Syntactic Structure and Conceptual Accessibility of Nouns
Simone Teufel, Elina Feleki
Centre for Cognitive Science
University of Edinburgh
2 Buccleuch Place
Edinburgh, EH8 9LW
{simone,elina}@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
April 19, 1996
Abstract:
Recent theories of sentence production
distinguish the level of grammatical function assignment from the
positional level, where the concepts expressed by certain
grammatical functions are linearly ordered. [Bock and Warren(1985)]
show the influence of conceptual accessibility, a semantic property,
on the assignment of grammatical function for English. We report a
similar experiment for German, which is a free word order language.
Our results confirm [Bock and Warren(1985)]'s basic hypothesis. We
speculate about the potential of German syntax to settle a more
controversial question: the potential influence of conceptual
accessibility on positional ordering. We suggest further research
that could settle the question more convincingly once free of the
restrictions of English syntax.
Sentence production is the conversion of thoughts into sentences, the
mapping of cognitive concepts into a linear order of speech sounds.
It involves a number of different levels that interact to produce the
linguistic output: syntactic, semantic, lexical and phonological.
Understanding the way these levels interact and the implications of
this interaction for the architecture of the mind has been the target
of much research in linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive
psychology. We will concentrate on the interaction between the
syntactic and semantic levels in the production of German sentences.
Recent models of sentence production ([Garrett(1975)],
[Garrett(1980)], [Bock and Levelt(1994)]) assume assignment of
conceptual elements to grammatical roles at a different point in
processing from the determination of word order. These models include
the following levels:
- message generation: discourse topics, planning of
possibly more than one phrase at a time.
- functional processing: mapping from conceptual representation
to an abstract linguistic representation. This includes:
- lexical selection: retrieval of lemmas (semantic
representations of words
) from the mental lexicon via semantic restrictions of the
preverbal message resulting from message generation. - functional assignment: linking of syntactic relations of verb
lemmas (assignment of those representations to particular
relational roles)
- positional processing: conversion of functional
(unordered) representations into a serially-ordered,
phonologically-specified string, with subtasks
- constituent processing: mapping of functional structure onto
constituent structure by insertion of representations of
content words into a grammatical frame consisting of
closed-class words and grammatical morphemes
- inflection processing: assignment of number, tense, and aspect
- phonological encoding: mapping to an overall
phonological structure, addition of prosodic contour and rhythm.
This section provides a summary of Bock's and Warren's theoretical
assumptions and their experiment.
Various experiments have shown the special prominence of surface
subjects: they tend to be more animate, concrete and imageable. But
there is a complete hierarchy of grammatical relations, descending
from subject to (direct) object, indirect object, oblique object,
object of comparison. [Keenan and Comrie(1977)] introduce the notion of
a hierarchy of NPs based on relativizability: If a language
permits a relative clause to be formed on a noun phrase associated
with a grammatical function low in the hierarchy, it will permit
relativization on NPs representing all grammatical functions above it.
They argue with crosslinguistic evidence as well as with a
within-language ordering of acceptability. For example, the man
who Sandy is taller than is less acceptable than a relative clause
where the relativized part is the direct object. [Pullum(1977)]
argues that the hierarchy is reflected in the dominant NP constituent
orders of the world's languages, where only the position of the verb
varies.
[Bock and Warren(1985)] define conceptual accessibility as the ease with
which the mental representation of some potential referent can be
activated in, or retrieved from, memory. Arguments from language
acquisition ([Keil(1979)]) predict a link between the development of
knowledge about entities and conceptual roles, and higher-level
grammatical relations. Bock's and Warren's hypothesis is that concepts
at lower levels of ontological hierarchy (i.e. the hierarchy of
conceptual accessibility) should be those that are most commonly used
in higher-level grammatical roles:
- Humans and animals are typical agents and are readily expressed
as subjects.
- Plants, artifacts, and natural inanimates are normally
recipients or results of human action and are typically expressed as
direct objects.
- Abstract mass nouns (e.g. love, fear) are most natural as
objects of PPs (e.g. in love, out of fear, for pleasure).
- Events form the highest concepts in the hierarchy, and are
expressed as verbs.
Findings from child development and the acquisition of ontological
knowledge support this hypothesis: Prototypical sentence subjects are
actors, agents, moving objects. Visual attention is centred on the
actor ([Robertson and Suci(1980)]); it facilitates children's learning
of word-referent relationships for words denoting agents and actors.
Children also have more knowledge about animate than about inanimate
objects. [Keil(1979)] stresses that knowledge of the physical
object category precedes knowledge of the event category, from which
abstract objects emerge. As a result, the adult's knowledge of lower
(more concrete) levels in the hierarchy of conceptual accessibility
are richer than higher levels (events and abstractions).
[Bock and Warren(1985)] used imageability as an index for
conceptual accessibility, partly because of the ready existence of
imageability norms ([Paivio et al.(1968)]). According to Bock and
Warren, objects which belong to lower levels in the
predicability/imageability hierarchy are more accessible in the sense
that it is easier to remember them, and talk about them as well as to
think of associates for them. Moreover, differences in imageability
have been shown to influence selection of surface subjects.
Bock and Warren tried to find variations in syntactic structure of
sentences which would provide evidence for the conceptual pressure of
assigning a higher grammatical function to more accessible nouns.
Their experiment made use of 3 types of sentences:
Simple transitive declaratives & passivization:
- the doctor administered the shock
- the shock was administered by the doctor
Double dative constructions:
- the hermit left the property to the university
- the hermit left the university the property
Phrasal conjuncts:
- The lost hiker fought time and winter
- The lost hiker fought winter and time
Each sentence contained one highly imageable and one less imageable
noun. The first two sentence pairs were used to examine the effects
of imageability on the placement of major constituents representing
three levels in the relational hierarchy (subject, direct and
indirect object). Subjects were presented with target sentences and
were asked to recall them later. Inversions of the noun phrases in
the subjects' responses to the target sentence were interpreted as
an effect of conceptual accessibiliy on grammatical function
assignment. Phrasal conjuncts (third sentence pair) were used as
control for word order effects: simple leftward movement is possible
without any change in surface grammatical roles. If variations in
the syntactic structure of the other two sentence types resulted
indirectly from word order effects and not from effects of conceptual
features on grammatical roles, then phrasal conjuncts (which both
shared the same grammatical role) should show effects of conceptual
accessibility that are comparable to those for simple declaratives
and datives.
