christoph scheepers

The Arithmetic of Relative-The Arithmetic of Relative-Clause Attachment Clause Attachment

Syntactic Priming of Global Structural Syntactic Priming of Global Structural ConfigurationsConfigurations

Christoph ScheepersChristoph Scheepers

IntroductionIntroduction

Syntactic PrimingSyntactic PrimingSyntactic priming refers to the facilitation of linguistic processing when

structures are repeated– Producers (unknowingly) tend to re-generate structures they have produced or

understood before– Comprehenders find structures easier to process when they are similar to

previously encountered ones

Useful, implicit method for investigating the kinds of abstract structural representations activated during language use

Typically measured in experiments where participants are encouraged to produce a particular structure in one trial (primeprime) and are free to produce the same or an alternative structure in a following trial (targettarget)

Method: EquipmentMethod: Equipment

Method: EquipmentMethod: Equipment

!!!


In language production, syntactic priming is well documented for a range of structural alternations, e.g.

Ditransitive Structure Priming (PO/DO)Ditransitive Structure Priming (PO/DO)(e.g. Bock, 1986; Pickering & Branigan, 1998; etc. etc.)–Peter read the girl a book a book (prime) > Mary gave the dog a bonethe dog a bone (target)–Peter read a book to the girl to the girl (prime) > Mary gave a bone to the doga bone to the dog (target)

Transitive Structure Priming (Active/Passive)Transitive Structure Priming (Active/Passive)(e.g. Bock, 1986; Bock & Loebell, 1990; etc etc.)–The boss fired the employee (prime) > Lightning strikes the house (target)–The employee was fired by the boss (prime) > The house is struck by lightning (target)

NP-modifier priming (Adjective/Relative Clause)NP-modifier priming (Adjective/Relative Clause)(e.g. Cleland & Pickering, 2003)–The green circle (prime) > The red sheep (target)–The circle that’s green (prime) > The sheep that’s red (target)


However, most (if not all) of these structural priming phenomena involve lexical choiceslexical choices

Ditransitive Structure Priming (PO/DO)Ditransitive Structure Priming (PO/DO)

– Choice between PO ([[V give] [NP the book] [PP to the man]) versus DO ([[V give] [NP the man] [NP the book]) verb frames

Active/Passive PrimingActive/Passive Priming– Choice between transitive (active) versus intransitive (passive) verb frames,

inclusion of “by”, differences in verb morphology, etc.

NP-modifier primingNP-modifier priming

– Choice between an adjective ([NP the [N’ [Adj red ] [N sheep]]]) or a relative pronoun ([NP [NP the [N sheep]] [RC [Pro that] [S’ is red]]]) for adjunction

Relative Clause AttachmentRelative Clause Attachment

– e.g., “I visited a friend of a colleague who lived in Spain.”

who lived in Spain

NP

NP PP

a friend prep

NP

a colleagueof

RC

NP

who lived in Spain

NP

NP PP

a friend prep

a colleague

ofRC

NP

NP

Low Attachment (LA)High Attachment (HA)

ConfigurationConfigurationof Modifiers!of Modifiers!

(1) NP Det N(2) NP NP PP(3) NP NP RC(4) PP prep NP

Relative Clause AttachmentRelative Clause Attachment

Scheepers (2003, Cognition)

HA Primes:HA Primes:

Die Assistentin verlas den Punktestand der Kandidatin, der ____ .

The assistant announced the score of the candidate that ____ .

LA Primes:LA Primes:

Die Assistentin verlas den Punktestand der Kandidatin, die ____ .


BL Primes:BL Primes:

Die Assistentin verlas den Punktestand der Kandidatin, bevor __ .

The assistant announced the score of the candidate before ___ .

Targets:Targets:

Der Rentner schimpfte über die Autorin der Flugblätter, die ___ .

The pensioner complained about the author of the fliers that ___ .

ProcedureProcedure

30 subjects 24 items Individual random sequences of

5 fillers (start) prime target 2 fillers prime target 2 fillers ...

Task: Provide a hand-written completion in each trial, e.g.

The pensioner complained about the author of the fliers that

_were in his letterbox this morning__ ..

ResultsResults

Probability of LA target completion (out of all classifiable responses)

0.00

0.20

0.40

0.60

0.80

1.00

BL prime

HA prime

LA prime

Clear structural priming effects!Global syntactic configuration (high/low RC-attachment) is as much

subject to priming as local, lexically-driven structure

Syntax or Pragmatics?Syntax or Pragmatics?

Scheepers (2003), Exp 3: adverbial clause primesadverbial clause primes

HR Primes:HR Primes:

Die Assistentin verlas den Punktestand der Kandidatin, als dieser ____ .

