrical voice system of German exhibited different patterns of processing-load changes during Sentence Production. This is interpreted as supporting the notion of (relative) symmetry in the Tagalog voice system. Mental effort during Sentence planning changes in different ways in the two languages because the grammatical architecture of their voice systems is different. Additionally, an anti-Patient bias in Sentence Production was found: linking patients to the subject function seems to be associated with greater cognitive effort. This anti-Patient bias in Production adds converging evidence to ‘subject preferences’ reported in the Sentence-comprehension literature.
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dependencies first eye tracking evidence from Sentence Production in tagalog
Conference Cognitive Science, 2013Co-Authors: Sebastian Sauppe, Elisabeth Norcliffe, Agnieszka E Konopka, Robert D Van Valin, Stephen C LevinsonAbstract:Dependencies First: Eye Tracking Evidence from Sentence Production in Tagalog Sebastian Sauppe (sebastian.sauppe@mpi.nl) Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525XD Nijmegen, Netherlands; International Max Planck Research School for Language Sciences, Wundtlaan 1, 6525XD Nijmegen, Netherlands Elisabeth Norcliffe (elisabeth.norcliffe@mpi.nl) Agnieszka E. Konopka (agnieszka.konopka@mpi.nl) Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525XD Nijmegen, Netherlands Robert D. Van Valin, Jr (vanvalin@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de) Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525XD Nijmegen, Netherlands; Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf, Universitatsstr. 1, 40225 Dusseldorf, Germany; University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA Stephen C. Levinson (stephen.levinson@mpi.nl) Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525XD Nijmegen, Netherlands; Radboud University Nijmegen, Erasmusplein 1, 6525HT Nijmegen, Netherlands Abstract We investigated the time course of Sentence formulation in Tagalog, a verb-initial language in which the verb obligatorily agrees with one of its arguments. Eye-tracked participants de- scribed pictures of transitive events. Fixations to the two characters in the events were compared across Sentences dif- fering in agreement marking and post-verbal word order. Fix- ation patterns show evidence for two temporally dissociated phases in Tagalog Sentence Production. The first, driven by verb agreement, involves early linking of concepts to syntac- tic functions; the second, driven by word order, involves in- cremental lexical encoding of these concepts. These results suggest that even the earliest stages of Sentence formulation may be guided by a language's grammatical structure. Keywords: eye tracking; Sentence Production; incrementali- ty; Austronesian; verb-initial word order. Introduction In the process of transforming thoughts into speech, speakers begin with a preverbal message, which must then be encoded linguistically. In English, this process may pro- ceed in a highly lexically incremental manner: for example, when describing events like the one shown in Figure 1, speakers may have encoded as little as the first element (the syntactic subject, e.g., “the boy”) of the to-be-uttered sen- tence prior to speech onset (Gleitman, January, Nappa, & Trueswell, 2007). The encoding of additional event partici- pants (e.g., “the ball”) and the relation between them (e.g., “kicking”) may be delayed until after speakers finish encod- ing the first element. This type of incremental planning is compatible with English morphosyntax, arguably in part because full noun phrases do not morphologically mark de- pendencies with other elements in the Sentence. For many Sentence types, speakers therefore do not have to commit to a particular syntactic structure upon beginning to encode one of the event participants as the syntactic subject. How- ever, not all languages offer this flexibility: in some lan- guages the first word is overtly marked for a dependency with word(s) occurring only later in the Sentence. In such cases, is there an effect of dependency marking on early Sentence encoding as speakers begin to map the preverbal message onto linguistic structure? One such language that exhibits dependency marking on the first word of a Sentence is the Austronesian language Tagalog. The predicate is in Sentence-initial position and agrees with one of its arguments. Thus, the grammatical properties of Tagalog allow us to test whether and how lin- guistic structure influences the earliest phases of Sentence Production; specifically, we test whether the overt depend- ency marking on the first word in a Sentence leads to differ- ences in the time course of Sentence formulation in Tagalog compared to languages with no overt dependency marking on the first word (such as English). In the following, we first sketch the relevant grammatical properties of Tagalog and then report the results of a picture description experiment in which eye-tracked speakers de- scribed pictures of simple transitive events. Tagalog Tagalog is spoken by approx. 21.5 million speakers in the Philippines; it belongs to the Western Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family. We provide a brief overview of the morphosyntactic properties that are relevant for the reported experiment. For more comprehen- sive descriptions of Tagalog morphosyntax, see Himmel- mann (2005), Kroeger (1993), and Schachter and Otanes Basic declarative Tagalog Sentences are predicate 1 -initial, i.e., predicates are followed by their arguments. One argu- To circumvent the discussion on lexical categories (noun/verb distinction) in Tagalog (e.g., Himmelmann, 2008), we will use the term “predicate” throughout this paper to refer to voice-marked words and the term “argument” to refer to heads of case-marked (non-oblique) phrases.