The results confirmed the hypothesis that subjects produce
significantly more inversions in simple declaratives and datives,
placing the more imageable noun before the less imageable one rather
than vice versa. They interpreted this as evidence that conceptual
accessibility is closely related to the hierarchy of grammatical
relations. Having found no such effect for phrasal conjuncts, they
concluded that word order is only indirectly affected by conceptual
accessibility. In other words, Bock and Warren maintain that
conceptual effects on syntax take place at functional level
only. We will return to
this highly controversial point in our discussion.
The theory about sentence production recapitulated in a previous
section ([Garrett(1980)]) claims universality. Bock's and Warren's
experiment only speaks for English, a fixed word order language, where
it is difficult to separate effects on grammatical functional level
from effects on positional level. We want to address two questions:
- Do the results in [Bock and Warren(1985)], i.e. the influence of
conceptual accessibility on grammatical function assignment, carry
over to other languages, and more specifically to languages with a
freer word order? (duplication of experiment)
- How could the syntax of free word order languages be exploited
to design experiments challenging Bock's and Warren's hypothesis
that the influence of semantics stops at the functional level (i.e.
does not apply to positional level)?
Our experiment, described in the next section, addresses the first
question. We have not conducted experiments towards the second
question but we will present a proposal for such research later.
In our experiment we used the concept of animacy as an index for
conceptual accessibility. Animacy, and more specifically
``humanness'', is highly related to this notion: at a very early stage
in conceptual learning, children combine animate entities (especially
humans) with the idea of agency (especially human agents, whose
range of action is even higher than that of animals); human entities,
as explained before, therefore appear particularly low in the
imageability hierarchy.
Our experiment was not an exact duplication of Bock's and Warren's
experiment. First, we did work with spoken but rather with written
language (due to practical pressures). Second, we did not use
sentences with double object constructions or phrasal conjuncts, because there are
better ways in German to experiment with word order. Rather, we used
the active/passive variation in order to compare the effect of animacy
on grammatical function of animate nouns vs. inanimate nouns. Our
hypothesis is that subjects will prefer to assign the subject to
animate nouns, even if this implies that they will have to convert
active sentences to passives.
Two pairs of active/passive sentences were constructed out of each
pair of animate/inanimate target nouns. Each item appeared in four
conditions. The verb was held constant across all four sentences, and
each sentence contained one animate and one inanimate entity. The
first pair of sentences described an action where the animate entity
was the agent and the inanimate entity the patient whereas in the
second pair the reverse relationship held. Each pair of
sentences expressed the same proposition, but with different syntactic
constructions (one passive, the other active). The following
tables give an overview of the four conditions:
------------------------------------------------------------
| | Animacy
----------+----------+--------------------------------------
| | Animate Agent Inanimate Agent
----------+----------+--------------------------------------
Sentence | Active | A B
| |
Type | Passive | D C
------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------
Condition | A | B | C | D
----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------
Agent | Anim | Inanim | Inanim | Anim
Patient | Inanim | Anim | Anim | Inanim
----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------
Subjekt | Anim | Inanim | Anim | Inanim
----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------
Type | Active | Active | Passive | Passive
----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------
Example | Man | Barrel | Man | Barrel
| squashed | squashed | squashed | squashed
| barrel | man | by barrel | by man
-----------------------------------------------------------
We should remark here that the only parameters we varied were animacy
of agent (animacy of patient followed automatically as opposite) and
sentence type. Whether or not the subject of the sentence was
animate or not followed as a function of these 2 parameters.
Crucially, conditions A and D are paraphrases of each other, and so
are conditions B and C. We were interested in whether our test
persons would recall sentences unchanged
or whether they would prefer the paraphrase of the sentence (i.e. D
for A, A for D, B for C or C for B), thus assigning target nouns the
opposite grammatical functions. Our hypothesis was that the test
persons will prefer to assign the grammatical role of subject to
animate nouns, even if they are not the agents of the sentence,
and even if this implies that they will have to passivize the
sentence. We therefore predict that the likelihood of inverting
conditions B and D (where the animate target is not realized as
subject) is higher than the likelihood of inverting conditions A and C
(where the animate target is realized as subject).
The two variables we manipulated were sentence construction type
(active vs passive) and animacy (animate agent vs inanimate agent),
resulting in a 2x2 experiment.
32 items were construed in these 4 conditions (that is a total of 128
sentences). As explained above, in two of these conditions, the
animate target was the subject, whereas in two of them it was the
direct object. The sentences differed only in the order of noun
phrases.
The sentences consisted of a matrix sentence expressing an action of
saying/thinking/believing, and a subordinate transitive clause (always
introduced by ``daß''). The sentences we were interested in were
the subordinate clauses; the matrix sentences were used in our
recall/production experiment as prompts. Targets were the subject and
the object of the subordinate clauses, where it was always the case
that the one was animate and the other inanimate, as the following
example item demonstrates.
- A Die Filmkritikerin fand, daß der Regisseur den Film bekannt
gemacht hatte.
The film critic found that the director has made the movie
famous.
- B Die Filmkritikerin fand, daß der Film den Regisseur bekannt
gemacht hatte.
The film critic found that the film had made the
director famous.
- C Die Filmkritikerin fand, daß der Regisseur von dem Film
bekannt gemacht wurde.
The film critic found that the director had been
made famous by the film.
- D Die Filmkritikerin fand, daß der Film durch den Regisseur
bekannt gemacht wurde.
The film critic found that the film was made famous
by the director.
Four different lists of sentences were created, where each list
contained only one of the four conditions of each of the 32 items. The
order of the sentences was randomised. Each list contained an equal
number of sentences in each condition. The resulting 48 sentences per
list were divided into 8 blocks of 6 sentences. Our fillers were
intransitive clauses, e.g.
Der Doktor sagte, daß die Krankenschwester um 5
nach Hause gegangen war.
The doctor said that the nurse had gone home at 5.
Fillers were identical for all lists. Each block contained 2 fillers.
The order of fillers and items within blocks was random, but it was
kept constant across all four lists. Not more than 2 of the same
conditions occurred per block, but two sentences of the same
conditions were allowed to occur consecutively. A prompt list
containing the matrix sentence up to and including the word
``daß'' from the paired sentences was constructed for use with all
four sentence lists. It was also divided into 8 blocks, but within
blocks, the prompts occurred in an order different from that of the
corresponding sentences in the sentence list.
Each sentence list was presented to 5 subjects. There were 2
within-subjects and within-items factors (construction type and
animacy), with each subject receiving 8 sentences in each of the 4
conditions. Each item was presented to all 20 subjects in one of the
four conditions.
