The prosody of ambiguous relative clauses in Spanish: a study of monolinguals and Basque- Spanish...
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The prosody of ambiguous relative clauses in Spanish: a study of monolinguals and Basque-Spanish bilinguals Irene de la Cruz-Pavía & Gorka Elordieta UPV-EHU This research has been funded by: Basque Government (BFI07.253) and CONSOLIDER-INGENIO: MCyT (CSD 2007- 00012).
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Transcript of The prosody of ambiguous relative clauses in Spanish: a study of monolinguals and Basque- Spanish...
The prosody of ambiguous relative clauses in
Spanish: a study of monolinguals and Basque-
Spanish bilinguals
Irene de la Cruz-Pavía & Gorka Elordieta UPV-EHU
This research has been funded by: Basque Government (BFI07.253) and CONSOLIDER-INGENIO: MCyT (CSD 2007-00012).
1. INTRODUCTION
● Syntactic processing:
1. What are the cognitive processes and strategies that take place during language processing?
2. What influences syntactic parsing?
● What role does prosody play?
● Prosodic principles influence in structural ambiguities resolution. (Schafer, Carter, Clifton y Frazier, 1996; Steinhauer, Alter y Friederici, 1999; Schafer, Speer, Warren y White, 2000; Snedecker y Trueswell, 2003; Frazier, Carlson, Clifton, 2006; Teira e Igoa, 2007)
1. INTRODUCTION
● Speakers introduce effective prosodic cues (pauses, tonal rising) to create boundaries.
● Listeners use these prosodic cues to resolve syntactic ambiguities.
1. INTRODUCTION
● Processing structural ambiguity in relative clauses.
Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony.
NP1 NP2 RC
[NP + PP] + RC
1. INTRODUCTION
● High Attachment / Early Closure
Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony.
NP1 NP2 RC
1. INTRODUCTION
● Low Attachment / Late Closure
Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony.
NP1 NP2 RC
1. INTRODUCTION
→ Early Closure / High Attachment
CP
DP
alguien disparó a
someone shot D NP
el
the NP RC
N PP que ei estaba en el balcón
criadoi whoi was on the balcony
servanti
P DP
de
of D NP
la
the N
actriz
actress
→ Late Closure / Low Attachment
CP
DP
alguien disparó a
someone shot D NP
el
the N PP
criado
servant P DP
de
of D NP
la
the N RC
actrizi
actressi que ei estaba en el balcón
whoi was on the balcony
High Attachment preference Low Attachment preference
Spanish (on-line + off-line) English (on-line + off-line)(Cuetos & Mitchell, 1988) (Cuetos & Mitchell, 1988; Fernández, 2002)
French (on-line + off-line) Basque (off-line)(Zagar, Pynte and Rativeau, 1997) (Gutierrez, Carreiras and Laka, 2004)
German (on-line) Italian (on-line + off-line) (Hemforth, Konieczny, Scheepers and Strube, 1998) (De Vincenzi and Job, 1993 and 1995)
Dutch (on-line + off-line) Swedish (off-line)(Brysbaert and Mitchell, 1996) (Ehrlich, Fernández, Fodor, Stenshoel & Vinereanu, 1999)
Galician (on-line) Romanian (off-line)(Fraga, García-Orza and Acuña, 2005) (Ehrlich et al., 1999)
Afrikaans (off-line) Norwegian (off-line) (Mitchell, Brysbaert, Grondelaers and Swanpoel, 2000) (Ehrlich et al., 1999)
Greek (on-line) Brazilian Portuguese (on-line) (Clahsen & Felser, 2006) (Miyamoto, 1998)
2. The Prosodic Hypothesis (Fodor: 1998, 2002)
● The prosodic processor packages the input into chunks in an initial stage of processing.
- Antigravity Law: Heavy constituents can rise, but light
constituents stay low.
Prosodic weight is defined by constituent length.
- The longer the RC the heavier.
- Same-Size-Sister constraint: Find a sister of your own size.
- The prosodic constituents of a sentence must have a balanced
size.