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planning units in tagalog Sentence Production evidence from eye tracking
the 26th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, 2013Co-Authors: Sebastian Sauppe, Elisabeth Norcliffe, Agnieszka E Konopka, Robert D Van Valin, Stephen C LevinsonAbstract:ABSTRACT In transforming thoughts into speech, speakers must encode a pre-verbal message linguistically. We investigated this process in the Philippine language Tagalog, which, unlike most European languages, has a verb-initial basic word order. The Tagalog verb agrees in semantic role with the “privileged syntactic argument” (simplified: “subject”). Either the semantic agent or the semantic patient may be the “subject” (e.g., [1]); in either case the Sentence remains transitive (unlike English where promoting the patient to the subject requires passivization). The subject can occur Sentence-finally (VOS: [chase_patient.voice woman chicken_subject] – ‘the woman chases the chicken’) or Sentence-medially (VSO: [chase_patient.voice chicken_subject woman] – ‘the woman chases the chicken’), but in both cases, Sentence-initial verb position requires selection of appropriate subject–verb agreement marking. We examined the time course of Sentence formulation for descriptions of transitive events [2,3] to test whether these grammatical properties entail early planning of the dependency between verb and subject and whether this dependency planning is temporally dissociated from lexical encoding of the subject argument. Fifty-three native speakers of Tagalog described 44 target pictures depicting two-participant, transitive events interspersed between unrelated filler pictures while their gaze and speech were recorded (Tobii T120 eye-tracker, 120 Hz sampling rate). The distribution of early eye movements (0–600 ms) to the two characters in the target pictures showed that a character was fixated more often when it was selected to be the subject of a given Sentence than when it was selected to be the non-subject (the “object”), regardless of whether the subject character was the semantic agent or the semantic patient in the event and regardless of whether the word order was VOS or VSO. This suggests an early phase of Sentence formulation that involves the planning of the dependency between verb and subject in order to select the appropriate agreement markers on the verb and that is independent of word order. The extent to which speakers continued fixating the subject character after 600 ms depended on whether the subject immediately followed the verb or was produced Sentence-finally: in Sentences with VOS word order speakers fixated the post-verbal object character before they re-fixated the subject character, whereas in VSO Sentences speakers continued fixating the subject character until shortly after speech onset and then shifted their gaze to the object character. This suggests that Sentence formulation in Tagalog can involve two temporally dissociated phases: rapid planning of the dependency relation between verb and subject, driven by agreement marking, followed by lexical encoding of post-verbal arguments in the order of mention. This is in contrast to English, where rigid subject-initial word order conflates the dependency planning and lexical encoding of the subject so that these two phases are not easily separable. The results speak against a strictly linear view of Sentence planning, which assumes that speakers immediately encode a fixated character lexically [2]. Instead, the presence of a grammatical effect of the subject on early eye movements is evidence of linguistic guidance in the earliest stages of message and Sentence formulation and suggests that the time course of these processes can be shaped by the structure of the language.
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typology and planning scope in Sentence Production eye tracking evidence from tzeltal and tagalog
the 10th Biennial Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology, 2013Co-Authors: Sebastian Sauppe, Elisabeth Norcliffe, Agnieszka E Konopka, Robert D Van Valin, Stephen C LevinsonAbstract:The explanatory potential of language processing for linguistic typology has been advocated by functionalist typologists and psycholinguists alike [1,2,3,4]. Building precise, testable theories of the relationship between real-time language use and typological patterns is, however, hampered by a lack of empirical research on language processing in the vast majority of the world’s languages [5]. As a small step towards expanding the typological scope of processing research, we investigate the processes underlying simple Sentence Production in two verbinitial languages, Tzeltal (Mayan) and Tagalog (Austronesian), using a picture-description/eye tracking task. Our goal was to determine to what extent the time-course of Sentence Production is affected by differences in basic word order and verbal morphology.