A pilot study was conducted in order to find the correct timing and to
detect ambiguities, pragmatic anomalities or other factors which could
interfere with the results. 8 subjects were examined. They were given
the blocks of sentences (either blocks of 6 or of 8
sentences and were allowed different time periods, ranging
from 45 seconds to 2 minutes. The correct timing is crucial in a
recall/sentence production experiment of this kind; too much time
would have allowed the subjects to recall the sentences by rote and
too little time would have placed too much demand on subjects' memory,
thereby leading to overall failure of recall. Thus, we had to make
sure the task was adequately demanding and that a sufficient amount of
time elapsed between the reading and the reproduction of sentences in
order to make sure that subjects reconstructed the sentences from
semantic representation rather than from surface rote memorization
(memorization of the exact syntactic structure of the sentences).
Furthermore, the pilot study helped to identify pragmatically marked
and ambiguous items which were
removed. Moreover, some sentences had to be shortened. In general, it
was made sure that there were no points that could lead to confusion
or uncertainty about the intended meaning of the sentences.
The participants were 20 German native speakers between 20 and 30
years old, recruited from the Edinburgh University community. They
were given a chocolate bar, either Mars, Bounty, Twix or StarBar. :-)
Subjects were
given one minute to read one block of sentences. After each block,
the experimenter asked them to do a simple 3 digit by one digit
multiplication.
Then, subjects were given the prompt list for that block and were
asked to
reproduce the six sentences from memory. To write down the sentences,
they were given as much time as they wished (usually between 2 and 4
minutes). Subjects were run in groups of one to four. They were told
that the experiment was a memory task on sentences, and the
instructions emphasised remembering the ideas expressed in the
sentences rather than the exact wording.
Like in Bock's and Warren's experiment, four categories were employed
in scoring the recalled sentences, including corrects, inversions,
errors and omissions. To be considered correct, a recalled
sentence had to preserve the basic syntax and word order of the
presented sentence. Thus, the same or similar phrases had to appear
as subjects or objects. Changes in tense, number, definiteness were
permitted as well as synonym substitutions and minor deletions or
additions that did not alter the major grammatical relations of the
sentence. We did
not score sentences as correct when the noun phrases were in the
correct order, but there was just an ``X'' or ``...'' representing one
of the noun phrases (which occurred several times).
An inversion was scored when the sentence met all the criteria
for a correct sentence, but was presented in the alternative form
that represented the same meaning (condition D instead of A, or C instead
of B, or vice versa). Note that preservation of the same semantics was
a vital condition here. All other responses were scored as
errors. If there was no answer, or at least one of the 3 vital
parts of the sentence (verb, object, subject) was missing, an
omission was scored.
Only the correct and the inverted sentences were taken into account in
the evaluation of the results - i.e. we performed the analyses on
proportions of inversions with respect to the total number of corrects
and inversions (discarding errors and omissions). This proportion
expresses the tendency to invert a sentence, given that the basic idea
of the sentence was remembered.
These data were evaluated in analyses of variance that treated both
subjects and items as random factors. Overall, there were
significantly more inversions when the effect of the inversion was to
make the animate target the subject (12.50% for condition B, 28.45%
for condition D) than when the effect was to make it the object
(4.35% for condition A, 6.45% for condition C).
------------------------------------------------------------
Condition | A | B | C | D
-----------+-----------+------------+------------+-----------
presented | Man | Barrel | Man | Barrel
as | squashed | squashed | squashed | squashed
| barrel | man | by barrel | by man
-----------+-----------+------------+------------+-----------
recalled | Barrel | Man | Barrel | Man
as | squashed | squashed | squashed | squashed
| by man | by barrel | man | barrel
-----------+-----------+------------+------------+-----------
Avg. % | 4.35 | 12.50 | 6.45 | 28.45
inversions | | | |
-------------------------------------------------------------
As predicted, we found a main effect of animacy (F1 (1,19) = 17.20, p
< .001 for subjects, F2 (1,31) = 23.67, p< .0001 for items),
which we interpret as a preference to express the animate target as a
subject.
We also obtained a main effect of sentence type (F1 (1,19) = 9.02, p < .008 for
subjects, F2 (1,31) = 6.00 , p < .02 for items), even though this
result was not a primary goal of our study. What this amounts to is that subjects are
more likely to invert a sentence to active if it was in passive beforehand,
i.e. a strong overall tendency to produce active sentences.
We found an interaction between sentence type and animacy
(F1 (1,19)= 11.99 , p < .01 for subjects and F2 (1,31)= 7.19 , p
< .01 for items), indicating that animacy has a stronger effects on
passives than on actives, as expected.
We will start this section by giving some interpretation of the
results and commenting on our methodology and alternative experimental
setups. Then we will elaborate on our main point here, possible
experiments to address the question of conceptual influence on word
order.
As the results show very strong tendencies, we can but repeat that
they provide additional evidence that the conceptual accessibility is
closely related to the hierarchy of grammatical functions for German
also, in the line of [Bock and Warren(1985].
A difference in design in our experiment to theirs concerns the
active/passive alternation. As opposed to their experiment, where the
active/passive difference was just a between-item factor, we have
designed it as an within-item factor, allowing us to compare all four
conditions (Bock and Warren had only counterbalanced active and
passive sentences). As a consequence, they had to assume that actives
are the preferred structure. On the other hand, the fact that we had 4
conditions in our experiment helped us prove this assumption (though
this is more a side effect of the experiment). The strong inversion
pattern from passive to active that was extracted from our experiment
was anticipated. The use of passive involves a pragmatic factor that
cannot easily be reproduced under the conditions of the experimental
environment. The passive involves an intention on the part of the
speaker to place more emphasis on the patient and much less on the
agent, there being cases where the agent is completely
omitted. Taking into account
that these factors which could trigger the special usage of passive
are absent in the experimental environment of sentence production, it
is not surprising that more inversions occurred from the passive
condition to the active: it simply confirms that active is the
default. Therefore, the interaction we found (the fact that there were
significantly more inanimate than animate passives converted into
active) is not surprising: the inclination of subjects to make the
animate target the subject became even stronger when the result was an
active sentence.
The data does not allow conclusions about effects of animacy on word
order. This is because in our sentences, subjects are always the first
NP, and objects are always the second NP. Claims about word order
effects can only be made if there are dislocated NPs.
One of the greatest difficulty in the design of the materials of our
experiment was isolating verbs that would allow an action to involve
the possibility of both pairs of animate-agent/inanimate-patient and
inanimate-agent/animate-patient alternatively, holding the target NPs
constant. Most verbs in the vocabulary of a language describe actions
which are performed by animate agents.
