Overt Prosody in English as a Function of Working Memory. Van Rynald Liceralde Saint Louis University SREBCS 2013 Mentor: Fernanda Ferreira, PhD

Transcription

1 Overt Prosody in English as a Function of Working Memory Van Rynald Liceralde Saint Louis University SREBCS 2013 Mentor: Fernanda Ferreira, PhD

2 The sister of the actress who shot herself on the balcony was under investigation.

3 The sister of the actress who shot herself on the balcony was under investigation.

4 High attachment The sister of the actress who shot herself on the balcony was under investigation.

5 Low attachment The sister of the actress who shot herself on the balcony was under investigation.

6 Low WM The sister of the actress who shot herself on the balcony was under investigation. High attachment Swets et al. (2007) High WM The sister of the actress who shot herself on the balcony was under investigation. Low attachment

7 The sister of the actress who shot herself on the balcony was under investigation.

8 High attachment = low WM The sister of the actress / who shot herself on the balcony / was under investigation.

9 Low attachment = high WM The sister of the actress who shot herself on the balcony / was under investigation.

10 Implicit Prosody Hypothesis (Fodor, 2002) Prosody is projected onto the text; this may aid in disambiguation. Parser favors an interpretation that implied by overt prosody. Implicit prosody = Overt prosody. Language-specific: English = low-attachment

11 Low WM The sister of the actress / who shot herself on the balcony / was under investigation. HYPOTHESIS 1 High WM The sister of the actress who shot herself on the balcony / was under investigation.

12 Is implicit prosody ultimately language-specific? Swets et al. (2007): WM predicts attachment preference better than cross-linguistic differences What does this say about overt prosody?

13 The sister of the actress who shot herself on the balcony was under investigation. The sister of the actress who hung herself on the balcony was under investigation.

14 Language Specific The sister of the actress who shot herself on the balcony was under investigation. The sister of the actress // who hung herself on the balcony was under investigation. High WM Low WM

15 Interacts with WM HYPOTHESIS 2 The sister of the actress who shot herself on the balcony was under investigation. The sister of the actress / who hung herself on the balcony was under investigation. Low WM = more cognitive disadvantages

16 Prosody: Interaction with WM HYPOTHESIS 2 The sister of the actress who shot herself on the balcony was under investigation. The sister of the actress / who hung herself on the balcony was under investigation. High WM = do not plan to break here, more distracted

17 Materials Everything presented in one randomized order Production: 60 fillers and 30 experimental sentences 15 high freq. and 15 low freq. frequency counterbalanced across Ss Reading span task WM measure

18 The sister of the actress who shot herself on the balcony was under investigation.

19 +

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22 Who shot herself on the balcony?

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24 sister actress

25 Results: Production Measured: Probability of break (yes/no) Duration of break Lengthening of last word Total break = duration of break + lengthening of last word The sister of the actress / who shot herself on the balcony / was under investigation. 1 2

26 Results: Production No significant effect of WM or freq. on probability of break at point 1 (pre-relative clause) Generally no break there The sister of the actress / who shot herself on the balcony / was under investigation. 1 2

27 Results: Production low freq high freq Interaction of WM and freq. on point 2 (post- RC) break probability (t=14.45) High freq verbs: Prob. of break: low WM > high WM Low freq verbs: Prob. of break low WM high WM The sister of the actress / who shot herself on the balcony / was under investigation. 1 2

28 Results: Production High freq. High WM chunking bigger than low WM Low freq. Tendency for High WM to break there more than low WM (???) Break at point 2 happens by chance Frequency affects breaks in high WM more WM interacts with language-specific constraints But why at point 2 (post-rc) and not point 1 (pre-rc)?

29 Results: Attachment Preference low freq high freq Main effect of WM (t=2.25) No effect of word frequency Contrary to Swets et al. (2007) High WM: N1 attachment Low WM: N2 attachment

30 HIGH FREQUENCY Low WM The sister of the actress who shot herself on the balcony / was under investigation. = low attachment

31 HIGH FREQUENCY high attachment = High WM The sister of the actress who shot herself on the balcony was under investigation. /

32 Results: Attachment Preference Overt prosody is similar to implicit prosody when given high frequency verbs. What is happening with low frequency verbs?

33 Limitations SAMPLE SIZE (n=7): data is underpowered Did not measure interrater reliability on transcribing recordings.

34 Future Directions Collect data from more participants Smooth out details on data collection (e.g., operationalize prosodic break, interrater reliability, collect pitch) Assess whether methodology best taps into speech (not implicit) prosody e.g., Are people saying sentences as fast as possible to avoid forgetting them?

35 Acknowledgements National Science Foundation Fernanda Ferreira Isabel Gwara, Jimmy Nye, Justine Van Dyke, John Lim, Hossein Karimi & everybody else in the Language and Cognition Lab for all the valuable input SREBCS folk for their unadulterated moral support Jennifer and Scott Vendemia, Corey Boswell, and Jongwan Kim