Transcript Givenness and the dative alternation in Danish

Givenness and the dative
alternation in Danish
Johannes Kizach, University of
Aarhus, English Degree Programme
1
The dative alternation:
1) Skolelæreren gav eleven
et æble
teacher.the
gave student.the an apple
“The teacher gave the student an apple”
NP-construction
2) Skolelæreren gav et æble til eleven
teacher.the
gave an apple to student.the
“The teacher gave an apple to the student”
PP-construction
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Information structure
What decides how we order the THEME and the
RECIPIENT?
Theme/rheme
Given/new
Topic/comment
- but is this actually the case?
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2500
Givenness in corpus
studies
Bresnan et al. (2007) show
that the construction type is
correlated with givenness. It is
far more likely to observe the
NP-construction in cases
where the RECIPIENT is given,
than in cases where the
RECIPIENT is new.
The bar plot shows number of
occurrences in the corpus. The
NP-construction shows a clear
bias for a given RECIPIENT. The
PP-construction shows no
bias.
2000
1500
Rec = New
Rec = Given
1000
500
0
NP
PP
4
700
Givenness in corpus
studies
Bresnan et al. (2007). The NPconstruction is mostly found
with given-new order. The PPconstruction is less
discriminate.
The bar plot shows how the
new-given, given-new and
neutral orders are distributed
in the NP- and PPconstructions.
600
500
400
New-given
Given-new
300
Neutral
200
100
0
NP
PP
5
Manipulating definiteness/givenness:
a. President Clausen promised the man a job
NPdef-indef
b. President Clausen promised a man the job
NPindef-def
c. President Clausen promised the job to a man
PPdef-indef
d. President Clausen promised a job to the man
PPindef-def
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Definiteness/givenness
(Bresnan et al. 2007)
Theme
Recipient
1000
900
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
2500
2000
1500
Given
New
Given
1000
New
500
0
Def
Indef
Def
Indef
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Givenness in
psycholinguistic
experiments
4500
4000
Clifton & Frazier (2004) report
a series of speeded
acceptability judgment
experiments, showing that
processing is facilitated when
a definite NP precedes an
indefinite NP (faster RTs), but
only in the NP-construction,
not in the PP-construction
where no such effect is found.
3500
Bar plot shows mean reaction
times. The difference between
the two NP-constructions is
significant. The difference
between the two PPconstructions is not.
1000
3000
2500
New-given
2000
Given-new
1500
500
0
NP
PP
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Givenness in
psycholinguistic
experiments
Clifton & Frazier (2004)
experiment 2. Same as
experiment 1, but now a onesentence context establish the
definite argument as given.
3500
3000
2500
2000
New-given
Bar plot shows mean reaction
times. The difference between
the two NP-constructions is
significant. The difference
between the two PPconstructions is not.
Given-new
1500
1000
500
0
NP
PP
9
Givenness in
psycholinguistic
experiments
Brown, Savova & Gibson (2012)
report a self-paced reading
experiment, showing the same
result as Clifton & Frazier (2004)
reached. The given-new order is
preferred for the NPconstruction, but no preference
is found in the PP-construction.
Bar plot shows mean reading
times in milliseconds for the
second argument. The
difference between the two NPconstructions is significant. The
difference between the PPconstructions is not.
320
310
300
290
New-given
280
Given-new
270
260
250
240
NP
PP
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Experiment 1
This work was done in collaboration with Laura Winther Balling (CBS).
Do we see the same
structural conditioning
of givenness-effects in
Danish?
Specifically, do we find a
reaction time difference
in the NP-construction,
but not in the PPconstruction?
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Experiment 1
Materials. 14 sentences were constructed using the 10 most frequent dative-alternating verbs (based
on a search in KorpusDK, Bergenholtz 1992).
a. Direktør
Clausen lovede
manden et arbejde
president
Clausen promised
man.the a job
“President Clausen promised the man a job”
NPdef-indef
b. Direktør Clausen lovede en mand arbejdet
“President Clausen promised a man the job”
NPindef-def
c. Direktør Clausen lovede arbejdet til en mand
“President Clausen promised the job to a man”
PPdef-indef
d. Direktør Clausen lovede et arbejde til manden
“President Clausen promised a job to the man”
PPindef-def
The materials also included 64 fillers, 40 of which were sentences structurally similar to the target
sentences but with semantic, syntactic or orthographic mistakes. The remaining 24 sentences were
materials from an unrelated experiment.
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Experiment 1
Procedure. The stimuli were
presented in a pseudo-random
order one sentence at a time
in the middle of the screen
following a fixation point (+).
The subjects were instructed to
accept or reject the sentences
by pressing either a red X
(rejection) or a green 
(acceptance) marked on the
keyboard.
A training session with four items
were run first to familiarize
subjects with the task.
Reaction times (RT) and
answers were recorded.
Stimulus presentation was done
using the free DMASTR
software (DMDX, version
4.0.4.8) developed at Monash
University and University of
Arizona by K.I. Forster and J.C.
