Speaker: Isabel Oltra-Massuet (Universitat Rovira i Virgili)
Title: Theories of argument structure and syntactic priming in comprehension
Date: Thursday 23 May
Venue: Lipsius 2.35(!)
Time: 15.15-16.30 hrs (drinks follow at Cafe de Keyzer)
Abstract:
Different theories of argument structure attribute different syntactic configurations to intransitives like (1) and transitive structures like (2-6), so that they make different predictions about the processing of these sentence types and the priming relations between them.
| (1) | Unergative | The dog | barked | in a quiet park | at night. |
| (2) | Cognate | The man | dozed | a restful doze | on the train. |
| (3) | Creation | The cook | baked | a carrot cake | with spelt flour. |
| (4) | Location/Locatum | The girl | saddled | a wild horse | in the farm. |
| (5) | Strong transitives | The athlete | ignored | a slight niggle | in his knee. |
| (6) | With-Small Clause | The worker | loaded | a rail wagon | with hay. |
In this talk, I will first review the syntactic structures attributed to (1)-(6) in two competing theoretical approaches to argument structure, (i) Hale & Keyser’s (1993, 2002) approach as developed in Mateu (2002), Acedo-Matellán (2010) and Acedo-Matellán & Mateu (2011, 2013) [AM&M], and (ii) Marantz’s (2005, 2011) [M], as well as their different claims with respect to syntactic priming. Then, I will report the results of a behavioral experiment, a self-paced reading language comprehension study on structural priming. Finally, I will discuss the development of this experiment into an ongoing MEG experiment.
Both experiments are the result of my collaboration with researchers at the Neuroscience of Language Lab – New York University Abu Dhabi.
References:
Acedo-Matellán, V. 2010. Argument Structure and the Syntax-Morphology Interface. A Case Study in Latin and Other Languages. UB, PhD Thesis. Acedo-Matellán, V. & Mateu, J. 2013. Satellite-framed Latin vs. verb-framed Romance: a syntactic approach. Probus 25, 227-265. Hale, K. & Keyser, S. J. 1993. On argument structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relations. The view from Building, 20, 53-109. Hale, K. & Keyser, S. J. 2002. Prolegomenon to a theory of argument structure. MIT Press. Mateu, J. 2002. Argument Structure. Relational Construal at the Syntax-Semantics Interface. UAB, PhD Thesis. Marantz, A. 2005. Objects out of the lexicon: Objects as events. MIT, Ms. Marantz, A. 2011. Syntactic approaches to argument structure without incorporation. Talk presented at the Workshop Structuring the argument, Structures Formelles du Langage UMR 7023 Paris 8/CNRS, Paris, 5-7 September.