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Is Passive Syntax Semantically Constrained? Evidence From Adult Grammaticality Judgment and Comprehension Studies

To explain the phenomenon that certain English verbs resist passivization (e.g., *£5 was cost by the book), Pinker (1989) proposed a semantic constraint on the passive in the adult grammar: The greater the extent to which a verb denotes an action where a patient is affected or acted upon, the greate...

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Autores principales: Ambridge, Ben, Bidgood, Amy, Pine, Julian M., Rowland, Caroline F., Freudenthal, Daniel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4996337/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26607289
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12277
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author Ambridge, Ben
Bidgood, Amy
Pine, Julian M.
Rowland, Caroline F.
Freudenthal, Daniel
author_facet Ambridge, Ben
Bidgood, Amy
Pine, Julian M.
Rowland, Caroline F.
Freudenthal, Daniel
author_sort Ambridge, Ben
collection PubMed
description To explain the phenomenon that certain English verbs resist passivization (e.g., *£5 was cost by the book), Pinker (1989) proposed a semantic constraint on the passive in the adult grammar: The greater the extent to which a verb denotes an action where a patient is affected or acted upon, the greater the extent to which it is compatible with the passive. However, a number of comprehension and production priming studies have cast doubt upon this claim, finding no difference between highly affecting agent‐patient/theme‐experiencer passives (e.g., Wendy was kicked/frightened by Bob) and non‐actional experiencer theme passives (e.g., Wendy was heard by Bob). The present study provides evidence that a semantic constraint is psychologically real, and is readily observed when more fine‐grained independent and dependent measures are used (i.e., participant ratings of verb semantics, graded grammaticality judgments, and reaction time in a forced‐choice picture‐matching comprehension task). We conclude that a semantic constraint on the passive must be incorporated into accounts of the adult grammar.
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spelling pubmed-49963372016-09-06 Is Passive Syntax Semantically Constrained? Evidence From Adult Grammaticality Judgment and Comprehension Studies Ambridge, Ben Bidgood, Amy Pine, Julian M. Rowland, Caroline F. Freudenthal, Daniel Cogn Sci Regular Articles To explain the phenomenon that certain English verbs resist passivization (e.g., *£5 was cost by the book), Pinker (1989) proposed a semantic constraint on the passive in the adult grammar: The greater the extent to which a verb denotes an action where a patient is affected or acted upon, the greater the extent to which it is compatible with the passive. However, a number of comprehension and production priming studies have cast doubt upon this claim, finding no difference between highly affecting agent‐patient/theme‐experiencer passives (e.g., Wendy was kicked/frightened by Bob) and non‐actional experiencer theme passives (e.g., Wendy was heard by Bob). The present study provides evidence that a semantic constraint is psychologically real, and is readily observed when more fine‐grained independent and dependent measures are used (i.e., participant ratings of verb semantics, graded grammaticality judgments, and reaction time in a forced‐choice picture‐matching comprehension task). We conclude that a semantic constraint on the passive must be incorporated into accounts of the adult grammar. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2015-11-26 2016-08 /pmc/articles/PMC4996337/ /pubmed/26607289 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12277 Text en © 2015 The Authors. Cognitive Science published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Cognitive Science Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Regular Articles
Ambridge, Ben
Bidgood, Amy
Pine, Julian M.
Rowland, Caroline F.
Freudenthal, Daniel
Is Passive Syntax Semantically Constrained? Evidence From Adult Grammaticality Judgment and Comprehension Studies
title Is Passive Syntax Semantically Constrained? Evidence From Adult Grammaticality Judgment and Comprehension Studies
title_full Is Passive Syntax Semantically Constrained? Evidence From Adult Grammaticality Judgment and Comprehension Studies
title_fullStr Is Passive Syntax Semantically Constrained? Evidence From Adult Grammaticality Judgment and Comprehension Studies
title_full_unstemmed Is Passive Syntax Semantically Constrained? Evidence From Adult Grammaticality Judgment and Comprehension Studies
title_short Is Passive Syntax Semantically Constrained? Evidence From Adult Grammaticality Judgment and Comprehension Studies
title_sort is passive syntax semantically constrained? evidence from adult grammaticality judgment and comprehension studies
topic Regular Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4996337/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26607289
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12277
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