Of the actions that can be performed by
inanimate agents, there is only a restricted number of transitive
verbs where the object can be animate. We have classified the actions
we found to obey these criteria:
- Bodily harm: smashing, shaking, sinking, blowing up,
pulling. These actions can be carried out either by an animate
entity to an inanimate one or vice versa (items 1, 10, 11, 12, 14,
15 and 16).
- Protection: a physical object can protect a human, and the
other way round (items 17, 18, 19, 20).
- Change of position of another object: pulling, pushing
over a cliff, as in items 4, 6 and 13.
- Change of relative position with respect to another
entity: reaching for, overtaking, accompanying someone or something,
standing in someone's or something's way. Items 3, 5, 8, 9, 24.
- Mutual abstract influence such as positive influence,
confusion, making someone or something famous: humans can influence
or be influenced by abstract concepts like religion, arguments,
poetry, art, political streams (items 7, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32).
- Mutual concrete influence: humans and ecosystems are
dependent on each other (items 21, 30 and 31).
- Presentation: an actor can influence or present an
abstract representation of a human being (such as a
role/picture/figure/description in a piece of literature), or the
presentation can influence him or her. This is exploited in items 2,
22 and 23.
These rigid semantic restrictions may in some cases have led to
awkward sentences in the absence of context. However, such cases were
limited in number and we don't think this factor influenced the
experiment significantly. Our sentences were written rather than
spoken, thus they included no prosodic cues such as stress and
intonation that can make sentences sound more natural. In any case, we
are confident that in spoken language there would not have been any
grounds for questioning semantic soundness.
The passivization of certain verbs involved a small number of
problematic cases as well (e.g. German dative objects can't be
passivized). First of all, in the cases where the logical subject was
the inanimate entity, it could not always be expressed through a
von-phrase; some of the passivized verbs would only subcategorize
for a durch-phrase:
Der Feldwebel betonte, daß der Soldat (*von dem/ durch den)
Bunker gesch\"utzt wurde.
The sergeant emphasized that the soldier
was protected by the bunker.
This is an indication that the true thematic role of the inanimate
entity was not agent but rather instrument. This weakens
our point a bit, as we are depending on the notion of agency; however,
this was only the case for a small number of sentences
- A practice block of sentences might prove to be useful, as we
noticed that most subjects made more errors and omissions in the
first block.
- The control of words for phonological variables like number of
syllables and position of words according to this factor should be
taken into account, as there are suspicions that this factor may be
correlated with both the semantic and the positional level. Speech
production also involves lexical and phonological factors which in
this paper have been eliminated due to practical considerations.
However, a theory of production must also treat these two levels in
order to account for the whole phenomenon of language production.
- As it has already been stated, the analysis of the results takes
into account only the remembered results and not the omissions or
the errors. Our motivation for focusing only on the correct and
inverted sentences was that the experiment was not a memory test and
thus we wanted to eliminate factors involving individual memory
capacities of the subjects. To prove if this is a legitimate
viewpoint, it would have been interesting to conduct a statistical
analysis on proportions of inversions on all items (i.e. also,
on incorrectly remembered or omitted sentences).
- One might doubt the connection between the animate/inanimate and
the abstract/concrete axes on the one hand and the concept of
imageability or conceptual accessibility on the other side. One
possible criticism is that conceptual accessibility is misleading or
at least dependent on many factors: it is hard to imagine that
``aardvark'', though an animate entity, should be more accessible
than ``table'', an inanimate entity. The degree of accessibility may
be due to factors such as frequency of use and/or environmental
influence. Thus, in a culture that is more familiar with aardvarks
than with tables, the former will probably be indeed more accessible
than the latter. This points to the fact that conceptual
accessibility is a relative concept and that different measures
are associated with the concepts in different cultures. In our
experiment we have tried not to use extreme cases of
familiarity/unfamiliarity, but we acknowledge that in future
research this factor should be controlled for more thoroughly.
Another point where we were not sure about the validity of the
concept of animacy as a measure of conceptual accessibility occurred
during the design of the experiment. We originally wanted to
include action taking place between individuals and institutions,
as in
Die Handelskammer gab an, daß der Architekt die Firma
beauftragte.
The chamber of commerce explained that the
architect had hired the company.
We did not use them in our final materials, as we suspected that even
though the institution nouns are abstract, the fact that they
represent groups of humans makes them similar in animacy/imageability
to concrete human agents. As we had no possibility to settle this
question, we decided conservatively to exclude these
sentences.
We intend to remedy these points of criticism in future experiments; we
are specifically interested in carrying out similar experiments in Greek
with spoken language.
In order to make claims about whether or not semantic factors
influence the determination of word order (positional level), it is
necessary to isolate the effects of word order from the effects of
grammatical function assignment. For fixed order languages, this is
impossible: in English, the subject is always the first NP in a
sentence (with the exception of constructions such as topicalization).
The only way to make any claims about word order effects in English is
by looking at conjunct order like Bock and Warren did. We believe that
their argument is not very strong; apart from the fact that all they
can show is a null effect, the variables grammatical function and word
order are not independent in their setup. We believe that the syntax
of certain other languages allows for more insightful experiments.
Languages with richer morphology usually also employ more freedom with
respect to word order; as the morphological marking on NPs flags the
thematic role of that NP it can be dislocated (e.g. scrambled,
extraposed or topicalized) without making the sentence ambiguous. In
German, for example, sentence 3 is perfectly grammatical; that
is, it is possible to place a given target (here: den Mann) in
front, even though it is not in the most salient grammatical
function, but rather an accusative object.
Er sagte, daß den Mann der Schlag getroffen hat.
he said that the man(acc) the blow(nom) hit had.
There is indeed considerable evidence from other
free word order languages such as Catalan, Spanish, cf.
[Prat-Sala et al.(1996)]) that the positional level is also influenced
by conceptual accessibility.
We therefore suggest a 2x2-experiment manipulating the two factors
grammatical function and word order. We want to clarify if
there are situations where the test persons violate the condition that
animate targets are expressed as subjects, in favour of placing them
prior to other NPs in the sentence. We want to find out what is more
attractive to the test persons, to make the animate target the subject
or to position it as the first noun phrase (in whatever grammatical
role).