Linda Wheeldon - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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healthy aging and Sentence Production disrupted lexical access in the context of intact syntactic planning
Frontiers in Psychology, 2020Co-Authors: Sophie M Hardy, Katrien Segaert, Linda WheeldonAbstract:Healthy aging does not affect all features of language processing equally. In this study, we investigated the effects of aging on different processes involved in fluent Sentence Production, a complex task that requires the successful execution and coordination of multiple processes. In Experiment 1, we investigated age-related effects on the speed of syntax selection using a syntactic priming paradigm. Both young and older adults produced target Sentences quicker following syntactically related primes compared to unrelated primes, indicating that syntactic facilitation effects are preserved with age. In Experiment 2, we investigated age-related effects in syntactic planning and lexical retrieval using a planning scope paradigm: participants described moving picture displays designed to elicit Sentences with either initial coordinate or simple noun phrases and, on half of the trials, the second picture was previewed. Without preview, both age groups were slower to initiate Sentences with larger coordinate phrases, suggesting a similar phrasal planning scope. However, age-related differences did emerge relating to the preview manipulation: while young adults displayed speed benefits of preview in both phrase conditions, older adults only displayed speed preview benefits within the initial phrase (coordinate condition). Moreover, preview outside the initial phrase (simple condition) caused older adults to become significantly more error-prone. Thus, while syntactic planning scope appears unaffected by aging, older adults do appear to encounter problems with managing the activation and integration of lexical items into syntactic structures. Taken together, our findings indicate that healthy aging disrupts the lexical, but not the syntactic, processes involved in Sentence Production.
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lexical availability and grammatical encoding scope during spoken Sentence Production
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2013Co-Authors: Linda Wheeldon, Natalie Ohlson, Aimee Ashby, Sophie GatorAbstract:Three Sentence Production experiments investigate the relationship between lexical and structural processing scope. Speakers generated Sentences with varying phrase structures in response to visual displays (e.g., The dog and the hat move above the fork and the tree/The dog moves above the hat and the fork and the tree). On half of the trials, one of the pictures in the arrays was previewed. Filler Sentences varied preview position and Sentence structure from trial to trial. When speakers could not anticipate the position of the previewed picture in the upcoming Sentence (Experiment 1), preview benefit for pictures corresponding to the second noun to be produced was limited to pictures that fell within the Sentence-initial phrase. When the linear position of the previewed picture was predictable, preview benefits were observed for the second noun to be produced, irrespective of phrase position (Experiment 2). However, no preview benefits were observed for the third noun to be produced (Experiment 3). In c...
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planning scope in spoken Sentence Production the role of grammatical units
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, 2007Co-Authors: Paul Allum, Linda WheeldonAbstract:Four experiments investigate the scope of grammatical planning during spoken Sentence Production in Japanese and English. Experiment 1 shows that Sentence latencies vary with length of Sentence-initial subject phrase. Exploiting the head-final property of Japanese, Experiments 2 and 3 extend this result by showing that in a 2-phrase subject phrase, Sentence latency varies with the length of the Sentence-initial phrase rather than that of the whole subject phrase or its head phrase. Experiment 4 confirms this finding in English. The authors' interpretation suggests that these effects derive from grammatical encoding processes. Planning scope varies according to the relation between the 2 phrases composing the subject phrase. A thematically defined functional phrase is suggested as defining this scope.
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horizontal information flow in spoken Sentence Production
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, 2004Co-Authors: Mark E Smith, Linda WheeldonAbstract:In 4 experiments the authors used a variant of the picture-word interference paradigm to investigate whether there is a temporal overlap in the activation of words during Sentence Production and whether there is a flow of semantic and phonological information between them. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that 2 semantically related nouns produce interference effects either when they are in the same or different phrases of a Sentence. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrate that 2 phonologically related nouns produce facilitation effects but only when they are within the same phrase of a Sentence. The results argue against strictly serial models of multiple-word access and provide evidence of a flow of semantic and phonological information between words during Sentence Production.
