A self-organized sentence processing theory of gradience: The case of islands.

Formal theories of grammar and traditional parsing models, insofar as they presuppose a categorical notion of grammar, face the challenge of accounting for gradient effects (sentences receive gradient acceptability judgments, speakers report a gradient ability to comprehend sentences that deviate from idealized grammatical forms, and various online sentence processing measures yield gradient effects). This challenge is traditionally met by explaining gradient effects in terms of extra-grammatical factors, positing a purely categorical core for the language system. We present a new way of accounting for gradience in a self-organized sentence processing (SOSP) model. SOSP generates structures with a continuous range of grammaticality values by assuming a flexible structure-formation system in which the parses are formed even under sub-optimal circumstances by coercing elements to play roles that do not optimally suit them. We focus on islands, a family of syntactic domains out of which movement is generally prohibited. Islands are interesting because, although many linguistic theories treat them as fully ungrammatical and uninterpretable, experimental studies have revealed gradient patterns of acceptability and evidence for their interpretability. We describe the conceptual framework of SOSP, showing that it largely respects island constraints, but in certain cases, consistent with empirical data, coerces elements that block dependencies into elements that allow them.

Representations underlying pronoun choice in Italian and English.

Research has shown that speakers use fewer pronouns when the referential candidates are more similar and hence compete more strongly. Here we examined the locus of such an effect, investigating (1) whether pronoun use is affected by the referents' competition at a non-linguistic level only (non-linguistic competition account) or whether it is also affected by competition arising from the antecedents' similarities (linguistic competition account) and (2) the extent to which this depends on the type of pronoun. Speakers used Italian null pronouns and English pronouns less often (relative to full nouns) when the referential candidates compete more strongly situationally, while the antecedents' semantic, grammatical or phonological similarity did not affect the rates of either pronouns, providing support for the non-linguistic competition account. However, unlike English pronouns, Italian null pronouns were unaffected by gender congruence between human referents, running counter to the gender effect for the use of non-gendered overt pronouns reported earlier. Hence, while both null and overt pronouns are sensitive to non-linguistic competition, what similarity affects non-linguistic competition partly depends on the type of pronouns.

Similarity-based interference in agreement comprehension and production: Evidence from object agreement.

Studies on agreement production consistently report an increase in production errors in the presence of an attractor mismatching the agreement feature of the target. In contrast, results from comprehension studies are mixed, ranging from lack of effect to facilitation. We report 2 forced-choice experiments and 2 self-paced reading experiments on number and gender object-verb agreement in French to systematically explore the effect of a mismatching subject in the production and comprehension of object relatives. Results show that the presence of a mismatching subject penalizes sentence production, in line with reports of attraction, but consistently improves sentence comprehension in off-line comprehension measures, in line with similarity-based interference effects. We discuss the limits of classical models of sentence production and comprehension (Marking and Morphing and ACT-R), and favor a self-organizing sentence processing approach (SOSP), which accounts for both production and comprehension results through a single similarity-based mechanism of structure building. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Encoding and Retrieval Interference in Sentence Comprehension: Evidence from Agreement.

Long-distance verb-argument dependencies generally require the integration of a fronted argument when the verb is encountered for sentence interpretation. Under a parsing model that handles long-distance dependencies through a cue-based retrieval mechanism, retrieval is hampered when retrieval cues also resonate with non-target elements (retrieval interference). However, similarity-based interference may also stem from interference arising during the encoding of elements in memory (encoding interference), an effect that is not directly accountable for by a cue-based retrieval mechanism. Although encoding and retrieval interference are clearly distinct at the theoretical level, it is difficult to disentangle the two on empirical grounds, since encoding interference may also manifest at the retrieval region. We report two self-paced reading experiments aimed at teasing apart the role of each component in gender and number subject-verb agreement in Italian and English object relative clauses. In Italian, the verb does not agree in gender with the subject, thus providing no cue for retrieval. In English, although present tense verbs agree in number with the subject, past tense verbs do not, allowing us to test the role of number as a retrieval cue within the same language. Results from both experiments converge, showing similarity-based interference at encoding, and some evidence for an effect at retrieval. After having pointed out the non-negligible role of encoding in sentence comprehension, and noting that Lewis and Vasishth's (2005) ACT-R model of sentence processing, the most fully developed cue-based retrieval approach to sentence processing does not predict encoding effects, we propose an augmentation of this model that predicts these effects. We then also propose a self-organizing sentence processing model (SOSP), which has the advantage of accounting for retrieval and encoding interference with a single mechanism.