The proposed sentences all have the following properties:
-----------------------------------------------------------
Condition | E | F | G | H
----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------
Agent | Anim | Inanim | Inanim | Anim
Patient | Inanim | Anim | Anim | Inanim
----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------
Subject | Anim | Inanim | Inanim | Anim
----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------
First | Anim | Inanim | Anim | Inanim
Position | | | |
----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------
Pref. | | | |
grammat. | + | - | - | +
function | | | |
----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------
Pref. | | | |
word | + | - | + | -
order | | | |
-----------------------------------------------------------
- E Der Trainer sagte, daß der Golfer den Ball getroffen hatte
The trainer said that the golfer(nom) the ball(acc) hit had.
- F Der Trainer sagte, daß der Ball den Golfer getroffen hatte.
The trainer said that the ball(nom) the golfer(acc) hit had.
- G Der Trainer sagte, daß den Golfer der Ball getroffen hatte.
The trainer said that the golfer(acc) the ball(nom) hit had.
- H Der Trainer sagte, daß den Ball der Golfer getroffen hatte.
The trainer said that the ball(acc) the golfer(nom) hit had.
Conditions E and H are variants of each other, only distinguished by
dislocation, and so are F and G.
If there is no influence on word order, conditions E and H should be
the preferred conditions, as they express the animate target as the
subject (even though dislocated in condition H); we would expect to
get more inversions for conditions F and G. In addition, E and H should have
about the same number of inversions, and similarly F and G, as they have
the same subject/object structure.
If there is influence on word order, condition G should be attractive
as well, since it places the animate target in front (even though not
in subject role). This should result in more inversions for F than G.
Clearly, in both cases, F will result in more inversions than E, as E
is a more favourable situation with respect to both word order and
grammatical function, and F is less preferred under both conditions.
The two factors compete when G and H are compared. The question then
is: Which of the two factors is stronger? Can preference for word
order override the preference for high grammatical roles?
Similar experiments for Spanish and Catalan have been conducted
recently ([Prat-Sala et al.(1996)]), with one difference being that
they did not involve recall tasks. Prat-Sala et al. utilised pictures
instead of sentences and asked subjects to describe the actions
depicted in the words, thus avoiding a bias towards a particular type
of target sentence. Thus there cannot be doubt that syntactic
structure was not computed afresh but only memorized, which is always
a possibility with experiments conducted along our lines. Prat-Sala et
al.'s results illustrate that conceptual accessibility does indeed
influence word order for these languages.
Even though we first designed our experiment along these lines, we
later felt that the sentences with dislocation were too marked to
present them to subjects without context
(which we could not provide due to time pressure), and therefore we
decided on the active/passive variation.
Context for these sentences can be provided by making the second NP
the topic, either via stress or by adding a contrastive
phrase:
daß der Golfer von dem Ball getroffen wurde
that the golfer was hit by the ball
The stressed item should be the last one, which is consistent with the
accepted notion that old information usually precedes new information:
in sentence 7 the NP the ball represents old
information and the golfer is the new information, and hence
it's the golfer which should be stressed. Maybe it would also
be necessary to set the context by introducing the agents before the
relevant item : On the golf course, there was a golf player,
practising with a golf ball, and a basketball player, playing with a
basketball. Overall, the sentences seem very much improved by
manipulation of the context.
What would it mean for theories of sentence production if the
influence of semantic factors on word order could be proved,
especially if it were additionally proved that word order can override
grammatical function? This is a tricky question. Do we have to assume
different sentence production mechanisms for fixed and free order
languages, or does the model need to be changed? These are open
questions.
Our experiment has brought additional support for the hypothesis
expressed in [Bock and Warren(1985)], namely that there is a strong
effect of conceptual accessibility on grammatical function assignment.
However, we suspect that there is semantic influence on word
order. We believe that further experimental research conducted in free
word order languages will have more to say on this matter.
References
- Bock and Levelt(1994)
-
Bock, J. and Levelt, W. (1994).
Language production: grammatical encoding.
In M. Gernsmacher, editor, A handbook of psycholinguistics.
MIT Press, Cambridge, Ma.
- Bock and Warren(1985)
-
Bock, J. and Warren, R. (1985).
Conceptual accessibility and syntactic structure in sentence
formulation.
Cognition, 21.
- Branigan(1995)
-
Branigan, H. (1995).
Language Processing and the Mental Representation of Syntactic
Structure.
Ph.D. thesis, Centre for Cognitive Science, University of Edinburgh.
- Garrett(1975)
-
Garrett, M. (1975).
The analysis of sentence production.
In G. Bower, editor, The psychology of learning and
motivation. Academic Press.
- Garrett(1980)
-
Garrett, M. (1980).
Levels of processing in sentence production.
In B. Butterworth, editor, Language Production, volume 1.
Academic Press.
- Keenan and Comrie(1977)
-
Keenan, E. and Comrie, B. (1977).
Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar.
Linguistic inquiry, 8.
- Keil(1979)
-
Keil, F. (1979).
Semantic and conceptual development: an ontological
perspective.
Harvard University Press.
- Paivio et al.(1968)
-
Paivio, A., Yuille, J., and Madigan, S. (1968).
Concreteness, imagery and meaningfulness values for 925 nouns.
Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1/2.
- Prat-Sala et al.(1996)
-
Prat-Sala, M., Branigan, H., Pickering, M., and Shillcock, R. (1996).
Is word order influenced by conceptual accessibility?
In 9th CUNY Sentence Processing Conference (presented in poster
session).
- Pullum(1977)
-
Pullum, G. K. (1977).
Word order universals and grammatical relations.
In P. Cole and J. Sadock, editors, Syntax and semantics:
Grammatical Relations, volume 8. Academic Press, New York.
- Robertson and Suci(1980)
-
Robertson, S. S. and Suci, G. J. (1980).
Event perception in children in early stages of language production.
Child Development, 51.
- The soldier assumed that the general put the canon out
of action.
A Der Soldat nahm an, daß der General die Kanone außer Gefecht setzte.
B Der Soldat nahm an, daß die Kanone den General außer Gefecht setzte.
C Der Soldat nahm an, daß der General von der Kanone außer Gefecht gesetzt wurde.
D Der Soldat nahm an, daß die Kanone von dem General außer Gefecht gesetzt wurde.
- The editor said that the guerilla fighter defended the radio station.
A Der Redakteur sagte, daß der Guerillakämpfer den Radiosender verteidigte.
B Der Redakteur sagte, daß der Radiosender den Guerillakämpfer verteidigte.
C Der Redakteur sagte, daß der Guerillakämpfer von dem Radiosender verteidigt wurde.
D Der Redakteur sagte, daß der Radiosender von dem Guerillakämpfer verteidigt wurde.
- The eye witness reported that the terrorist followed the police car.