- Light/small RCs attach low in the syntactic tree. Heavy/large
RCs attach high.
2. The Prosodic Hypothesis (Fodor 1998, 2002)
- Implicit Prosody Hypothesis: In silent reading a prosodic
contour is imposed on the input string.
- Results obtained by Maynell (1999) and Lovrić, Bradley and
Fodor (2000, 2001) show a correlation between prosodic
breaks and RC attachment.
2. The Prosodic Hypothesis (Fodor 1998, 2002)
● Prosodic break after NP1 Low Attachment
Someone shot the servant]break [of the actress that was on the balcony. NP1 NP2
● Prosodic break after NP2 High Attachment
Someone shot the servant of the actress]break [that was on the balcony.
NP1 NP2
2. The Prosodic Hypothesis (Fodor 1998, 2002)
● Two part experiment: production + questionnaire
- Same materials and participants.
- Order of the experiments: counterbalanced
● Plausibility/Naturalness test: 48 sentences + fillers
The 36 most plausible/natural were selected (mean rate 6.16)
1----------------------------------------------7
not plausible/natural very plausible/natural
3. EXPERIMENTS
● 36 experimental sentences containing: NP1 de NP2 + RC.
48 fillers pseudorandomly mixed: two lists
● The length of the RC was manipulated and sorted into three groups:
3-4 syll.; 6-7 syll.; 9-11 syll..
3.1. PRODUCTIONMETHODOLOGY
● 24 participants: 8 Spanish monolinguals, 8 Basque-Spanish
bilinguals L1 Spanish and 8 Basque- Spanish bilinguals L1 Basque.
● Task: to read the sentences aloud in a natural way.
● The utterances were recorded in an anechoic room.
● Skimming: 4 participants per linguistic group
METHODOLOGY
● Amount of experimental items recorded: 864
(2016 in total, fillers included)
● Amount of analyzed utterances: 844
● We analyzed the prosodic contours of the critical region (the complex NP and the beginning of the RC).
● Prosodic cues: continuation rise, pause, lengthening.
METHODOLOGY
Ayer ayudé al abuelo del ganaderobreak que adoraba comer lasaña todos los viernes.
METHODOLOGY
● Presence of a prosodic break between NP1 and NP2 in the sentences with the
shortest RC (3-4 syll.)
Nadie habló al amigo / del gamberro que vino.
break
● Presence of a prosodic break between NP2 and RC in the sentences with longer
RCs (6-7 and 9-11 syll.)
El hombre despidió al hermano del marinero / que hablaba portugués.
break
PREDICTIONS
● Neutral vs. non-neutral utterances
28,1
71,9
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Neutral Non-neutral
RESULTS
● 90.9% of the boundaries: continuation rise
● 15.3% were combined with pauses and 7.1% with lengthening
RESULTS
● 21.1% of the prosodic breaks were placed after NP1
78.9% prosodic breaks after NP2
RESULTS
Mi madre invitó a la sobrinabreak de la bailarina que bebía.
METHODOLOGY
● 75% of the prosodic breaks after NP1 are introduced in the group containing the shortest RCs (3-4 syll.)
RESULTS
● The longer the RC, the higher the frequency of appearance of a prosodic
break after NP2.
45,1
8,1 8,2
54,9
91,9 91,8
0102030405060708090
100
3-4 syllables 6-7 syllables 9-11 syllables
after NP1after NP2
RESULTS
● L1 Basque bilinguals: significantly higher number of neutral utterances (χ²=11.98, p<.005)
RESULTS
● Higher frequency of clear boundaries.
RESULTS
● Monolinguals and L1 Spanish Bilinguals were clearer in their prosodic breaks than L1 Basque bilinguals (χ²=7.16, p<.05)
RESULTS
● Skimming: higher presence of boundary cues (χ²=32.73, p<.001)
RESULTS
● Skimming: higher frequency of prosodic boundaries after NP2
(χ²=9.47, p<.005)
25,9
15,7
74,1
84,3
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Non-skimming Skimming
after NP1
after NP2
RESULTS
● Default prosodic contour:
prosodic boundary after NP2 (72%) high attachment
● These results fulfill Fodor’s Antigravity Law’s predictions partially.
