Prosodic and syntactic focus in speech processing in Mandarin Chinese

<p>It is well established that focus plays an important role in facilitating language processing, i.e., focused words are recognised faster and remembered better. In addition, more recent research shows that alternatives to a word (e.g., sailor as an alternative to captain) are more activated when listeners hear the word with contrastive prominence (e.g., ‘The captain put on the raincoat) (bold indicates contrastive prominence). The mechanism behind these processing advantages is focus. Focus has two broad conceptions in relation to its effect on language processing: focus as updating the common ground and focus as indicating alternatives. Considerable psycholinguistic evidence has been obtained for processing advantages consistent with the first conception, and this evidence comes from studies across a reasonably wide range of languages. But the evidence for the second conception only comes from a handful of closely related languages (i.e., English, Dutch and German). Further, it has largely been confined to contrastive accenting as a marker of focus. Therefore, it is not clear if other types of focus marking (e.g., clefts) have similar processing effects. It is also not known if all this is true in Mandarin, as there is very little research in these areas in Mandarin. Mandarin uses pitch expansion to mark contrastive prominence, rather than the pitch accenting found in Germanic languages. Therefore, the investigation of Mandarin expands our knowledge of these speech processing effects to a different language and language family. It also expands our knowledge of the relative roles of prosody and syntax in marking focus and in speech processing in Mandarin, and in general. This thesis tested how different types of focus marking affect the perception of focus and two aspects of language processing related to focus: the encoding and activation of discourse information (focused words and focus alternatives). The aim was to see whether there is a link between the relative importance of prosodic and syntactic focus marking in Mandarin and their effectiveness in these aspects of language processing. For focus perception, contrastive prominence and clefting have been claimed to mark focus in Mandarin, but it has not been well tested whether listeners perceive them as focus marking. For the first aspect of processing, it is not yet clear what cues listeners use to encode focused information beyond prominence when processing a discourse. For the second aspect, there has been rapidly growing interest in the role of alternatives in language processing, but little is known regarding the effect of clefting. In addition, it is not clear whether the prosodic and syntactic cues are equally effective, and again little research has been devoted to Mandarin. Therefore, the following experiments were conducted to look at these cues in Mandarin. Experiment 1, a norming study, was conducted to help select stimuli for the following Experiments 2, 3, 4A and 4B. Experiment 2 investigated the relative weights of prosodic and syntactic focus cues in a question-answer appropriateness rating task. The findings show that in canonical word order sentences, the focus was perceived to be on the word that was marked by contrastive prominence. In clefts where the prominence and syntactic cues were on the same word, that word was perceived as being in focus. However, in ‘mismatch’ cases, e.g., 是[船长]F 穿上的[雨衣]F ‘It was the [captain]F who put on the [raincoat]F’ (F indicates focus), the focus was perceived to be on raincoat, the word that had contrastive prominence. In other words, participants weighted prosodic cues more highly. This suggests that prosodic prominence is a stronger focus cue than syntax in Mandarin. Experiment 3 looked at the role of prosodic and syntactic cues in listeners’ encoding of discourse information in a speeded ‘false alternative’ rejection task. This experiment shows that false alternatives to a word in a sentence (e.g., sailor to captain in ‘The captain put on the raincoat’) were more easily rejected if captain was marked with prosodic cues than with syntactic cues. This experiment shows congruent results to those of Experiment 2, in that prosodic cues were more effective than syntactic cues in encoding discourse information. It seems that a more important marker of focus provides more effective encoding of discourse information. Experiments 4A and 4B investigated the role of prosodic and syntactic focus cues in the activation of discourse information in Mandarin, using the cross-modal lexical priming paradigm. Both studies consistently show that prosodic focus marking, but not syntactic focus marking, facilitates the activation of identical targets (e.g., captain after hearing ‘The captain put on the raincoat’). Similarly, prosodic focus marking, but not syntactic focus marking, primes alternatives (e.g., sailor). But focus marking does not prime noncontrastive associates (e.g., deck). These findings, together with previous findings on focus particles (e.g., only), suggest that alternative priming is particularly related to contrastive prominence, at least in languages looked at to date. The relative priming effects of prosodic and syntactic focus cues in Experiments 4A and 4B are in line with their relative weights in Experiments 2 and 3. This thesis presents a crucial link between the relative weights of prosodic and syntactic cues in marking focus, their degrees of effectiveness in encoding discourse information and their ability to activate discourse information in Mandarin. This research contributes significantly to our cross-linguistic understanding of prosodic and syntactic focus in speech processing, showing the processing advantages of focus may be common across languages, but what cues trigger the effects differ by language.</p>