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Syntactic priming in spoken Sentence Production - an online study
Cognition, 2001Co-Authors: Mark M Smith, Linda WheeldonAbstract:Six experiments investigate syntactic priming online via a picture description task in which participants produce target Sentences whose initial phrase is syntactically similar or dissimilar to that of the prime Sentence produced on the previous trial. In the first experiment it is shown that a syntactically related prime Sentence speeds onset latencies to a subsequent target Sentence by approximately 50 ms relative to a syntactically unrelated prime Sentence. In the second experiment, the cost of the process of lemma access is factored out via a picture previewing technique but a priming effect is still obtained demonstrating that the effect is not a product of the priming of lemma access processes. In Experiment 3, the related and unrelated prime trials feature the same picture display but the 50 ms facilitation effect is still observed indicating that the effect does not result from the priming of visual perception of the picture movements. This is further strengthened in Experiment 4 which uses written prime Sentences rather than a picture description task on the prime trial and still obtains a facilitation effect. In Experiment 5, the effect disappears when the participants are instructed to name the movements but not the objects depicted in the array and this is interpreted as evidence against the view that the effect results from the conceptualization of the events depicted by the array. In the final experiment, the scope of the syntactic persistence effect is investigated by priming Sentences with initial phrases of varying syntactic complexity. Significant priming is only observed for an initial phrase featuring two nouns - a finding consistent with the view that the syntactic persistence effect applies only to the generation of the first phrase of an utterance prior to speech onset. The implications of these results are analyzed in the final discussion section.
Robert J Hartsuiker - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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proactive language control during bilingual Sentence Production
International Journal of Bilingualism, 2021Co-Authors: Mathieu Declerck, Jonathan Grainger, Robert J HartsuikerAbstract:Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions:While evidence for proactive language control processes has been found during single word Production, very little and conflicting evidence has been ob...
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inside the syntactic box the neural correlates of the functional and positional level in covert Sentence Production
PLOS ONE, 2014Co-Authors: Simona Collina, Ruth Seurinck, Robert J HartsuikerAbstract:The aim of the present fMRI study was to investigate the neural circuits of two stages of grammatical encoding in Sentence Production. Participants covertly produced Sentences on the basis of three words (one verb and two nouns). In the functional level condition both nouns were animate and so were potential competitors for the grammatical function of subject. In the positional level condition the first noun was animate whereas the second was inanimate. We found activation of Broca's and adjacent areas, previously indicated as responsible for syntactic processing. Additionally, a later onset of the activation in three brain areas in the functional level condition suggests that there is indeed a competition for assignment of subjecthood. The results constrain theories of grammatical encoding, which differ in whether they assume two separate processing levels or only one.
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language integration in bilingual Sentence Production
Acta Psychologica, 2008Co-Authors: Robert J Hartsuiker, Martin J PickeringAbstract:Abstract To what extent are processes used in Sentence Production integrated between the different languages of a bilingual and to what extent are they kept separate? We consider three models that differ in their assumptions about the degree of integration: De Bot’s [De Bot, K. (1992). A bilingual Production model: Levelt’s Speaking model adapted. Applied Linguistics, 13 , 1–24] bilingual blueprint of the speaker, Ullman’s [Ullman, M. T. (2001). The neural basis of lexicon and grammar in first and second language: The declarative/procedural model. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4 , 105–122] declarative/procedural model of bilingualism, and Hartsuiker et al.’s [Hartsuiker, R. J., Pickering, M. J., & Veltkamp, E. (2004). Is syntax separate or shared between languages? Cross-linguistic syntactic priming in Spanish/English bilinguals. Psychological Science, 15 , 409–414] integrated model. A review of the evidence from bilingual Sentence Production studies shows that Hartsuiker et al.’s predictions are supported, but argues against the other two models. We discuss some repercussions for bilingual language use.
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the interplay of meaning sound and syntax in Sentence Production
Psychological Bulletin, 2002Co-Authors: Gabriella Vigliocco, Robert J HartsuikerAbstract:A discussion of modularity in language Production processes, with special emphasis on processes for retrieving words and building syntactic structures for a to-be-uttered Sentence, is presented. The authors' 1st goal was to assess the extent to which information processing is encapsulated between different processing stages. In particular, they assessed whether the input from one processing stage to the next is minimal and whether the flow of information in the system is strictly unidirectional. On the basis of the reviewed evidence, they conclude that both assumptions have to be revised. Their 2nd goal was to propose an alternative framework that does not assume strict encapsulation but that maintains multiple levels of integration for Production.