The assistant announced the score of the candidate when this ____ .

LR Primes:LR Primes:

Die Assistentin verlas den Punktestand der Kandidatin, die ____ .



Die Assistentin verlas den Punktestand der Kandidatin, bevor __ .

The assistant announced the score of the candidate before ___ .

Targets:Targets:

Der Rentner schimpfte über die Autorin der Flugblätter, die ___ .

The pensioner complained about the author of the fliers that ___ .

Syntax or Pragmatics?Syntax or Pragmatics?

when {it , she } had reached …

S

NP

VP

They

V

announced

NP

NP PP

the score prep NP

of the candidate

S’

1

VP

2

1 2

The score of the candidate that had reached 1000 points impressed us.

*The score of the candidate when it/she had reached 1000 points impressed us.

ResultsResults

No reliable priming!Simply referring back to either NP1 or NP2 in the prime is not enough


0.00

0.20

0.40

0.60

0.80

1.00

Baseline

HR Prime

LR Prime

SummarySummary

RC-attachments are subject to priming– also replicated in Dutch, and from Dutch to English in bilinguals (Desmet &

Declercq, 2006)

Priming of global syntactic configurations– Not explainable in terms of lexical choices– Not explainable in terms of re-using individual rules– Not explainable in terms of focus structure or anaphoric binding

What exactly is being primed, then?– My original suggestion: Preservation of rule sequences…

Rule SequencesRule Sequences

1. NP NP RCRC

NP

NP

2. NP NP PP

RC

NP

PPNP

NP

a friend

3. PP prep NP

RC

NP

PP

NP

NP

NPprep

a friend of a colleague …

1. NP NP PPNP

PP

NP

a friend

2. PP prep NP

NP

PP

NP

a friend

NP

prep

of

3. NP NP RC

NP

PP

NP

a friend

NP

prep

ofNP RC

a colleague …

HA LA

Rule Sequences?Rule Sequences?

If exact rule sequences are being primed, one should not observe cross-structural priming, e.g.–From PP-attachment primes to RC-attachment targets–From complex genitive primes to RC-attachment targets

If we do observe cross-structural priming, then maintained syntactic representations must be more abstract / general than rule sequences

Cross-Structural PrimingCross-Structural Priming

Scheepers (to appear), Exp 1: PP-attachment primesPP-attachment primes


The cobbler examined The cobbler examined the shoesthe shoes of the old man of the old man with theirwith their ____ . ____ .

(… (… broken solesbroken soles).).


The cobbler The cobbler examined the shoes examined the shoes of of the old man fromthe old man from ____ . ____ .

(… (… down the streetdown the street).).

BL Primes:BL Primes: The cobbler examined the shoes of the old man before ____ .The cobbler examined the shoes of the old man before ____ . (… (… lunchlunch ))

Targets:Targets:

The minister saw the bodyguard of the diplomats who ____ .The minister saw the bodyguard of the diplomats who ____ .



0.00

0.20

0.40

0.60

0.80

1.00

Baseline

HA Prime

LA Prime

Clear cross-structural priming from PP- to RC-attachment– recently replicated in Dutch by Loncke, van Laere, & Desmet


Scheepers (to appear), Exp 2: Genitive primesGenitive primes


The knights jousted for the daughter of the King’s ____ .

(… hand in marriage )


The knights jousted for the hand of the King’s ____ .

(… beautiful daughter )

BL Primes:BL Primes: The knights jousted for the daughter of the King during ____ .(… the tournament )

Targets:Targets:


Head-Modifier RelationsHead-Modifier Relations

… a friend of a colleague who lived in Spain.

H

M

… a friend of a colleague who lived in Spain.

MH

Relative Clauses

… a friend of a colleague from Spain.

H

M

… a friend of a colleague from Spain.

MH

PPs

Genitives

… a friend of a colleague’s acquaintance.

M

… a friend of a colleague’s acquaintance.

H

M H


Clear cross-structural priming from Genitives to RC-attachment!!