A Die Augenzeugin berichtete, daß der Terrorist den Polizeiwagen verfolgte.
B Die Augenzeugin berichtete, daß der Polizeiwagen den Terroristen verfolgte.
C Die Augenzeugin berichtete, daß der Terrorist von dem Polizeiwagen verfolgt wurde.
D Die Augenzeugin berichtete, daß der Polizeiwagen von dem
Terroristen verfolgt wurde.
- The driving instructor
reported that the driving pupil towed the car away.
A Die Fahrlehrerin berichtete, daß der Fahrschüler das Auto abschleppte.
B Die Fahrlehrerin berichtete, daß das Auto den Fahrschüler abschleppte.
C Die Fahrlehrerin berichtete, daß der Fahrschüler von dem Auto abgeschleppt wurde.
D Die Fahrlehrerin berichtete, daß das Auto von dem Fahrschüler angeschleppt wurde.
- The local reporter described that the wine queen accompanied the
procession.
A Der Lokalreporter beschrieb, daß die Weinkönigin den Umzug begleitete.
B Der Lokalreporter beschrieb, daß der Umzug die Weinkönigin begleitete.
C Der Lokalreporter beschrieb, daß die Weinkönigin von dem Umzug begleitet wurde.
D Der Lokalreporter beschrieb, daß der Umzug von der Weinkönigin begleitet wurde.
- The wind surfer reported that the swimmer took the rubber boat in tow.
A Der Windsurfer berichtete, daß der Schwimmer das Gummiboot ins Schlepptau nahm.
B Der Windsurfer berichtete, daß das Gummiboot den Schwimmer ins Schlepptau nahm.
C Der Windsurfer berichtete, daß der Schwimmer von dem Gummiboot ins Schlepptau genommen wurde.
D Der Windsurfer berichtete, daß das Gummiboot von dem Schwimmer ins Schlepptau genommen wurde.
- The physics book said that the physician had made this method famous.
A Im Physikbuch stand, daß der Physiker diese Methode berühmt gemacht hatte.
B Im Physikbuch stand, daß diese Methode den Physiker berühmt gemacht hatte.
C Im Physikbuch stand, daß der Physiker durch diese Methode berühmt gemacht wurde.
D Im Physikbuch stand, daß diese Methode von dem Physiker berühmt gemacht wurde.
- The traffic policeman described that the defendant/accussed reached the lorry.
A Der Verkehrspolizist beschrieb, daß der Angeklagte den Lastwagen erreichte.
B Der Verkehrspolizist beschrieb, daß der Lastwagen den Angeklagten erreichte.
C Der Verkehrspolizist beschrieb, daß der Angeklagte von dem Lastwagen erreicht wurde.
D Der Verkehrspolizist beschrieb, daß der Lastwagen von dem Angeklagten erreicht wurde.
- The motor biker said that the cyclist overtook the bus.
A Die Motorradfahrerin sagte aus, daß der Radfahrer den Bus überholte.
B Die Motorradfahrerin sagte aus, daß der Bus den Radfahrer überholte.
C Die Motorradfahrerin sagte aus, daß der Radfahrer von dem Bus überholt wurde.
D Die Motorradfahrerin sagte aus, daß der Bus von dem Radfahrer überholt wurde.
- The trainer reported that the golfer hit the ball.
A Der Trainer berichtete, daß der Golfer den Ball traf.
B Der Trainer berichtete, daß der Ball den Golfer traf.
C Der Trainer berichtete, daß der Golfer von der Ball getroffen wurde.
D Der Trainer berichtete, daß der Ball von dem Golfer getroffen wurde.
- The carpenter said that the cabinet maker smashed the wardrobe.
A Der Zimmermann sagte, daß der Schreiner den Schrank zerschmetterte.
B Der Zimmermann sagte, daß der Schrank den Schreiner zerschmetterte.
C Der Zimmermann sagte, daß der Schreiner von dem Schrank zerschmettert wurde.
D Der Zimmermann sagte, daß der Schrank von dem Schreiner zerschmettert wurde.
- The fireman said that the demolition expert blew up the bomb.
A Der Feuerwehrmann sagte, daß der Sprengstoffspezialist die Bombe in die Luft jagte.
B Der Feuerwehrmann sagte, daß die Bombe den Sprengstoffspezialisten in die Luft jagte.
C Der Feuerwehrmann sagte, daß der Sprengstoffspezialist von der Bombe in die Luft gejagt wurde.
D Der Feuerwehrmann sagte, daß die Bombe von dem Sprengstoffspezialisten in die Luft gejagt wurde.
- The mafia boss said that the witness pushed the car over the cliff.
A Der Mafiaboss sagte, daß der Zeuge das Auto über die Klippe stieß.
B Der Mafiaboss sagte, daß das Auto den Zeugen über die Klippe stieß.
C Der Mafiaboss sagte, daß der Zeuge von dem Auto über die Klippe gestoßen wurde.
D Der Mafiaboss sagte, daß das Auto von dem Zeugen über die Klippe gestoßen wurde.
- The worker saw that the winemaker rolled the barrel flat.
A Die Arbeiterin sah, daß der Winzer die Tonne plattwalzte.
B Die Arbeiterin sah, daß die Tonne den Winzer plattwalzte.
C Die Arbeiterin sah, daß der Winzer von der Tonne plattgewalzt wurde.
D Die Arbeiterin sah, daß die Tonne von dem Winzer plattgewalzte wurde.
- The radar showed that the submarine captain sank the war ship.
A Das Radar zeigte, daß der U-Boot-Kapitän das Kriegsschiff versenkte.
B Das Radar zeigte, daß das Kriegsschiff den U-Boot-Kapitän versenkte.
C Das Radar zeigte, daß der U-Boot-Kapitän von dem Kriegsschiff versenkt wurde.
D Das Radar zeigte, daß das Kriegsschiff von dem U-Boot-Kapitän versenkt wurde.
- The skilled worker said that the master craftsperson shook the machine.
A Der Facharbeiter sagte, daß der Meister die Maschine durchschüttelte.
B Der Facharbeiter sagte, daß die Maschine den Meister durchschüttelte.
C Der Facharbeiter sagte, daß der Meister von der Maschine durchgeschüttelt wurde.
D Der Facharbeiter sagte, daß die Maschine von dem Meister durchgeschüttelt wurde.
- The civil servant knew that the employee rescued
the bank book.
A Der Finanzbeamte wußte, daß der Angestellte das Sparbuch rettete.
B Der Finanzbeamte wußte, daß das Sparbuch den Angestellten rettete.