Prosodic and syntactic focus in speech processing in Mandarin Chinese

<p>It is well established that focus plays an important role in facilitating language processing, i.e., focused words are recognised faster and remembered better. In addition, more recent research shows that alternatives to a word (e.g., sailor as an alternative to captain) are more activated when listeners hear the word with contrastive prominence (e.g., ‘The captain put on the raincoat) (bold indicates contrastive prominence). The mechanism behind these processing advantages is focus. Focus has two broad conceptions in relation to its effect on language processing: focus as updating the common ground and focus as indicating alternatives. Considerable psycholinguistic evidence has been obtained for processing advantages consistent with the first conception, and this evidence comes from studies across a reasonably wide range of languages. But the evidence for the second conception only comes from a handful of closely related languages (i.e., English, Dutch and German). Further, it has largely been confined to contrastive accenting as a marker of focus. Therefore, it is not clear if other types of focus marking (e.g., clefts) have similar processing effects. It is also not known if all this is true in Mandarin, as there is very little research in these areas in Mandarin. Mandarin uses pitch expansion to mark contrastive prominence, rather than the pitch accenting found in Germanic languages. Therefore, the investigation of Mandarin expands our knowledge of these speech processing effects to a different language and language family. It also expands our knowledge of the relative roles of prosody and syntax in marking focus and in speech processing in Mandarin, and in general. This thesis tested how different types of focus marking affect the perception of focus and two aspects of language processing related to focus: the encoding and activation of discourse information (focused words and focus alternatives). The aim was to see whether there is a link between the relative importance of prosodic and syntactic focus marking in Mandarin and their effectiveness in these aspects of language processing. For focus perception, contrastive prominence and clefting have been claimed to mark focus in Mandarin, but it has not been well tested whether listeners perceive them as focus marking. For the first aspect of processing, it is not yet clear what cues listeners use to encode focused information beyond prominence when processing a discourse. For the second aspect, there has been rapidly growing interest in the role of alternatives in language processing, but little is known regarding the effect of clefting. In addition, it is not clear whether the prosodic and syntactic cues are equally effective, and again little research has been devoted to Mandarin. Therefore, the following experiments were conducted to look at these cues in Mandarin. Experiment 1, a norming study, was conducted to help select stimuli for the following Experiments 2, 3, 4A and 4B. Experiment 2 investigated the relative weights of prosodic and syntactic focus cues in a question-answer appropriateness rating task. The findings show that in canonical word order sentences, the focus was perceived to be on the word that was marked by contrastive prominence. In clefts where the prominence and syntactic cues were on the same word, that word was perceived as being in focus. However, in ‘mismatch’ cases, e.g., 是[船长]F 穿上的[雨衣]F ‘It was the [captain]F who put on the [raincoat]F’ (F indicates focus), the focus was perceived to be on raincoat, the word that had contrastive prominence. In other words, participants weighted prosodic cues more highly. This suggests that prosodic prominence is a stronger focus cue than syntax in Mandarin. Experiment 3 looked at the role of prosodic and syntactic cues in listeners’ encoding of discourse information in a speeded ‘false alternative’ rejection task. This experiment shows that false alternatives to a word in a sentence (e.g., sailor to captain in ‘The captain put on the raincoat’) were more easily rejected if captain was marked with prosodic cues than with syntactic cues. This experiment shows congruent results to those of Experiment 2, in that prosodic cues were more effective than syntactic cues in encoding discourse information. It seems that a more important marker of focus provides more effective encoding of discourse information. Experiments 4A and 4B investigated the role of prosodic and syntactic focus cues in the activation of discourse information in Mandarin, using the cross-modal lexical priming paradigm. Both studies consistently show that prosodic focus marking, but not syntactic focus marking, facilitates the activation of identical targets (e.g., captain after hearing ‘The captain put on the raincoat’). Similarly, prosodic focus marking, but not syntactic focus marking, primes alternatives (e.g., sailor). But focus marking does not prime noncontrastive associates (e.g., deck). These findings, together with previous findings on focus particles (e.g., only), suggest that alternative priming is particularly related to contrastive prominence, at least in languages looked at to date. The relative priming effects of prosodic and syntactic focus cues in Experiments 4A and 4B are in line with their relative weights in Experiments 2 and 3. This thesis presents a crucial link between the relative weights of prosodic and syntactic cues in marking focus, their degrees of effectiveness in encoding discourse information and their ability to activate discourse information in Mandarin. This research contributes significantly to our cross-linguistic understanding of prosodic and syntactic focus in speech processing, showing the processing advantages of focus may be common across languages, but what cues trigger the effects differ by language.</p>

