Processing discontinuous words: On the interface between lexical and syntactic processing

Cognition, 47 (1993) 219-249 OOlO-0277/93/$06.00 0 1993 - Elsevier

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Processing discontinuous words: On the interface between lexical and syntactic processing L. Frazier* Linguistics Department,

G.B.

Flores

University of Massachusetts, Amherst,

d’Arcais,

R. Coolen

Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Received

August

MA 01003, USA

12. 1991, final version

6525 XD, Nijmegen Netherlands

accepted

March

2, 1993

Abstract How are discontinuous words processed? Are they identified in the lexicon or in the syntax? Schreuder (1990) proposes the existence of morphological integration nodes (MI nodes) to account for the representation of complex verbs with separable prefixes in Dutch. We tested the MI model during sentence processing in Dutch, using an ungrammaticality judgment task. The results supported the predictions of the Schreuder model, and also provide evidence for distinct lexical/morphological and syntactic processing subsystems, each driven by the information resources and tasks relevant to its own representational vocabulary. It is argued that no special principles are needed to govern the interaction of lexical/morphological and syntactic processing, even for the identification of discontinuous words; this follows automatically from independently required characterizations of the subsystems themselves. We also examine the principles underlying the MI model in an attempt to extend the model to a wider array of constructions and languages. It is hypothesized that frequently encountered linguistic expressions are represented in the lexicon. In the basic case, they are represented as access nodes, if they may

This work was supported by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and by NIH Research Grant HD-18708 to Charles Clifton and Lyn Frazier. We are very grateful to Charles Clifton for help with various stages of this work and to three anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript. We also thank Pienie Zwitserlood, who graciously helped with the preparation of the materials. *Corresponding author.

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stand alone, and as MI nodes, if their constituents are already represented by access nodes. Unlike the original MI model, no further stipulation is needed concerning the existence or inhibition properties of Ml nodes, assuming that candidate lexicallmorphological

hypotheses are appended to whatever portion(s)

of the input

string they are hypotheses about.

Introduction The recognition of morphologically complex words has now become an active area of psycholinguistic investigation (Emmorey, 1989; Stanners, Neiser, Hernon, 81 Hall, 1979; Taft, 1979; Taft AL Forster, 1975; Tyler & Marslen-Wilson, 1986). To our knowledge, however, none of the existing studies, with the exception of Schreuder (1990) (discussed below), have dealt with the recognition of discontinuous words, or the interesting questions they pose concerning the nature of the lexical recognition system and its interaction with the syntactic processing system. Separable prefix verbs in Dutch provide a clear example of discontinuous words: the prefix and verb must be considered a word because they must occur together in order to receive the interpretation of the complex verb, which is sometimes completely non-compositional. Further, the verb and prefix must be adjacent to each other in certain forms (the infinitive, and in verb-raising constructions; see Booij, 1990; Model, 1991). The problems a discontinuous word poses for the lexical system stem directly from the non-adjacency of the word’s constituent parts. The word recognition system typically is confronted with the task of recognizing continuous portions of the input as a word, not constituents separated by a potentially very long string of intervening words. For example, in (1) “aan” and “geeft” (from “aangeven”) are separated by nine words and of course either the head of the intervening noun phrase or its phrasal modifier could be lengthened. The occurrence of “geeft” alone will not necessitate postulation of a complex verb, as indicated by the acceptability of (lb), where no particle occurs. (See (2a) below for an example where the constituents of a complex verb are adjacent, thus forming a continuous verb.) ) a. Jan geeft per ongeluk

een kom met de mooie

plastic vruchten aan. (“aangeven” = to pass) “John verb by mistake a bowl with the pretty plastic fruits particle.” (verb + particle = aangeven) (John mistakenly passed a bowl with pretty plastic fruit.) b. Jan geeft per ongeluk een kom met de mooie plastic vruchten (als kado). “John gave by mistake a bowl with pretty plastic fruit (as a present).” (John mistakenly gave a bowl with pretty plastic fruit (as a present).)

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ideas about lexical recognition involve activation of lexical nodes in an network, with quick decay of the activation permitting reactivation of

the same nodes

for recognition

of following

words.

discontinuous input for a lexical node? Further, system manage to correctly take in and relate

Can such a system

regions of a sentence power and complexity

without a concomitant massive of the system due to relating

“chunk”

to each other

of the signal

cope with

how does any lexical recognition input from two widely separated increase in the necessary each coherent portion or

chunk?

For syntactic processing, the nature of the problem posed by discontinuous words will depend on whether the first constituent of the word is itself analyzable as a word or not, and on whether analysis of the first constituent of the word proceeds immediately or is delayed long enough to determine whether the other portion of the discontinuous word will arrive. Immediate analysis of the first constituent of a discontinuous word will likely give rise to many errors of analysis in cases where the constituent could itself be a word. Delaying analysis (or computing all potential analyses) is in principle possible, but would be required whether the sentence actually contains a discontinuous word or not, since the processor has no way to know in advance of analyzing later portions of the sentence whether the second constituent of the discontinuous word will appear as in (la), or not, as in (lb). This will be costly in terms of memory burden, since the material intervening between the parts of the complex word may be very long. Hence for large stretches of the sentence, no fully structured analysis would be available (or multiple analyses would be necessary), except perhaps in those cases where the first constituent of the discontinuous word happened accidentally to have the same syntactic category and imposed identical syntactic restrictions to those of the entire discontinuous word itself. Given the nature of the task implicit in recognizing discontinuous words, it seems important to know whether recognition of such words is accomplished by a single processing system. If so, its task appears to be formidably complex. If on the other hand distinct lexical and syntactic subsystems cooperate in the processing of discontinuous words, what principles govern the coordination of the subsystems? Complex verbs in Dutch allow stressed prefixes to separate from the stem, as illustrated in (la) above and in (2b), where the complex verb “aanvallen” (“attack”) appears in its continuous (2a) versus its discontinuous (2b) form: (2)

a. De jongen “The boy (“The boy b. De jongen “The boy (“The boy

wil de andere spelers aanvallen. want+PRES the others players to attack.” wants to attack the other players.“) vie1 de andere spelers aan. STEM+PAST the other players PARTICLE.” attacked the other players.“)