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word order priming in written and spoken Sentence Production
Cognition, 2000Co-Authors: Robert J Hartsuiker, Casper WestenbergAbstract:An experiment is reported that showed priming of the word order of auxiliary verb and past participle in Dutch subordinate clauses, both in speaking and in writing. Participants completed Sentence fragments to full Sentences. Prime Sentence fragments were constrained so as to be completed with only one possible word order. Target Sentence fragments, presented immediately after the prime fragments, could be completed with the same word order as that of the prime and an alternative order with the two words exchanged. Significant priming effects were obtained, so that the same word orders tended to be used in prime and target. We interpret this as evidence for a distinct process of constituent structure linearization during Sentence Production, which serves to ensure the fluency of speech and writing.
Cynthia K. Thompson - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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common and distinct neural substrates of Sentence Production and comprehension
NeuroImage, 2021Co-Authors: Sladjana Lukic, Cynthia K. Thompson, Brenda Rapp, Elena Barbieri, Brianne Chiappetta, Borna Bonakdarpour, Swathi Kiran, Todd B ParrishAbstract:Functional neuroimaging and lesion-symptom mapping investigations implicate a left frontal-temporal-parietal network for Sentence processing. The majority of studies have focused on Sentence comprehension, with fewer in the domain of Sentence Production, which have not fully elucidated overlapping and/or unique brain structures associated with the two domains, particularly for Sentences with noncanonical word order. Using voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM) we examined the relationship between lesions within the left hemisphere language network and both Sentence comprehension and Production of simple and complex syntactic structures in 76 participants with chronic stroke-induced aphasia. Results revealed shared regions across domains in the anterior and posterior superior temporal gyri (aSTG, pSTG), and the temporal pole (adjusted for verb Production/comprehension). Additionally, comprehension was associated with lesions in the anterior and posterior middle temporal gyri (aMTG, pMTG), the MTG temporooccipital regions, SMG/AG, central and parietal operculum, and the insula. Subsequent VLSM analyses (Production versus comprehension) revealed critical regions associated with each domain: anterior temporal lesions were associated with Production; posterior temporo-parietal lesions were associated with comprehension, implicating important roles for regions within the ventral and dorsal stream processing routes, respectively. Processing of syntactically complex, noncanonical (adjusted for canonical), Sentences was associated with damage to the pSTG across domains, with additional damage to the pMTG and IPL associated with impaired Sentence comprehension, suggesting that the pSTG is crucial for computing noncanonical Sentences across domains and that the pMTG, and IPL are necessary for re-analysis of thematic roles as required for resolution of long-distance dependencies. These findings converge with previous studies and extend our knowledge of the neural mechanisms of Sentence comprehension to Production, highlighting critical regions associated with both domains, and further address the mechanism engaged for syntactic computation, controlled for the contribution of verb processing.
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recovery of Sentence Production processes following language treatment in aphasia evidence from eyetracking
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2017Co-Authors: Jennifer E Mack, Michaela Nerantzini, Cynthia K. ThompsonAbstract:Introduction: Sentence Production impairments in aphasia often improve with treatment. However, little is known about how cognitive processes supporting Sentence Production, such as Sentence planning, are impacted by treatment. Methods: The present study used eyetracking to examine changes in Sentence Production resulting from a 12-week language treatment program focused on passive Sentences (Treatment of Underlying Forms (TUF); Thompson and Shapiro, 2005). In two pre-treatment and two post-treatment sessions, nine participants with mild-to-moderate agrammatic aphasia performed a structural priming task, which involved repeating primed Sentences (actives or passives) and then, using the same verb, producing Sentences describing pictured events. Two individuals with aphasia performed the eyetracking task on the same schedule without intervening language treatment. Ten unimpaired older adults also performed the task to identify normal performance patterns. Sentence Production accuracy and speech onset latencies were examined, and eye movements to the pictured Agent and Theme characters were analyzed in the first 400 ms after picture onset, reflecting early Sentence planning, and in the regions preceding the Production of the Sentence subject and post-verbal noun, reflecting lexical encoding. Results: Unimpaired controls performed with high accuracy. Their early eye movements (first 400 ms) indicated equal fixations to the Agent and Theme, consistent with structural Sentence planning (i.e., initial construction of an abstract structural frame). Subsequent eye movements occurring prior to speech onset were consistent with encoding of the correct Sentence subject (i.e., the Agent in actives, Theme in passives), with encoding of the post-verbal noun beginning at speech onset. In participants with aphasia, accuracy improved significantly with treatment, and post-treatment (but not pre-treatment) eye movements were qualitatively similar to those of unimpaired controls, indicating correct encoding of the Agent and Theme nouns for both active and passive Sentences. Analysis of early eye movements also showed a treatment-induced increase in structural planning. No changes in Sentence Production accuracy or eye movements were found in the aphasic participants who did not receive treatment. Conclusion: These findings indicate that treatment improves Sentence Production and results in the emergence of normal-like cognitive processes associated with successful Sentence Production, including structural planning.
