Syntax-Semantics Interface

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Antonio Branco - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

Shari R. Baum - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • How Do French-English Bilinguals Pull Verb Particle Constructions Off? Factors Influencing Second Language Processing of Unfamiliar Structures at the Syntax-Semantics Interface.
    Frontiers in psychology, 2018
    Co-Authors: Alexandre C. Herbay, Laura M. Gonnerman, Shari R. Baum
    Abstract:

    An important challenge in bilingualism research is to understand the mechanisms underlying sentence processing in a second language and whether they are comparable to those underlying native processing. Here, we focus on verb-particle constructions (VPCs) that are among the most difficult elements to acquire in L2 English. The verb and the particle form a unit, which often has a non-compositional meaning (e.g., look up or chew out), making the combined structure semantically opaque. However, bilinguals with higher levels of English proficiency can develop a good knowledge of the semantic properties of verb-particle constructions (Blais and Gonnerman, 2013). A second difficulty is that in a sentence context, the particle can be shifted after the direct object of the verb, (e.g., The professor looked it up). The processing is more challenging when the object is long (e.g. The professor looked the student’s last name up.). This shifted structure favors syntactic processing at the expense of VPC semantic processing. We sought to determine whether or not bilinguals’ reading time (RT) patterns would be similar to those observed for native monolinguals (Gonnerman and Hayes, 2005) when reading VPCs in sentential contexts. French-English bilinguals were tested for English language proficiency, working memory and explicit VPC semantic knowledge. During a self-paced reading task, participants read 78 sentences with verb-particle constructions that varied according to parameters that influence native speakers’ reading dynamics: verb-particle transparency, particle adjacency and length of the object noun phrase (NP; 2, 3, or 5 words). RTs in a critical region that included verbs, NPs and particles were measured. Results revealed that RTs were modulated by participants’ English proficiency, with higher proficiency associated with shorter RTs. Examining participants’ explicit semantic knowledge of VPCs and working memory, only readers with more native-like knowledge of VPCs and a high working memory presented RT patterns that were similar to those of monolinguals. Therefore, given the necessary lexical and computational resources, bilingual processing of novel structures at the Syntax-Semantics Interface follows the principles influencing native processing. The findings are in keeping with theories that postulate similar representations and processing in L1 and L2 modulated by processing difficulty.

Mary Dalrymple - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

Louise Mycock - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

Ray Jackendoff - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • Turn Over Control to the Semantics
    Syntax, 2006
    Co-Authors: Peter W. Culicover, Ray Jackendoff
    Abstract:

    .  Historically, control in generative grammar has fallen within the province of syntactic theory. One primary reason for this is that Mainstream Generative Grammar (MGG) has imposed a strong uniformity criterion on analyses as a measure of their explanatory adequacy. One aspect of this uniformity criterion, which we call Interface Uniformity, holds that the Syntax-Semantics Interface is maximally simple, in that meaning maps transparently into syntactic structure, and that it is maximally uniform, so that the same meaning always maps into the same syntactic structure. It follows from Interface Uniformity that a nonfinite VP has a syntactic subject that is assigned its external θ-role. We argue that this view is most sustainable if one does not take into account the full richness and complexity of control phenomena, but treats control strictly in terms of complementation. When a fuller range of phenomena is taken into account, it appears that it is preferable to ‘‘turn over control’’ to the semantics, which is better equipped to capture the facts. We outline how to formulate the Syntax-Semantics Interface so as to get the semantic facts to line up properly with the syntactic facts. This analysis of the Interface extends naturally to raising.

  • Real-Time Processing Implications of Enriched Composition at the Syntax–Semantics Interface
    Journal of psycholinguistic research, 1999
    Co-Authors: Maria Mercedes Piñango, Edgar Zurif, Ray Jackendoff
    Abstract:

    This study reports results on the real-time consequences of aspectual coercion. We define aspectual coercion as a combinatorial semantic operation requiring computation over and above that provided by combining lexical items through expected syntactic processes. An experiment is described assessing whether or not parsing of a string requiring coercion—in addition to syntactic composition—is more computationally costly than parsing a syntactically transparent counterpart, a string that provides for an interpretable representation via syntactic composition alone. The prediction of a higher computational cost for this process is borne out by the results.

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