Applied linguistics

1. Applied linguistics Psycholinguistics PART 3

2. Psycholinguistics • Psycholinguistics is also interested in sentence processing. It is assumed that a sentence is understood through the analysis of the meanings of its words and through the analysis of its syntactic structure. Sentence processing is called parsing.

3. Psycholinguistics • As with mental lexicon studies, the researchers of sentence processing also have at their disposal some experimental techniques. One the the most frequently used methods are Timed-reading experiments. The assumption is that the more difficult sentence-processing is, the longer it should take. Therefore, in timed-reading methods, the time required to read a sentence is measured. We will take a look at one variant of a timed-reading technique, which is called bar-pressing paradigm.

4. In bar-pressing paradigm experiment, subjects are seated in front of a computer screen and read a sentence one word at a time. When the subject presses the bar on the keyboard, the first word disappears and the second word of the sentence appears in its place, etc. This procedure continues until the subject has read entire sentence.

5. Psycholinguistics • The experiment has demonstrated that subjects show longer processing times for nouns and verbs, and relatively less time for function words. Also, they need more time to process words at the clause boundaries. Therefore, in the sentence (5), the words kites and rivers will exhibit longer processing times than other words in the sentence, as they are at the end of the clause. (5) The Chinese, who used to produce kites, used them to carry ropes across rivers.

6. Psycholinguistics • Another phenomenon that might provide some clues to the nature of language processing are eye movements. It has been shown that sentence reading involves a series of jerky eye movements called saccades. A number of events take place during these movements: • When the eyes are at rest they take a snapshot of two or three words. They usually last from 200 to 250 milliseconds. While the snapshot is being taken, the language-processing system calculates where to jump next.

7. Psycholinguistics - During a jump to the next fixation location (usually about eight letters to the right), the subject is essentially blind.

8. Psycholinguistics • The study of saccades has revealed that fixation times are longer for less frequent words, and the points of fixation are typically centered on content words. Difficult sentence structures create longer fixation times and many regressive saccades.

9. Psycholinguistics • Regressive saccades are backward jumps in a sentence and are usually associated with mis-parsing or miscomprehension.

10. Psycholinguistics • Two sources of evidence have been very important in the exploration of the principles of modularity of sentence processing: garden path sentences and sentence ambiguity.

11. Psycholinguistics • Garden path sentences are sentences that are exceptionally difficult to process due to their complex (thus misleading) internal structure. An example of such a sentence is (6): (6) The horse raced past the barn fell. ►Initial, wrong analysis of the sentence is: S → NP VP VP [The horseNP] [raced past the barnVP] [fellVP]. In this misanalysis, raced past the barn is taken to be a predicate of the sentence, which leaves no place for the constituent fell to be incorporated into the sentence structure. ►The correct analysis is : S → NP VP [The horse raced past the barnNP] [fellVP]. Therefore, raced past the barn is a relative clause inserted into the subject NP., and fell is the predicate of the sentence.

12. Psycholinguistics Another example of a garden-path sentence is (7): (7) Since Keith always walks a mile seems like a short distance to him. In the wrong analysis, the NP a mile is taken to be the direct object of walk. This leaves seems without its grammatical subject. In the correct analysis, Since Keith always walks is a subordinate clause, and a mile is a subject of the main clause.

13. Psycholinguistics • It has been demonstrated that subjects show longer fixation times and more regressive saccades for garden path sentences. • Garden path sentences support the evidence that we construct syntactic representations from the beginning of the sentences to the end, and that our sentence parsers are organized so that we make a number of assumptions about how a sentence will proceed.

14. Psycholinguistics • Another syntactic phenomenon that is of interest to psycholinguists is sentence ambiguity. Experiments show that when seeing an ambiguous sentence, subjects activate both meanings, even if the context makes it clear which meaning is correct. Thus, for the sentence (8): (8)They all rose. speakers will activate both meanings of rose (e.g. as a flower and as a preterite form of rise) despite the fact that the position of rose in the sentence totally excludes the former meaning.

15. Psycholinguistics • It seems, then, that in sentence interpretation, we create all representations possible and then discard the ones that are either incorrect or unnecessary. Therefore, we may conclude that sentence processing proceeds in two stages: first, all representations and structures are computed; second, one of these structures is selected and all others are abandoned.