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grammatical planning units during real time Sentence Production in speakers with agrammatic aphasia and healthy speakers
Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 2015Co-Authors: Jiyeon Lee, Masaya Yoshida, Cynthia K. ThompsonAbstract:Purpose Grammatical encoding (GE) is impaired in agrammatic aphasia; however, the nature of such deficits remains unclear. We examined grammatical planning units during real-time Sentence Production in speakers with agrammatic aphasia and control speakers, testing two competing models of GE. We queried whether speakers with agrammatic aphasia produce Sentences word by word without advanced planning or whether hierarchical syntactic structure (i.e., verb argument structure; VAS) is encoded as part of the advanced planning unit. Method Experiment 1 examined Production of Sentences with a predefined structure (i.e., “The A and the B are above the C”) using eye tracking. Experiment 2 tested Production of transitive and unaccusative Sentences without a predefined Sentence structure in a verb-priming study. Results In Experiment 1, both speakers with agrammatic aphasia and young and age-matched control speakers used word-by-word strategies, selecting the first lemma (noun A) only prior to speech onset. However,...
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what goes wrong during passive Sentence Production in agrammatic aphasia an eyetracking study
Aphasiology, 2010Co-Authors: Soojin Cho, Cynthia K. ThompsonAbstract:Background: Production of passive Sentences is often impaired in agrammatic aphasia and has been attributed both to an underlying structural impairment (e.g., Schwartz, Saffran, Fink, Myers, & Martin, 1994) and to a morphological deficit (e.g., Caplan & Hanna, 1998; Faroqi-Shah & Thompson, 2003). However, the nature of the deficit in passive Sentence Production is not clear due to methodological issues present in previous studies. Aims: This study examined active and passive Sentence Production in nine agrammatic aphasic speakers under conditions of structural priming using eyetracking to test whether structural impairments occur independently of morphological impairments and whether the underlying nature of error types is reflected in on-line measures, i.e., eye movements and speech onset latencies. Methods & Procedures: Nine participants viewed and listened to a prime Sentence in either active or passive voice, and then repeated it aloud. Next, a target picture appeared on the computer monitor and parti...
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the northwestern anagram test measuring Sentence Production in primary progressive aphasia
American Journal of Alzheimers Disease and Other Dementias, 2009Co-Authors: Sandra Weintraub, Marsel M Mesulam, Christina Wieneke, Alfred W Rademaker, Emily Rogalski, Cynthia K. ThompsonAbstract:Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a clinical dementia syndrome with early symptoms of language dysfunction. Postmortem findings are varied and include Alzheimer disease and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), both tauopathies and TAR DNA binding protein (TDP-43) proteinopathies. Clinical-pathological correlations in PPA are complex but the presence in the clinical profile of agrammatism has a high association with tauopathy. Grammatical competence is difficult to assess in the clinical setting with available methods. This article describes the Northwestern Anagram Test (NAT), a new clinical measure of Sentence Production. A total of 16 patients with PPA and their controls assembled single printed words to create Sentences describing pictures. Northwestern Anagram Test performance was significantly correlated with a measure of Sentence Production and with aphasia severity but not with measures of naming, single word comprehension, object recognition, or motor speech. The NAT can be used to assess syntax competence when patients cannot be tested with measures that require intact speech Production.
