Prosody and Verb Placement Research question: Do Explicit Prosody and Verb Placement modulate listeners PP-attachment preferences in the processing of globally ambiguous German main clauses? If so, is this information used incrementally? What we know: Prosodic structure is sensitive to syntactic structure (Truckenbrodt, 2007). Prosody: Listeners immediately use the cues of prosodic boundary marking to resolve global PP-attachment ambiguities in the processing of English main clauses (e.g., Snedeker & Trueswell, 2003). Verb Placement: PP-attachment preferences in German depend on the placement of the finite verb, i.e., the availability of possible attachment sites at the point of ambiguity Verb-second structures favour high (VP-)attachment, verb-final structures favour low (NP-)attachment (Konieczny et al., 1995, 1997). Experiment 1 – offline, forced choice categorisation The processing of surface structure ambiguities in German: Influence of Explicit Prosody and Verb Placement Susann Lingel-Zschernitz 1, Thomas Pechmann 1, & Christoph Scheepers 2 Frazier, L. (1987). Sentence processing: A tutorial review. In Coltheart, M. (Ed.), The psychology of reading (559 – 586). Hove: Erlbaum. Konieczny, L., Hemforth, B., Scheepers, C., & Strube, G. (1995). PP-attachment in German: Results from eye movement studies. In J. M. Findlay, R. Walker, & R. W. Kentridge (Eds.), Eye movement research. Mechanisms, processes, and applications (Vol. 6, ). Amsterdam: North Holland. Konieczny, L., Hemforth, B., Scheepers, C., & Strube, G. (1997). The role of lexical heads in parsing: Evidence from German. Language and Cognitive Processes, 12, Schafer, A. J. (1997). Prosodic parsing: The role of prosody in sentence comprehension. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts. Amherst: GLSA. Snedeker, J. & Trueswell, J. (2003). Using prosody to avoid ambiguity: Effects of speaker awareness and referential context. Journal of Memory and Language, 48, Speer, S. R., Kjelgaard, M. M., & Dobroth, K. M. (1996). The influence of prosodic structure on the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 25, 249 – 272. Truckenbrodt, H. (2007). The syntax-phonology interface. In P. de Lacy (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of phonology ( ). Cambridge: CUP. Zschernitz, S. (in prep.). The role of prosody in the production and processing of PP-attachment ambiguities in German. Doctoral dissertation, University of Leipzig. Experimental data Introduction 1 2 Poster presented at Linguistic Evidence 2010, Tübingen, Germany Printed at the Computer Centre of the University of Leipzig References Predictions Prosodic Structuring Hypothesis (Zschernitz, in prep.; following Speer, Kjelgaard, & Dobroth, 1996; Schafer, 1997) Prosodic boundary information guides attachment decisions. NP-attachment preference is expected with NP-Attachment prosodic marking. VP-attachment preference is expected with VP-Attachment prosodic marking. Syntactic attachment preferences (e.g., Minimal Attachment bias, Frazier, 1987) should be overridden. Verb Placement is not expected to have an influence. Parameterized-Head-Attachment Hypothesis (PHA, e.g., Konieczny et al., 1995) Attachment preferences depend on the availability of lexical heads at the point of ambiguity, i.e., on Verb Placement. NP-attachment preference is predicted for verb-final sentences. VP-attachment preference is predicted for verb-second sentences. The PHA is underspecified with respect to Prosody. Diverging predictions for two conditions: Verb-second, NP-Attachment Prosody (V2, NP-Pros.) and verb-final, VP-Attachment-Prosody (Vfin, VP-Pros.). Strong evidence for Prosodic Structuring: Prosodic boundary marking immediately guides parsing of PP-attachment ambiguities in German (replicating Snedeker & Trueswells English data). Early Prosody effect is modulated by a late Verb Placement effect exclusively in verb-final sentences of the on-line study. Puzzle: Why does the NP-attachment preference for verb-final sentences appear so late in the on-line data, only after the onset of the sentence-final verb? N2 N3 PP V Materials – Auditory stimuli Verb-second conditions V2, NP-Attachment Prosody [[Der Junge berührt gleich] ip [den Adler mit der Socke] ip ] IP The boy touches soon the eagle with the stocking V2, VP-Attachment Prosody [[Der Junge berührt gleich den Adler] ip [mit der Socke] ip ] IP Verb-final conditions Vfin, NP-Attachment Prosody [[Der Junge überlegt] ip [ob er gleich] ip [den Adler mit der Socke] ip [berühren soll] ip ] IP The boy considers whether he soon the eagle with the stocking touch should Vfin, VP-Attachment Prosody [[Der Junge überlegt] ip [ob er gleich den Adler] ip [mit der Socke berühren soll] ip ] IP Acoustic analyses of the materials showed significant differences of prosodic boundary marking (F0 & duration) between conditions. Experiment 2 – on-line, Visual-World study Procedure: Visual-World Paradigm: participants eye movements were monitored while listening to structurally ambiguous sentences and looking at referentially ambiguous picture displays. Results: Early Prosody effect for verb-second structures: ms after PP-onset: reliably more looks to modified NP referent when NP- Prosody is presented than with VP-Prosody (p <.05) prosodic boundary information immediately affects eye-movement behaviour, consistent with Prosodic Structuring; no reliable prosodic effect for verb-final structures. Late Verb Placement effect: ms after PP-onset: reliably more fixations on the modified NP referent for verb-final structures compared to verb-second structures (p <.01) consistent with predictions by PHA. A post-hoc sentence completion study replicates the Prosody effect for verb- second sentences, but there was no NP-attachment preference for verb-final sentences. Conclusions Procedure: Having heard auditory stimuli, Ss chose one of the two attachment types (NP- vs. VP-attachment) by selecting one of two pictures showing referents each of which is associated with one attachment of the ambiguous PP. Results: Prosody effect: Reliably more VP-attachment responses when VP-Prosody was presented, and more NP-attachment responses when NP-Prosody was presented. Overall VP-attachment bias: Reliably higher error rates for NP-Prosody compared to VP-Prosody conditions. I.e., listeners generally favour VP-attachment over NP-attachment. Prosody effect overrides VP-attachment bias, consistent with Prosodic Structuring. No effect of Verb Placement on attachment preferences Visual stimulus of Experiment 2