0.00

0.20

0.40

0.60

0.80

1.00

Baseline

HA Prime

LA Prime

SummarySummary

Evidence for cross-structural priming effects– RC-attachment can be primed by syntactic configuration within a complex

genitive NP or a high- vs. low attached PP– Clearly inconsistent with rule sequencing

Interesting side-aspect:– Complex genitive primes imply reverse head-modifier relations compared

to RC-attachment targets– Priming cannot be explained in terms of maintaining such relations

Rather, what appears to be primed is the syntactic chunking/bracketing of the ‘NP-of-NP’ string– [the noun of the noun] ‘s / with / who …– the noun of [the noun] ‘s / with / who …

Cross-Cross-DomainDomain Priming Priming

If it has to do with syntactic chunking/bracketing, it might even If it has to do with syntactic chunking/bracketing, it might even work with work with mathematical equationsmathematical equations as primes as primes

3 + ( 4 – 2 ) 3 + ( 4 – 2 ) 2 2 vs.vs. 3 + 4 – 2 3 + 4 – 2 2 2

33

44 22

22

++

33

44

22 22

++

Cross-Domain PrimingCross-Domain Priming

Indeed, evidence from neuroscience already point to the possibility that language shares processing resources in the brain with other highly structured representational domains, e.g.– Musical cognition (e.g. Patel, 2003)– Sequential processing (e.g. Lelekov et al., 2000)– Mathematical cognition (e.g. Deheane et al., 1999)

There is also behavioural evidence showing – that concurrent mathematical tasks interfere with the processing of

linguistic structures with high memory demands (Fedorenko et al., 2007)

– that domain-general memory resources associated with chunking are predictive of RC-attachment preferences (Swets et al., 2007)

Structural priming from maths to language might work


Scheepers et al. (2011), Exp 1Exp 1


80 – ( 9 + 1 ) 5 =


80 – 9 + 1 5 =


80 – 22 =

Targets:Targets:



108 participants– 36 Psychology students (pre-screened for mathematical ability and

reminded of the rules if necessary [extra training for ca. 60%])– 36 Business students (no extra mathematical training)– 36 Maths/Informatics/Physics students (no extra mathematical training)

24 prime (equation) – target (sentence fragment) pairs

Fillers between prime-target pairs were randomly taken from a set of 26 sentence fragments and 25 equations– No regular sequence of equations and sentences detectable

Task: Solve equations by hand foot and provide hand-written completions to sentence fragments

ResultsResults

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

PSY Business Maths Overall

Pro

bab

ilit

y o

f L

A C

om

ple

tio

n

Participant Sample

Probability of LA Target Completion by Sample and Prime

BL Prime HA Prime LA Prime

Clear cross-domain structural priming!– Comparable in magnitude to

previous, language-specific RC-attachment priming effects

Relative to baseline:Fewer LA / more HA sentence

completions after correctly solving HA equations like 90 + ( 5 + 15 ) / 5 =

More LA / fewer HA sentence completions after correctly solving LA equations like 90 + 5 + 15 / 5 =

Doesn’t work that well with (mathematically trained) Psychology undergrads…

Scheepers C., Sturt P., Martin C.J., Myachykov A., Teevan K. & Viskupova I. (2011).Structural priming across cognitive domains: From simple arithmetic to relative clause attachment. Psychological Science, 22(10), 1319-1326.

ResultsResults

Same as before, except

Only Psychology students (N=27 no mathematical training!)

HA and LA prime equations comprised redundant bracketsHA: 90 + ( ( 5 + 15 ) / 5 ) =

LA: 90 + 5 + ( 15 / 5 ) =

Psychology students do show cross-domain priming if they are helped with redundant brackets instead of mathematical training Scheepers C., Sturt P., Martin C.J., Myachykov A., Teevan K. & Viskupova I. (2011).

Structural priming across cognitive domains: From simple arithmetic to relative clause attachment. Psychological Science, 22(10), 1319-1326.

Scheepers et al. (2011), Exp 2Exp 2

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

Pro

babi

lity

of L

A C

ompl

etio

n

Probability of LA Target Completion by Prime

BL Prime HA Prime LA Prime

DiscussionDiscussion

First piece of evidence for cross-domaincross-domain structural priming from arithmetic to language

Priming of syntax in its ‘purest’ form, concerning the hierarchical chunking of elements–Algebra and language have no “semantics” in common–Highlights the importance of global syntactic representations at a very high level of abstraction

But what could be the actual mechanisms behind these (and the previous language-internal) priming effects?

Potential MechanismsPotential Mechanisms

90

+

/

5+

( 5 15 )

mentioned

VP

NP

NP

the bells of the church

RC that…

90

+

/

mentioned

VP

NP

NP

the bells of

RC that…

HA

LA+

5

15 5 the church

Possibility 1: Representational IsomorphismPossibility 1: Representational Isomorphism

Participants retain (in memory) an abstract global structure representation of the prime, and process a subsequent sentence in such a way that its global structure is isomorphic to that of the prime

The exact level of abstraction would need to be specified


Possibility 2: (Incremental) Procedural IsomorphismPossibility 2: (Incremental) Procedural Isomorphism

Expressions (sentences and equations) are processed from ‘left to right’

When the final combinatorial element is encountered (“ / ” respectively “ that ”), a previous computation has to be un-done, combined with that element, and re-integrated into the previous structure

Priming relies on whether the final element combines with a simple (LA) or a more complex (HA) expression on its left

90

+/

520

+

( 5 15 )

HA

110??

