1. Assessing sentence comprehension in Slovenian using the new JERA test : linguistic background and standardizationArthur Stepanov, Matic Pavlič, Nika Pušenjak Dornik, Penka Stateva, 2024, published scientific conference contribution Keywords: receptive language, Slovenian, language assessment, standardization, psycholinguistics Published in RUNG: 04.12.2024; Views: 120; Downloads: 0 Full text (3,38 MB) This document has many files! More... |
2. Processing feature assignment in Bulgarian : lecture at the Beyond Agreement Workshop, Geneve, 20. 6. 2024Danil Khristov, Penka Stateva, Julie Franck, Dávid György, Arthur Stepanov, 2024, unpublished conference contribution Keywords: Sentence processing, psycholinguistics, memory, feature assignment, Bulgarian Published in RUNG: 26.06.2024; Views: 984; Downloads: 2 Link to file This document has many files! More... |
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4. Sentence comprehension test for Russian : a tool to assess syntactic competenceDaria Chernova, Artem Novozhilov, Natalia Slioussar, 2023, review article Abstract: Although all healthy adults have advanced syntactic processing abilities in their native language, psycholinguistic studies report extensive variation among them. However, very few tests were developed to assess this variation, presumably, because when adult native speakers focus on syntactic processing, not being distracted by other tasks, they usually reach ceiling performance. We developed a Sentence Comprehension Test for the Russian language aimed to fill this gap. The test captures variation among participants and does not show ceiling effects. The Sentence Comprehension Test includes 60 unambiguous grammatically complex sentences and 40 control sentences that are of the same length, but are syntactically simpler. Every sentence is accompanied by a comprehension question targeting potential syntactic processing problems and interpretation errors associated with them. Grammatically complex sentences were selected on the basis of the previous literature and then tested in a pilot study. As a result, six constructions that trigger the largest number of errors were identified. For these constructions, we also analyzed which ones are associated with the longest word-by-word reading times, question answering times and the highest error rates. These differences point to different sources of syntactic processing difficulties and can be relied upon in subsequent studies. We conducted two experiments to validate the final version of the test. Getting similar results in two independent experiments, as well as in two presentation modes (reading and listening modes are compared in Experiment 2) confirms its reliability. In Experiment 1, we also showed that the results of the test correlate with the scores in the verbal working memory span test. Keywords: syntax, comprehension, Russian language, psycholinguistics Published in RUNG: 05.04.2024; Views: 1340; Downloads: 6 Full text (1,03 MB) This document has many files! More... |
5. Czech speakers learn and apply morphological dependencies : lecture at the University of Nova Gorica, Jezik & Linguistics Colloquia, Nova Gorica, 23. 11. 2023Guy Tabachnick, 2023, other performed works Abstract: Theories of morphology must account for lexicalized variation: lexical items that differ unpredictably in their inflection must be memorized individually and differ in their stored representation. When tested on such cases, adult speakers usually follow the “law of frequency matching” (Hayes et al. 2009), extending gradient phonological patterns from the lexicon. In this talk, I present results from two wug tests showing that Czech speakers likewise extend gradient morphological patterns from the lexicon: that is, they productively apply correlations between inflected forms of the same word. I handle lexicalized variation using diacritic features marking lexical entries and propose that Czech speakers have learned a gradient cooccurrence relation between diacritic features, extending the sublexicon model of Gouskova et al. (2015). This approach accounts for phonological and morphological patterns with a unified mechanism. This approach provides an account of morphological dependencies in generative grammar compatible with a piece-based, syntactic theory like Distributed Morphology, responding to Ackerman and Malouf (2013) and others who criticize such theories for being unable to account for these morphological correlations. Keywords: morphology, psycholinguistics, inflection classes, nonce word study, frequency matching, morphological dependencies, Czech Published in RUNG: 05.03.2024; Views: 1472; Downloads: 2 Link to file This document has many files! More... |
6. Speakers apply morphological dependencies in the inflection of novel forms : lecture at the University of Connecticut, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Department of Linguistics, Ling Lunch, 18. 4. 2023Guy Tabachnick, 2023, invited lecture at foreign university Abstract: Theories of morphology must account for lexicalized variation: lexical items that differ unpredictably in their inflection must be memorized individually and differ in their stored representation. When tested on such cases, adult speakers usually follow the “law of frequency matching” (Hayes et al. 2009), extending gradient phonological patterns from the lexicon. In this talk, I present results from two wug tests showing that Hungarian and Czech speakers likewise extend gradient morphological patterns from the lexicon: that is, they productively imply correlations between inflected forms of the same word. I handle lexicalized variation using diacritic features marking lexical entries and propose that Hungarian and Czech speakers have learned a gradient cooccurrence relation between diacritic features, extending the sublexicon model of Gouskova et al. (2015). This approach also allows for a flexible analysis of traditional inflection classes (in languages like Russian) as emergent clusters of frequently cooccurring features. Keywords: morphology, psycholinguistics, inflection classes, nonce word study, frequency matching, morphological dependencies, Hungarian, Czech Published in RUNG: 05.03.2024; Views: 1262; Downloads: 2 Link to file This document has many files! More... |
7. Speakers apply morphological dependencies in the inflection of novel forms : lecture at the Linguistic Society of America 97th Annual Meeting, January 6, 2023Guy Tabachnick, 2023, unpublished conference contribution Abstract: Since Berko (1958), nonce word studies have shown that speakers exhibit morphological productivity: they can create morphologically complex forms of unfamiliar lexical items. Speakers are known to use a word’s phonology in morphological productivity (e.g. Bybee, 2001; Albright and Hayes, 2003; Hayes and Londe, 2006). Using a novel nonce word paradigm in Hungarian, I show that speakers can also be sensitive to a word’s morphological behavior: specifically, Hungarian speakers take a novel word’s plural allomorph into account in selecting its possessive, reflecting the distribution of plural and possessive allomorphs in the lexicon. This experimental paradigm thus sheds light on how speakers use morphological dependencies: correlations between members of an inflectional paradigm (see Ackerman and Malouf, 2013). Keywords: Morphology, Psycholinguistics, nonce word study, productivity, morphological dependencies, Hungarian Published in RUNG: 04.03.2024; Views: 1592; Downloads: 8 Full text (1,00 MB) This document has many files! More... |
8. Number mismatch effect and processing cataphora in a pro-drop language : the case of SlovenianMatic Pavlič, Arthur Stepanov, 2023, independent scientific component part or a chapter in a monograph Abstract: Cataphora (also known as backward anaphora) is a type of pronominals that prcede their antecedents elinearly. Previous research on processing cataphora has explored the idea that cataphoric pronouns trigger a forward-looking active search for an antecedent to establish a coreference relation similar to a filler-gap dependency between a fronted wh-phrase and its base-generated syntactic position
(Cowart & Cairns 1987). Van Gompel & Liversedge (2003) have shown that in an active search, the parser establishes a cataphoric coreference before considering pronominal phi-features. This results in a gender mismatch effect: sentences with incongruent incoming NP antecedents were more difficult to read than their congruent counterparts, as evidenced by slower reading times and eye movement regressions. In this paper, we report the results of a self-paced reading experiment in which the active search hypothesis is further tested by examining online cataphora resolution with respect to the number feature in Slovenian, a pro-drop language with a rich nominal and verbal morphology. Keywords: cataphora, feature mismatch effect, forward-looking active search, self-paced reading, Slovenian, psycholinguistics Published in RUNG: 16.01.2024; Views: 1674; Downloads: 15 Full text (413,50 KB) This document has many files! More... |
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