The language network supports both lexical access and sentence generation during language production

A network of left frontal and temporal brain regions has long been implicated in language comprehension and production. However, because of relatively fewer investigations of language production, the precise role of this ‘language network’ in production-related cognitive processes remains debated. Across four fMRI experiments that use picture naming/description to mimic the translation of conceptual representations into words and sentences, we characterize the response of the language regions to production demands. In line with prior studies, sentence production elicited strong responses throughout the language network. Further, we report three novel results. First, we demonstrate that production-related responses in the language network are robust to output modality (speaking vs. typing). Second, the language regions respond to both lexical access and sentence-generation demands. This pattern implies strong integration between lexico-semantic and combinatorial processes, mirroring the picture that has emerged in language comprehension. Finally, some have previously hypothesized the existence of production-selective mechanisms given that syntactic encoding is a critical part of sentence production, whereas comprehension is possible even when syntactic cues are degraded or absent. Contrary to this hypothesis, we find no evidence of brain regions that selectively support sentence generation. Instead, language regions respond overall more strongly during production than during comprehension, which suggests that production incurs a greater cost for the language network. Together, these results align with the idea that language comprehension and production draw on the same knowledge representations, which are stored in the language-selective network and are used both to interpret linguistic input and generate linguistic output.

Processing similarities between native speakers and non-balanced bilinguals

Aims and objectives: The study investigates human sentence processing and argues that information from multiple sources is considered equally in native and non-native languages. Non-syntactic information does not overrule the parsing decisions prompted by syntactic cues. Methodology: The experiment used ambiguous relative clauses (RC) in a self-paced reading task with 20 native and 45 non-native adult speakers of English and Russian. The software Linger recorded participants’ answers to comprehension questions and the time they spent reading each word. Data and analysis: Mixed linear analysis performed in R checked for the effect of a matrix verb, RC length, social conventions, the native language and the language of testing on RC processing and interpretation. Findings: Both native and non-native speakers followed social conventions in deciding on the interpretation of the RC. However, this information never overruled the attachment decision prompted by the matrix predicate or by the length of the RC which entails certain sentence prosody. Originality: The study is innovative in investigating the extent to which each factor affected RC processing. It shows that social conventions enhance processing when they conspire with the structural parse prompted by linguistic cues. When they do not, syntactic information governs sentence parsing in both L1 and L2. Significance/implications: The study provides evidence that sentence processing uses linguistic structure as a first parsing hypothesis, which can then be adjusted to incorporate the incoming information from multiple sources. Limitations: The findings need further support from testing L2 learners of Russian in various socio-cultural contexts.

Phonological vs. natural gender cues in the acquisition of German by simultaneous and sequential bilinguals (German–Russian)

We investigate German–Russian bilingual children's sensitivity to formal and semantic cues when assigning gender to nouns in German. Across languages, young children have been shown to primarily rely on phonological cues, whereas sensitivity to semantic and syntactic cues increases with age. With its semi-transparent gender assignment system, where both formal and semantic cues are psycho linguistically relevant, German has weak phonological cues compared to other languages, and children have been argued to acquire semantic and phonological rules in tandem. German–Russian bilingual children face the challenge of acquiring two different gender assignment systems simultaneously. We tested 45 bilingual children (ages 4–10 years) and monolingual controls. Results show that the children are clearly sensitive to phonological cues, while semantic cues play a minor role. However, monolingual and bilingual children have different defaulting strategies, with monolinguals defaulting to neuter and bilinguals to feminine gender.