C Der Finanzbeamte wußte, daß der Angestellte durch das Sparbuch gerettet wurde.
D Der Finanzbeamte wußte, daß das Sparbuch von dem Angestellten gerettet wurde.
- The mountain rescue service said that the archeologist was protected
by the equipment.
A Die Bergwacht sagte, daß der Archäologe die Ausrüstung schützte.
B Die Bergwacht sagte, daß die Ausr"ustung den Archäologen schützte.
C Die Bergwacht sagte, daß der Archäologe von der Ausrüstung geschützt wurde.
D Die Bergwacht sagte, daß die Ausr"ustung durch den Archäologen geschützt wurde.
- The museum guard reported that the burgler covered the statue
A Der Museumswärter berichtete, daß der Einbrecher die Statue verdeckte.
B Der Museumswärter berichtete, daß die Statue den Einbrecher verdeckte.
C Der Museumswärter berichtete, daß der Einbrecher von der Statue verdeckt wurde.
D Der Museumswärter berichtete, daß die Statue von dem Einbrecher verdeckt wurde.
- The sergeant stressed that the soldier protected the bunker/air
raid shelter.
A Der Feldwebel betonte, daß der Soldat den Bunker schützte.
B Der Feldwebel betonte, daß der Bunker den Soldaten schützte.
C Der Feldwebel betonte, daß der Soldat durch den Bunker geschützt wurde.
D Der Feldwebel betonte, daß der Bunker von dem Soldaten geschützt wurde.
- The person in charge of environment questions stressed that the
indios kept the rain forest alive.
A Die Umweltbeauftragte betonte, daß die Indios den Regenwald am Leben erhielten.
B Die Umweltbeauftragte betonte, daß der Regenwald die Indios am Leben erhielt.
C Die Umweltbeauftragte betonte, daß die Indios von dem Regenwald am Leben erhalten wurden.
D Die Umweltbeauftragte betonte, daß der Regenwald von den Indios am Leben erhalten wurde.
- The lawyer's assistant reported that the star lawyer represented the firm
# of solicitors/law firm.
A Die Anwaltshelferin berichtete, daß der Staranwalt die Anwaltskanzlei vertrat.
B Die Anwaltshelferin berichtete, daß die Anwaltskanzlei den Staranwalt vertrat.
C Die Anwaltshelferin berichtete, daß der Staranwalt von der Anwaltskanzlei vertreten wurde.
D Die Anwaltshelferin berichtete, daß die Anwaltskanzlei von dem Staranwalt vertreten wurde.
- The critics liked the fact that the hero (re)presented/introduced the
poem.
A Den Kritikern gefiel sehr gut, daß der Held das Gedicht vorstellte.
B Den Kritikern gefiel sehr gut, daß das Gedicht den Helden vorstellte.
C Den Kritikern gefiel sehr gut, daß der Held von dem Gedicht vorgestellt wurde.
D Den Kritikern gefiel sehr gut, daß das Gedicht von dem
Helden vorgestellt wurde.
- The rail employee saw that
the moped driver hindered the train.
A Die Eisenbahnangestellte sah, daß der Mopedfahrer den Zug an der Weiterfahrt hinderte.
B Die Eisenbahnangestellte sah, daß der Zug den Mopedfahrer an der Weiterfahrt hinderte.
C Die Eisenbahnangestellte sah, daß der Mopedfahrer von dem Zug an der Weiterfahrt gehindert wurde.
D Die Eisenbahnangestellte sah, daß der Zug von dem Mopedfahrer an der Weiterfahrt gehindert wurde.
- The inspector assumed that the privat detective hindered the investigations.
A Der Kommissar nahm an, daß der Privatdetektiv die Nachforschungen behinderte.
B Der Kommissar nahm an, daß die Nachforschungen den Privatdetektiv behinderten.
C Der Kommissar nahm an, daß der Privatdetektiv von den Nachforschungen behindert wurde.
D Der Kommissar nahm an, daß die Nachforschungen von dem Privatdetektiv behindert wurden.
- The film critic found that the director had made the film famous.
A Die Filmkritikerin fand, daß der Regisseur den Film bekannt gemacht hatte.
B Die Filmkritikerin fand, daß der Film den Regisseur bekannt gemacht hatte.
C Die Filmkritikerin fand, daß der Regisseur von dem Film bekannt gemacht wurde.
D Die Filmkritikerin fand, daß der Film durch den
Regisseur bekannt gemacht wurde.
- The resistance
fighter stated that the rebel influenced the peace process.
A Die Widerstandskämpferin sagte, daß der Rebell die Freiheitsbestrebungen beeinflußte.
B Die Widerstandskämpferin sagte, daß die Freiheitsbestrebungen den Rebellen beeinflußten.
C Die Widerstandskämpferin sagte, daß der Rebell von den Freiheitsbestrebungen beeinflußt wurde.
D Die Widerstandskämpferin sagte, daß die Freiheitsbestrebungen von dem Rebellen beeinflußt wurden.
- The secretary suspected that the boss confused the argument.
A Die Sekretärin hatte den Verdacht, daß der Chef das Argument durcheinanderbrachte.
B Die Sekretärin hatte den Verdacht, daß das Argument den Chef durcheinanderbrachte.
C Die Sekretärin hatte den Verdacht, daß der Chef durch das Argument durcheinandergebracht wurde.
D Die Sekretärin hatte den Verdacht, daß das Argument von dem Chef durcheinandergebracht wurde.
- The sports reporter said that the racing cyclist defeated the bad weather.
A Die Sportreporterin sagte, daß der Radsportler das Unwetter bezwang.
B Die Sportreporterin sagte, daß das Unwetter den Radsportler bezwang.
C Die Sportreporterin sagte, daß der Radsportler von dem Unwetter bezwungen wurde.
D Die Sportreporterin sagte, daß das Unwetter von dem Radsportler bezwungen wurde.
- The geologist said that the natives threatened this living space/biotop.
A Der Geologe sagte, daß die Eingeborenen diesen Lebensraum bedrohten.
B Der Geologe sagte, daß dieser Lebensraum die Eingeborenen bedrohte.
C Der Geologe sagte, daß die Eingeborenen von diesem Lebensraum bedroht wurden.
D Der Geologe sagte, daß dieser Lebensraum von den Eingeborenen bedroht wurde.
- The chemist denied that the people poisoned the river.
A Der Chemiker bestritt, daß die Menschen den Fluß vergifteten.
B Der Chemiker bestritt, daß der Fluß die Menschen vergiftete.
