The Arithmetic of Relative- Clause Attachment Syntactic Priming of Global Structural Configurations Christoph Scheepers

Introduction Syntactic Priming Syntactic 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 prime target Typically measured in experiments where participants are encouraged to produce a particular structure in one trial (prime) and are free to produce the same or an alternative structure in a following trial (target)

Method: Equipment

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Introduction 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.) a book the dog a bone – Peter read the girl a book (prime) > Mary gave the dog a bone (target) to the girl a bone to the dog – Peter read a book to the girl (prime) > Mary gave a 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)

Introduction lexical choices However, most (if not all) of these structural priming phenomena involve lexical 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 Priming Active/Passive Priming – Choice between transitive (active) versus intransitive (passive) verb frames, inclusion of “by”, differences in verb morphology, etc. NP-modifier priming NP-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 Attachment – e.g., “I visited a friend of a colleague who lived in Spain.” who lived in Spain NP PP a friend prep NP a colleague of RC NP who lived in Spain NP PP a friend prep a colleague of RC NP Low Attachment (LA)High Attachment (HA) Configuration of Modifiers! (1) NP  Det N (2) NP  NP PP (3) NP  NP RC (4) PP  prep NP

Relative Clause Attachment Scheepers (2003, Cognition) HA Primes: Die Assistentin verlas den Punktestand der Kandidatin, der ____. The assistant announced the score of the candidate that ____. LA Primes: Die Assistentin verlas den Punktestand der Kandidatin, die ____. The assistant announced the score of the candidate that ____. BL Primes: Die Assistentin verlas den Punktestand der Kandidatin, bevor __. The assistant announced the score of the candidate before ___.Targets: Der Rentner schimpfte über die Autorin der Flugblätter, die ___. The pensioner complained about the author of the fliers that ___.

Procedure  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 __..

Results 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? adverbial clause primes Scheepers (2003), Exp 3: adverbial clause primes HR Primes: Die Assistentin verlas den Punktestand der Kandidatin, als dieser ____. The assistant announced the score of the candidate when this ____. LR Primes: Die Assistentin verlas den Punktestand der Kandidatin, die ____. The assistant announced the score of the candidate that ____. BL Primes: Die Assistentin verlas den Punktestand der Kandidatin, bevor __. The assistant announced the score of the candidate before ___.Targets: Der Rentner schimpfte über die Autorin der Flugblätter, die ___. The pensioner complained about the author of the fliers that ___.

Syntax or Pragmatics? when {it, she } had reached … S NP VP They V announced NP PP the scoreprepNP of the candidate S’ 1 VP 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.

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

Summary 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 Sequences 1. NP  NP RC RC NP 2. NP  NP PP RC NP PP NP a friend 3. PP  prep NP RC NP PP NP prep a friendofa colleague… 1. NP  NP PP NP 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 of NP RC a colleague… HA LA

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 Priming PP-attachment primes Scheepers (to appear), Exp 1: PP-attachment primes HA Primes: The cobbler examined the shoes of the old man with their ____. The cobbler examined the shoes of the old man with their ____. (… broken soles ). (… broken soles ). LA Primes: The cobbler examined the shoes of the old man from ____. (… down the street ). (… down the street ). BL Primes: The cobbler examined the shoes of the old man before ____. The cobbler examined the shoes of the old man before ____. (… lunch ) (… lunch )Targets: The minister saw the bodyguard of the diplomats who ____. The minister saw the bodyguard of the diplomats who ____.

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

Cross-Structural Priming Genitive primes Scheepers (to appear), Exp 2: Genitive primes HA Primes: The knights jousted for the daughter of the King ’s ____. (… hand in marriage ) LA Primes: The knights jousted for the hand of the King ’s ____. (… beautiful daughter ) BL Primes: The knights jousted for the daughter of the King during ____. (… the tournament )Targets: The minister saw the bodyguard of the diplomats who ____. The minister saw the bodyguard of the diplomats who ____.

Head-Modifier Relations … a friend of a colleague who lived in Spain. H M M H Relative Clauses … a friend of a colleague from Spain. H M M H PPs Genitives … a friend of a colleague’s acquaintance. M H M H

Cross-Structural Priming Clear cross-structural priming from Genitives to RC-attachment!!

Summary 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-Domain Priming If it has to do with syntactic chunking/bracketing, it might even work with mathematical equations as primes If it has to do with syntactic chunking/bracketing, it might even work with mathematical equations as primes 3 + ( 4 – 2 )  2 vs – 2     

Cross-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

Cross-Domain Priming Exp 1 Scheepers et al. (2011), Exp 1 HA Primes: 80 – ( )  5 = LA Primes: 80 –  5 = BL Primes: 80 – 22 =Targets: The minister saw the bodyguard of the diplomats who ____. The minister saw the bodyguard of the diplomats who ____.

Cross-Domain Priming 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

Results 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 = More LA / fewer HA sentence completions after correctly solving LA equations like / 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),

Results Same as before, except Only Psychology students (N=27 no mathematical training!) HA and LA prime equations comprised redundant brackets HA: 90 + ( ( ) / 5 ) = LA: ( 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), Exp 2 Scheepers et al. (2011), Exp 2

Discussion cross-domain First piece of evidence for cross-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 Mechanisms Possibility 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

Potential Mechanisms Possibility 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 + / ( 515 ) HA 110 ?? LA 110 / 5 ??

Potential Mechanisms Possibility 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 + / ( 515 ) HA 90 ?? LA 95 / 5 ??

Potential Mechanisms Possibility 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 + / ( 515 ) HA LA 95 / 5 3

Potential Mechanisms Possibility 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 + / ( 515 ) HA 94 4 done LA 98 / 5 3

Potential Mechanisms Possibility 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 + / ( 515 ) / 5 3 NP PP ofNP the bells VP heard the church RC that S’ NP S Peter NP PP ofNP the bells VP heard the church RC that S’ NP S Peter HA LA 1

Potential Mechanisms Possibility 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 + / ( 515 ) / 5 3 NP PP ofNP the bells VP heard the church RC that S’ NP S Peter NP PP of NP the bells VP heard the church RC that S’ NP S Peter HA LA 2

Potential Mechanisms Possibility 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 + / ( 515 ) / 5 3 NP PP ofNP the bells VP heard the church RC that S’ NP S Peter NP PP of the bells VP heard the church RC that S’ NP S Peter HA LA 3 NP

Potential Mechanisms Possibility 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 + / ( 515 ) / 5 3 NP PP ofNP the bells VP heard the church RC that S’ NP S Peter NP PP of the bells VP heard the church RC that S’ NP S Peter HA LA done

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

Preliminary Results Prime condition main effect:  2 subjects (2) = 5.22; p =.074;  2 items (2) = 6.56; p <.04

Preliminary Results Prime condition × LRP-index interaction:  2 subjects (2) = 5.31; p =.070;  2 items (2) = 6.84; p <.04 HA equations are more effective in suppressing LA responses, the more they are processed incrementally from left to right

Thanks! Collaborators Patrick Sturt (Edinburgh) Kay Teevan (Glasgow) Andriy Myachykov (Glasgow) Catherine Martin (Glasgow) Izabela Viskupova (Glasgow)