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Task-dependency and structure-dependency in number interference effects in sentence comprehension

We report three experiments on French that explore number mismatch effects in intervention configurations in the comprehension of object A’-dependencies, relative clauses and questions. The study capitalizes on the finding of object attraction in sentence production, in which speakers sometimes erro...

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Autores principales: Franck, Julie, Colonna, Saveria, Rizzi, Luigi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4392591/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25914652
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00349
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author Franck, Julie
Colonna, Saveria
Rizzi, Luigi
author_facet Franck, Julie
Colonna, Saveria
Rizzi, Luigi
author_sort Franck, Julie
collection PubMed
description We report three experiments on French that explore number mismatch effects in intervention configurations in the comprehension of object A’-dependencies, relative clauses and questions. The study capitalizes on the finding of object attraction in sentence production, in which speakers sometimes erroneously produce a verb that agrees in number with a plural object in object relative clauses. Evidence points to the role of three critical constructs from formal syntax: intervention, intermediate traces and c-command (Franck et al., 2010). Experiment 1, using a self-paced reading procedure on these grammatical structures with an agreement error on the verb, shows an enhancing effect of number mismatch in intervention configurations, with faster reading times with plural (mismatching) objects. Experiment 2, using an on-line grammaticality judgment task on the ungrammatical versions of these structures, shows an interference effect in the form of attraction, with slower response times with plural objects. Experiment 3 with a similar grammaticality judgment task shows stronger attraction from c-commanding than from preceding interveners. Overall, the data suggest that syntactic computations in performance refer to the same syntactic representations in production and comprehension, but that different tasks tap into different processes involved in parsing: whereas performance in self-paced reading reflects the intervention of the subject in the process of building an object A’-dependency, performance in grammaticality judgment reflects intervention of the object on the computation of the subject-verb agreement dependency. The latter shows the hallmarks of structure-dependent attraction effects in sentence production, in particular, a sensitivity to specific characteristics of hierarchical representations.
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spelling pubmed-43925912015-04-24 Task-dependency and structure-dependency in number interference effects in sentence comprehension Franck, Julie Colonna, Saveria Rizzi, Luigi Front Psychol Psychology We report three experiments on French that explore number mismatch effects in intervention configurations in the comprehension of object A’-dependencies, relative clauses and questions. The study capitalizes on the finding of object attraction in sentence production, in which speakers sometimes erroneously produce a verb that agrees in number with a plural object in object relative clauses. Evidence points to the role of three critical constructs from formal syntax: intervention, intermediate traces and c-command (Franck et al., 2010). Experiment 1, using a self-paced reading procedure on these grammatical structures with an agreement error on the verb, shows an enhancing effect of number mismatch in intervention configurations, with faster reading times with plural (mismatching) objects. Experiment 2, using an on-line grammaticality judgment task on the ungrammatical versions of these structures, shows an interference effect in the form of attraction, with slower response times with plural objects. Experiment 3 with a similar grammaticality judgment task shows stronger attraction from c-commanding than from preceding interveners. Overall, the data suggest that syntactic computations in performance refer to the same syntactic representations in production and comprehension, but that different tasks tap into different processes involved in parsing: whereas performance in self-paced reading reflects the intervention of the subject in the process of building an object A’-dependency, performance in grammaticality judgment reflects intervention of the object on the computation of the subject-verb agreement dependency. The latter shows the hallmarks of structure-dependent attraction effects in sentence production, in particular, a sensitivity to specific characteristics of hierarchical representations. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-04-10 /pmc/articles/PMC4392591/ /pubmed/25914652 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00349 Text en Copyright © 2015 Franck, Colonna and Rizzi. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Franck, Julie
Colonna, Saveria
Rizzi, Luigi
Task-dependency and structure-dependency in number interference effects in sentence comprehension
title Task-dependency and structure-dependency in number interference effects in sentence comprehension
title_full Task-dependency and structure-dependency in number interference effects in sentence comprehension
title_fullStr Task-dependency and structure-dependency in number interference effects in sentence comprehension
title_full_unstemmed Task-dependency and structure-dependency in number interference effects in sentence comprehension
title_short Task-dependency and structure-dependency in number interference effects in sentence comprehension
title_sort task-dependency and structure-dependency in number interference effects in sentence comprehension
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4392591/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25914652
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00349
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