C Der Chemiker bestritt, daß die Menschen durch den Fluß vergiftet wurden.
D Der Chemiker bestritt, daß der Fluß von den
Menschen vergiftet wurde.
- The historian reported that
the prophet shaped the religion.
A Der Geschichtsschreiber berichtete, daß der Prophet die Religion prägte.
B Der Geschichtsschreiber berichtete, daß die Religion den Propheten prägte.
C Der Geschichtsschreiber berichtete, daß der Prophet von der Religion geprägt wurde.
D Der Geschichtsschreiber berichtete, daß die Religion durch den Propheten geprägt wurde.
- The air traffic controller said that the plane had landed.
Der Fluglotse sagte, daß das Flugzeug gelandet war.
- The doctor said that the nurse went home at 5 o'clock.
Der Doktor sagte, daß die Krankenschwester um 5 Uhr nach Hause ging.
- The parents found out that their daughter smoked secretely.
Die Eltern fanden heraus, daß ihre Tochter heimlich rauchte.
- The ecological organization announced that the government supported
nuclear power stations.
Die Umweltorganisation erinnerte daran, daß das Kohlekraftwerk explodierte.
- The Sea police informed that the oiltanker sank the previous
night.
Die Küstenwacht informierte, daß der Öltanker letzte Nacht gesunken war.
- The traffic court stressed that the driver had driven too fast.
Das Verkehrsgericht betonte, daß der Fahrer zu schnell gefahren war.
- The mother reported that her son liked to sleep long.
Die Mutter berichtete, daß ihr Sohn gerne lange schlief.
- The sports reporter said that the athlete fell down shortly
before the finishing line.
Der Sportreporter berichtete, daß der Athlet kurz vor dem Ziel stürzte.
- UNICEF emphasized that many people in the Third world starved without a good reason.
UNICEF betonte, daß viele Menschen in der Dritten Welt unn#246;tig verhungerten.
- The patient assured that the pain soon subsided.
Die Patientin versicherte, daß der Schmerz bald nachließ.
- The dermatologist said that the child had been sunbathing for too long.
Der Dermatologe sagte, daß das Kind zu lange in der Sonne gelegen hatte.
- The economical analyst said that unemployment was the biggest problem.
Der Wirtschaftsberater sagte, daß Arbeitslosigkeit das gr#246;ßte Problem darstellte.
- The computer scientists announced that the computers had malfunctioned unexpectedly.
Die Informatiker gaben an, daß die Computer unerwartet ausgefallen waren.
- The businessman said that his haulage agency expanded quickly.
Der Geschäaftsmann sagte, daß seine Spedition schnell expandierte.
- The United Nations were suspicious that the torture was going on.
Die Vereinten Nationen hatten den Verdacht, daß die Folter andauerte.
- The local government admitted that their plans had failed.
Die Stadtverwaltung gab zu, daß ihre Pläane gescheitert waren.
Footnotes
- ...encoding
- Sometimes regarded as
subordinate to positional level.
- ...words
- It is assumed that phonological
form is not stored with lemmas.
- ...comparison
- Experimental results seem to support the
idea of a continuous dimension of grammatical relations (rather than
a concrete one).
- ...([Paivio et al.(1968)]
- Paivio et al.
obtained their results from experiments in first language
acquisition, where they measured variation of imageability across
sentence types and grammatical relations.
- ...only
- However, they admit that the absence of an effect of
imageability on word order within phrasal conjuncts should be
treated tentatively: it remains possible that there is a conceptual
or semantic influence on order within conjuncts but that it is hard
to see it as it is weaker than that of phonological variables
(syllable length) for sentences of this type.
- ...level
- Free word order languages
are taken as a justification for the assumption that these two
levels are separate; English leaves little evidence for this, as
[Branigan(1995)] remarks.
- ...constructions
- Though there is a
very similar construction in German, contrasting sie buk
ihr(Dat) einen Kuchen(Akk) with sie buk einen Kuchen(Akk)
für sie(PP-Obj).
- ...held.
- Due to common
verbal semantic restrictions, the number of types of verbs that are
candidates for such constructions is restricted.
- ...persons
- We use ``test person'' as an alternative way of
saying ``subject'', in order to avoid potential confusion that could
arise from the use of the word ``subject'' as a grammatical
relation.
- ...phrases
- Modulo active/passive alternation and morphological
changes on verbs made necessary by subject/verb agreement.
- ...sentences
- The blocks of 8 sentences contained 4 instead of 2
fillers per block.
- ...items
- One syntactic ambiguity in German is due
to the proposition von/vom which can be used to introduce the
by-phrase (the logical subject) of passive sentences, and also
to introduce the modifier of the other noun, as in Die Presse
war sich einig, daß das Foto von dem Filmstar gezeigt wurde
- ...that the photo was shown by the film star or
...that the photo of the film star was shown.
- ...omitted.
- Some reasons for this may have to do with the
speaker's ignorance of the agent's identity, the irrelevance of the
agent's identity to the communication of the message, or the
intention of the speaker to appear objective.
- ...agents
- Which supports the idea
that agents tend to be prominent (e.g. animate, moving, human, in
possession of a will and in-tensions...), [Keil(1979)].
- ...criteria
- Appendix A
provides all items used for the experiment.
- ...cliff
- One of the very few examples where we could
not keep to the condition that the subordinate sentences be
transitive, but had to include the additional PP über die
Klippe.
- ...sentences
- We
intend to exclude such examples in further experiments.
- ...sentences
- Another reason for the exclusion of this group of
actions was the fact that unfortunately, most of the institutions in
German are in feminine which do not morphosyntactically distinguish
nominative and accusative.
- ...roles
-
Unfortunately for this point, we must take into consideration that
passive sentences are also competitors here: Sentence (5)
expresses the same proposition and is favorable with respect to both
animacy and word order. In a sentence production experiments, we
cannot exclude that many subjects will retort to this construction.
- ...context
- We also made the
observation that scrambling is much more acceptable with datives
than with accusatives or prepositional objects. Note that even
though the sentences are perfectly grammatical, nevertheless
some of them are only marginally acceptable without context.
- ...phrase
- We are aware of the importance of stress on our
examples, e.g. in the following ambiguous situation in Greek, where
morphological marking cannot disambiguate the two opposite meanings
(neutral nouns in Greek have the same morphological realization in
nominative and accusative case):
In this situation, prosodic features are the sole determinants of
the meaning of a sentence, a further argument for preferring spoken
language for further experiments.
Simone Teufel
Tue Jul 9 18:59:18 BST 1996