Pronominal anaphora resolution in Polish: investigating online sentence interpretation using eye-tracking.

The mechanism of anaphora resolution is subject to large cross-linguistic differences. The most likely reason for this is the different sensitivity of pronouns to pragmatic and syntactic cues of reference. In the current study, we explored the mechanism of anaphora resolution in Polish. First, in an ambiguous sentence-interpretation task, we explored the natural biases that occur during the interpretation of null or overt pronouns. More specifically, we investigated whether Polish speakers prefer to relate overt pronouns to antecedents which are in the syntactic position of a subject or an object. Subsequently, we tested the consequences of violation of this bias when tracing the online sentence-interpretation process using eye-tracking. Our results show that Polish speakers have a strong preference for interpreting null pronouns as referring to antecedents in a subject position and for interpreting overt pronouns as referring to antecedents in an object position. However, in online sentence interpretation, only overt pronouns showed sensitivity to violation of the speaker’s natural preferences for a pronoun-antecedent match. We found the null pronoun resolution to be more flexible than that of overt pronouns. Our results indicate that it is much easier for Polish speakers to shift the reference of a null pronoun than an overt one whenever a pronoun is forced to refer to a less-preferred antecedent. We propose that this is because the interpretation of null and overt pronouns is sensitive to the different cues which determine their reference. Overall, in the Polish language, interpretation of a null pronoun seems to be more sensitive to pragmatic cues of reference than syntactic cues of reference, while resolution of overt pronouns relies strongly on syntax-based cues.

Prosody-syntax interface and prosodic phrasing in brazilian portuguese

This paper focuses on the Brazilian Portuguese (PB) prosodic phrasing and has two main goals: (1) to find a correlation between the prosodic constituents boundaries, as described by the Prosodic Hierarchy Theory (Nespor & Vogel, 2007 [1986], a.o.) and the perception and production of spontaneous and reading speech breaks, and (2) to describe the phonological characteristics and the syntactic ranking of perceived and non perceived edges. The corpus under analysis includes 5 extracts both of spontaneous and reading speech lasting about 2 minutes each. The reading speech (LE) emerged from the spontaneous speech (FE) orthographic transcription which was collected from an interview in an informal environment. In the perception test, 11 referees heard the 10 speaking extracts, without punctuation, and marked the perceived breaks in the orthographic transcription of each of them. Both the 5 speakers and the 11 referees were students at UFRJ, born in Rio de Janeiro, and were between 22 and 38 years old.The results point out that the prosodic breaks are mainly perceived at the intonational phrase (I) boundary, regardless of the speech style (FE: 91%; LE 99%). However, in LE, 64% of the foreseen I boundaries, described by the Prosodic Hierarchy Theory, were perceived as breaks, but in FE, just 37% were perceived. The most usual nuclear contour in both styles is H+L* L% (this being the Portuguese neutral declarative contour), but its occurrence frequency at perceived breaks draws a distinction between LE and FE (67% and 30%, respectively). In FE, contours like L+H* H% and L*+H H% are also produced (34%). In general, descendant nuclei in LE are predominant, as well as the edge tone L; in FE, both the descendant and ascendant nuclei distribution and low or high boundaries are similar. After running a statistic test, the appearance of an L edge, as a predictive for perception, was globally significant. Concerning the syntactic boundary, it was statistically checked and the result points out that breaks are mainly perceived at the matrix phrase limit (LE: 59%; FE: 61%,), showing the endurance of the matrix phrase edge/I boundary mapping. In general, FE has proved to have a bigger variation on the relation of predicted, perceived and produced, as it was expected, which was also confirmed by statistics. Therefore, the results show that the foreseen I phrasing is fairly robust in both styles, once only 13% of the predicted I boundaries have not been produced as so, regarding intonation. Besides, just 1,4% of the predicted phonological phrase (f) boundaries (and produced as Is) were perceived as breaks by the referees. With this study one may conclude that LE and FE share the same prosodic grammar, performed by the same type of phonological/syntactic cues; nevertheless, these are more consistent in LE and have a more disperse way in FE, adding to a greater difficulty at the systematic perception of prosodic boundaries in FE than in LE.