Franklin Chang - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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meaningful questions the acquisition of auxiliary inversion in a connectionist model of Sentence Production
Cognition, 2017Co-Authors: Hartmut Fitz, Franklin ChangAbstract:Nativist theories have argued that language involves syntactic principles which are unlearnable from the input children receive. A paradigm case of these innate principles is the structure dependence of auxiliary inversion in complex polar questions (Chomsky, 1968, 1975, 1980). Computational approaches have focused on the properties of the input in explaining how children acquire these questions. In contrast, we argue that messages are structured in a way that supports structure dependence in syntax. We demonstrate this approach within a connectionist model of Sentence Production (Chang, 2009) which learned to generate a range of complex polar questions from a structured message without positive exemplars in the input. The model also generated different types of error in development that were similar in magnitude to those in children (e.g., auxiliary doubling, Ambridge, Rowland, & Pine, 2008; Crain & Nakayama, 1987). Through model comparisons we trace how meaning constraints and linguistic experience interact during the acquisition of auxiliary inversion. Our results suggest that auxiliary inversion rules in English can be acquired without innate syntactic principles, as long as it is assumed that speakers who ask complex questions express messages that are structured into multiple propositions.
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the p chain relating Sentence Production and its disorders to comprehension and acquisition
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2014Co-Authors: Gary S. Dell, Franklin ChangAbstract:This article introduces the P-chain, an emerging framework for theory in psycholinguistics that unifies research on comprehension, Production and acquisition. The framework proposes that language processing involves incremental prediction, which is carried out by the Production system. Prediction necessarily leads to prediction error, which drives learning, including both adaptive adjustment to the mature language processing system as well as language acquisition. To illustrate the P-chain, we review the Dual-path model of Sentence Production, a connectionist model that explains structural priming in Production and a number of facts about language acquisition. The potential of this and related models for explaining acquired and developmental disorders of Sentence Production is discussed.
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symbolically speaking a connectionist model of Sentence Production
Cognitive Science, 2002Co-Authors: Franklin ChangAbstract:The ability to combine words into novel Sentences has been used to argue that humans have symbolic language Production abilities. Critiques of connectionist models of language often center on the inability of these models to generalize symbolically (Fodor & Pylyshyn, 1988; Marcus, 1998). To address these issues, a connectionist model of Sentence Production was developed. The model had variables (role-concept bindings) that were inspired by spatial representations (Landau & Jackendoff, 1993). In order to take advantage of these variables, a novel dual-pathway architecture with event semantics is proposed and shown to be better at symbolic generalization than several variants. This architecture has one pathway for mapping message content to words and a separate pathway that enforces sequencing constraints. Analysis of the model's hidden units demonstrated that the model learned different types of information in each pathway, and that the model's compositional behavior arose from the combination of these two pathways. The model's ability to balance symbolic and statistical behavior in syntax acquisition and to model aphasic double dissociations provided independent support for the dual-pathway architecture.
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structural priming as implicit learning a comparison of models of Sentence Production
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2000Co-Authors: Franklin Chang, Gary S. Dell, Kathryn Bock, Zenzi Margareta GriffinAbstract:Structural priming reflects a tendency to generalize recently spoken or heard syntactic structures to different utterances. We propose that it is a form of implicit learning. To explore this hypothesis, we developed and tested a connectionist model of language Production that incorporated mechanisms previously used to simulate implicit learning. In the model, the mechanism that learned to produce structured sequences of phrases from messages also exhibited structural priming. The ability of the model to account for structural priming depended on representational assumptions about the nature of messages and the relationship between comprehension and Production. Modeling experiments showed that comprehension-based representations were important for the model’s generalizations in Production and that nonatomic message representations allowed a better fit to existing data on structural priming than traditional thematic-role representations. When we talk, we have to create syntactic structures. How we do this is important for understanding Sentence Production. In this paper, we argue that the process of creating structure is affected by adaptations to experience within the Production system. That is, the Production system learns. We address this claim through the computational modeling of structural priming, looking at how alternative representations influence structural variations. Structural priming is a tendency to use similar syntactic structures in successive clauses or Sentences (Bock, 1986; Bock & Loebell, 1990). For example, in primed picture description, speakers who first produce a prepositional-dative Sentence (e.g., “The girl showed a picture to the teacher”)