- Long (heavy) RCs show a clear preference for high attachment
(91.85%).
- Short (light) RCs show a much smaller preference for high attachment
(55%).
CONCLUSIONS
● Basque dominant speakers produce fewer prosodic breaks and
these are less clear than Spanish dominant speakers.
● Skimming the sentences leads to more non-neutral utterances;
● and to a higher frequency of the default contour (break after
NP2).
CONCLUSIONS
Prosodic weight (in terms of number of syllables)
influences prosodic segmentation.
CONCLUSIONS
● To study ambiguous RC attachment preferences of participants
of production study.
● Is there a correlation between prosodic segmentation and
attachment preferences?
3.2. QUESTIONNAIRE
AIMS
● Same materials and same participants.
● Task: read the sentences silently and choose an
antecedent for the empty subject of the RC.
METHODOLOGY
● 3-4 syllable RCs: NP2 as preferred host in around 50% of the sentences.
Alguien llevó al amigo del niño que lloraba.
¿Quién lloraba?
el amigo el niño
● 6-7 and 9-11 syllable RCs: NP1 as preferred host in almost every sentence.
El hombre despidió al hermano del marinero que hablaba portugués.
¿Quién hablaba portugués?
el hermano el marinero
PREDICTIONS
● General low attachment preference
35,4
64,6
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
NP1 NP2
RESULTS
45,1
8,1 8,2
54,9
91,9 91,8
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
3-4 syll 6-7 syll 9-11 syll
after NP1after NP2
Prosodic break Expectancy of location attch. preference
54,9
91,9 91,8
45,1
8,1 8,2
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
3-4 syll 6-7 syll 9-11 syll
NP1
NP2
● Low Attachment / Late Closure
Someone shot the servant / of the actress who was on the balcony.
NP1 break NP2 RC
1. INTRODUCTION
45,1
8,1 8,2
54,9
91,9 91,8
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
3-4 syll 6-7 syll 9-11 syll
after NP1after NP2
Prosodic break Expectancy of location attch. preference
54,9
91,9 91,8
45,1
8,1 8,2
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
3-4 syll 6-7 syll 9-11 syll
NP1
NP2
● High Attachment / Early Closure
Someone shot the servant of the actress / who was on the balcony.
NP1 NP2 break RC
1. INTRODUCTION
45,1
8,1 8,2
54,9
91,9 91,8
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
3-4 syll 6-7 syll 9-11 syll
after NP1after NP2
Prosodic break Expectancy of location attch. preference
54,9
91,9 91,8
45,1
8,1 8,2
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
3-4 syll 6-7 syll 9-11 syll
NP1
NP2
Expectancy of Questionnaire attch. preference results
25,3
43,7
37,3
74,7
56,3
62,7
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
3-4 syllables 6-7 syllables 9-11 syllables
NP1
NP2
54,9
91,9 91,8
45,1
8,1 8,2
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
3-4 syllables 6-7 syllables 9-11 syllables
NP1
NP2
• Great interpersonal variability
• No correlation between prosodic contours and attachment preference.
CONCLUSIONS
• Why?
– Implicit prosody is not similar to explicit prosody.
or
– An off-line experiment only reveals the end decision taken by the participant.
CONCLUSIONS
• Perception experiment:
– Auditorilly present utterances with different prosodic contours.
– Participants will have to choose the preferred antecedent.
FUTURE RESEARCH
Thank you!
And thank you also to:
all the participants
Edurne Petrirena
ELEBILAB
BRAINGLOT
● Linguistic Group x length x site of the prosodic boundary: 3-4 syllables
4. Results
● Linguistic Group x length x site of the prosodic boundary:
6-7 syllables and 9-11 syllables
4. Results
3-4 syllable RCsProduction Questionnaire
6-7 syllable RCsProduction Questionnaire
9-11 syllable RCsProduction Questionnaire
