1. Comparison with Levelt Study July 2007 Jerry Ball Air Force Research Laboratory

2. 2 Empirical Validation of Linguistic Representations Empirical study to determine the kinds of linguistic representations that humans construct during language comprehension – What is/are the basic structure(s) of the clause? Subject Predicate Subject Verb Object Other – Methodology Ask subjects to group words in expressions into meaningful units Assumes subjects have explicit knowledge of the meaningful groups that occur in expressions the man bit the dog

3. 3 Empirical Study – Preliminary Results A pilot study was conducted Results were compared to an early study by Levelt which used multidimensional scaling: – Levelt, W. (1970). A scaling approach to the study of syntactic relations. In G. B. Flores d’Arcais and W. Levelt (eds.) Advances in psycholinguistics 109- 121. NY: Elsevier.

4. 4 Levelt’s Early Study the boy has lost a dollar 60 80 100 Relative frequency of “more related” in triadic comparison % Connectedness method

5. 5 Pilot Study vs. Levelt Study boyhaslostadollarthe boyhaslostadollarthe Levelt Study Pilot Study

6. 6 Double R Model

7. 7 Levelt’s Early Study Jan (John) eet (eats) Piet (Peter) eet (eats) en (and) peren (pears) 3.0 5.0 7.0 Mean scale value (7-point rating scale) Connectedness method appels (apples)

8. 8 Pilot Study vs. Levelt Study applesandPetereatspearsJohneats Levelt Study Pilot Study appelsenPieteetperenJaneet

9. 9 Double R Model