1

90

+

20

+

5 15

LA

110/

5

??






90

+/

5

20

+

( 5 15 )

HA

90??

2

90

+

5

+

5

15

LA

95/

5

??






90

+

/

5

20

+

( 5 15 )

HA

90

4

3

90

+

5

+

5

15

LA

95

/

5

3






90

+

/

5

20

+

( 5 15 )

HA

94

4

done

90

+

8

+

5

15

LA

98

/

5

3






90

+

/

5

20

+

( 5 15 )

94

4

90

+

8

+

5

15

98

/

5

3

NP

NP

PP

of NPthe bells

VP

heard

the church

RC

that S’

NP

NP

S

NP

Peter

NP

NP

PP

of NPthe bells

VP

heard

the church

RC

that S’

NP

NP

S

NP

Peter

HA LA

1






90

+

/

5

20

+

( 5 15 )

94

4

90

+

8

+

5

15

98

/

5

3

NP

NP

PP

of NPthe bells

VP

heard

the church

RC

that S’

NP

NP

S

NP

Peter

NP

NP

PP

of

NP

the bells

VP

heard

the church

RC

that S’

NP

NP

S

NP

Peter

HA LA

2






90

+

/

5

20

+

( 5 15 )

94

4

90

+

8

+

5

15

98

/

5

3

NP PP

of NPthe bells

VP

heard

the church

RC

that S’

NP

S

NP

Peter

NP

NP

PP

ofthe bells

VP

heard

the church

RC

that S’

NP

NP

S

NP

Peter

HA LA

3

NP






90

+

/

5

20

+

( 5 15 )

94

4

90

+

8

+

5

15

98

/

5

3

NP PP

of NPthe bells

VP

heard

the church

RC

that S’

NP

NP

S

NP

Peter

NP

NP

PP

ofthe bells

VP

heard

the church

RC

that S’

NP

NP

S

NP

Peter

HA LA

done

New (Preliminary) FindingsNew (Preliminary) Findings

The representational account makes no assumptions about how the equations are being processed (left-to-right, right-to left, etc.)– All that matters is the final syntactic representation

By contrast, the incremental procedural account predicts that the more an equation is processed in a “language-like” fashion (i.e. from left to right), the stronger the priming effect should be– Left-to-right incrementality matters

Eye-tracking experiment (21 participants) in which mathematical prime equations were followed by written sentence fragments for verbal completion– Question: Does the amount of left-to-right processing in the equations predict

strength of syntactic priming in the target sentences?

Quantifying IncrementalityQuantifying Incrementality

8 local progressions

9 0 - ( 5 + 1 5 ) / 5 =

t

9 0 - ( 5 + 1 5 ) / 5 =

t

7 global progressions

LRP index (N-global / N-local) = 7/8 = .875

Preliminary ResultsPreliminary Results

• Prime condition main effect:

2subjects(2) = 5.22; p = .074; 2

items(2) = 6.56; p < .04

Table 1. Covariate-adjusted marginal means (and corresponding standard errors) for probabilities of LA target completions as a function of prime condition.

By Subjects By Items

Mean SE Mean SE

HA prime .386 .041 .381 .039

LA prime .552 .046 .544 .058

BL prime .399 .033 .424 .045

Preliminary ResultsPreliminary Results

• Prime condition × LRP-index interaction:

2subjects(2) = 5.31; p = .070; 2

items(2) = 6.84; p < .04

Table 2. LRP-index slopes (in logit units, with standard errors) in each prime condition. A positive slope implies an increase in LA target probability with increasing LRP indices, while a negative slope implies a decrease in LA target probability with increasing LRP indices.

By Subjects By Items

Mean SE Mean SE

HA prime 1.616 .916 1.689 .777

LA prime 0.372 .620 0.224 .635

BL prime +0.909 .653 +0.716 .463

HA equations are more effective in suppressing LA responses, the more they are processed incrementally from left to right

Thanks!Thanks!

Collaborators

Patrick Sturt (Edinburgh)

Kay Teevan (Glasgow)

Andriy Myachykov (Glasgow)

Catherine Martin (Glasgow)

Izabela Viskupova (Glasgow)

christoph scheepers

Documents

man np

relative pronoun np

adjective np

trial prime

structural priming phenomena

book prime mary

employee prime lightning

girl prime mary