Forster.
Subjects. 30, 9 males, 21 females.
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Statistical methods
(following Baayen 2008)
We analyzed the data using a
linear mixed-effects regression
model. The mixed-part is because
it includes both fixed and random
factors. This means that the
variance due to differences
between subjects and differences
between items can be statistically
controlled. In other words, some
of the noise from people and
sentences can be filtered out.
A model was fitted to the
dependent variable log RT using
the software R (R Development
Core Team, 2009) and the lme4
package for R (Bates, Maechler &
Bolker 2009).
Variance
Subjects
Items
Variable 1
Variable 2
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Table shows the fixed factors in the regression model fitted to log RT with the
NP-construction, and given-new as reference level.
Estimate MCMCmean
HPD95lower
HPD95upper
p
(Intercept)
79.742
79.670
78.454
80.773
0.0001
Givenness: new-given
0.1709
0.1698
0.0775
0.2607
0.0008
Construction: PP
0.0898
0.0901
-0.0182
0.1936
0.0972
Error
0.1189
0.1235
0.0537
0.1905
0.0012
-0.0079
-0.0078
-0.0120
-0.0039
0.0002
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
0.0001
-0.2597
-0.2588
-0.3853
-0.1264
0.0001
Repetition
Previous RT
Givenness: new-given
Construction: PP
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Results
Previous RT. When a subject has responded slowly, he will answer slowly on the next
item too. Fast subjects will correspondingly answer fast. Notice, that this effect is
there despite the fact that item and subject variance has been filtered out.
Repetition. If a subject sees an specific construction multiple times, he will respond
faster and faster (cf. Luka & Barsalou 2005 and Sprouse 2007).
The crucial question: The construction*givenness interaction.
Yes, the RT is significantly higher when the order is new-given,
but only in the NP-construction.
Error. Subjects are slower when they make a wrong answer.
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PP
given-new
Construction
8.00
8.05
logRT
8.10
8.15
NP
new-given
Givenness
The interaction between construction and givenness. The difference
between the two NP-constructions is significant. The difference
between the two PP-constructions is not (ascertained by means of
likelihood ratio tests).
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Error/rejected sentences
Few cases were subjects have
rejected the sentences, because
all sentences are considered
grammatical.
450
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
Rejected
Accpeted
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Conclusion
The effect of information structure (the
discourse variable givenness) is structurally
conditioned in the sense that it only has an
effect in the NP-construction, not in the PPconstruction.
“Syntactic representations can include information-structural
constraints on their arguments”
Brown, Savova & Gibson (2012:194)
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Experiment 2
(currently running)
Does the givenness-effect in the NP-construction
persist, when the complexities of the NPs are
manipulated?
a. Ib gav en gammel klog man med rød hat æblet
“Ib gave an old wise man with a red hat the apple”
b. Ib gav den gamle kloge man med rød hat et æble
“Ib gave the old wise man with a red hat an apple”
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Experiment 2
(currently running)
Conditions (appear in a def-indef and an indef-def version, 5x2):
a. Ib gave the man an apple
b. Ib gave the old, wise man an apple
c. Ib gave the old wise man with a hat an apple
d. Ib gave the man an apple from Brazil
e. Ib gave the man a very big, red apple from Brazil
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References (the end)
Baayen, R.H. (2008) Analyzing linguistic data – a practical introduction to statistics using R, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.
Baayen, R. H. (2011) languageR: Data sets and functions with "Analyzing Linguistic Data: A practical
introduction to statistics", R package version 1.2. http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=languageR.
Bates, Douglas, Martin Maechler & Ben Bolker (2011). lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using S4 classes. R
package version 0.999375-42. http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lme4.
Bergenholtz, Henning (1992) Dansk frekvensordbog: baseret på danske romaner, ugeblade og aviser, 19871990, G. E. C. Gad, København.
Bresnan, Joan, Anna Cueni, Tatiana Nikitina & R. Harald Baayen (2007) “Predicting the Dative Alternation”,
Cognitive Foundations of Interpretation, G. Bouma, I. Kraemer & J. Zwarts (eds), Royal Netherlands
Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam.
Brown, Meredith, Virginia Savova & Edward Gibson (2012) “Syntax encodes information structure: evidence
from on-line reading comprehension”, Journal of Memory and Language, 66, pp. 194-209.
Clifton, Jr., Charles & Lyn Frazier (2004) “Should given information appear before new? Yes and no”, Memory
and Cognition, 32, pp. 886-895.
Luka, B.J. and Barsalou, L.W. (2005). Structural facilitation: Mere exposure effects for grammatical acceptability
as evidence for syntactic priming in comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 52, pp. 436-459.
R Development Core Team (2009) R: A language and environment for statistical computing, R Foundation for
Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. ISBN 3-900051-07-0, URL http://www.R-project.org.
Sprouse, Jon (2007). Continuous acceptability, categorical grammaticality, and experimental syntax.
Biolinguistics, 1, pp. 123-134.
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