In (2a), “aanvallen”

appears

as an infinitive,

with the constituents

of the word

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form of the sentence.

In (2b),

the verbal

stem “vallen/viel” moves to complementizer position, to satisfy the verb-second constraint of Dutch. The prefix “aan” remains in the verb phrase. Hence the two constituents of “aanvallen” are separated. If the verb stem (“fall”) is semantically interpreted when it first occurs, this interpretation will need revision later when the prefix is encountered. This separation of stem and prefix occurs only in some constructions,

for example

(2b) but not (2a).

Schreuder (1990) proposes a morphological integration model to account for the processing of prefixed verbs in Dutch. He suggests that, in addition to access representations found for ordinary (e.g., monomorphemic) words, morphological integration nodes also exist for some but not all polymorphemic words. These integration nodes are activated by access nodes for the constituents of a morphologically complex form like “aanvallen”. The activation of integration nodes persists longer than that of access nodes. However, once an integration node is fully activated, it inhibits the access representation nodes which feed it. Here and throughout the article we use the term “access node” in Schreuder’s sense where it is distinguished from a morphological integration node. Schreuder proposes that integration nodes exist for separable prefix verbs, such as “aanvallen”, but not for inseparable prefix verbs like “betonen” (“to show or manifest”), as illustrated in Figure 1. To our knowledge, Schreuder’s model has not been developed beyond the specifications summarized above. It was not Schreuder’s intent to develop a general model of morphological processes or a model of how words are processed in sentential contexts. Thus it is not entirely clear how the model should be extended to make predictions about phenomena beyond isolated complex verbs in Dutch. We will consider some natural extensions of the model below. Although one purpose of our study, like Schreuder’s, is to develop a principled, empirically motivated account of processing verb particle (prefixed verb) constructions, we will focus on processing prefixed verbs during sentence comprehension. We adopt his morphological integration (MI) model because it has the virtue of explaining how separated verb particle constructions are handled at all, and because it explains why complex verbs show distinct priming patterns depending on whether the prefix is separable or not (Schreuder, 1990, and references therein). In his experiments, preview of Separable

prefix

verb

Inseparable +

X (aanvallen) /\ X (aan)

‘x

t

(vallen)

Figure

1,

- -

Schrender’s

INTEGRATION NODES -ACCESSNODES (1990)

prefix verb

+

-

----f

morphological

x (betonen)

integration model

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223

the prefix or the stem significantly facilitated processing of separable prefix verbs, as indicated by naming time for words presented in isolation, but not inseparable prefix verbs,

which merely

monomorphemic Job, Sandstrom,

showed

words sharing and Schreuder

the visual priming

the same characters (1987). Schreuder

effects also present

for, say,

as the preview, as in Jarvella, also finds comparable priming

effects for separable prefix verbs with compositional meanings and for those with non-compositional meanings, as expected if morphological integration nodes exist for both. Below we report an experiment in Dutch designed to test the predictions of the MI model during normal sentence processing. After presenting the experiment, we will return to general questions concerning the MI model and why the human language processor may be configured in the particular way it is. Consider Dutch questions containing separable prefix verbs, such as those in (3), which has four versions. Two forms (3a,b) occur in the present tense. Two appear in the present perfect (3c,d): (3)

a. Wie bied je nu de dranken aan? (“aan-bieden” = “to offer”) “Who verb you now the drinks particle?” (verb+particle=“offer”) b. Aan wie bied je de dranken aan? “To whom verb you the drinks particle?” c. Wie heb je nu de dranken aangeboden? “Who have you now the drinks offered?” d. Aan wie heb je de dranken aangeboden? “To whom have you the drinks offered?”

The questioned constituent is either a noun phrase (3a,c), or a prepositional phrase headed by a preposition to the particle (prefix) of the complex verb. In (3a) the MI model predicts that an integration (“offer”) will be partially activated when the stem “bied”

“wie” (“aan”

(“who”), as in in (3)) identical

node for “aanbieden” (“bid”) is encountered

and then fully activated when “aan” is encountered. Thus the verb “aanbieden” will be recognized at the end of the sentence. This will not entail any reanalysis of assigned structure, assuming the syntactic representation in (4) is legitimate: (4) Wie [bied]

By

contrast,

j e nu de dranken

in

(3b)

the

[aan]?

occurrence

of “aan”

will

partially

activate

the

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When

the stem

“bied”

is encountered,

the

representation shown under (5a) should be formed, assuming the integration node for “aanbieden” is automatically activated whenever each of the constituent nodes has been fully activated independent of the syntactic legitimacy of the analysis. The correct syntactic analysis of (3a) is shown above (5a). Syntactically “aan” must be analyzed as a preposition taking “wie” as its object. The reason is because

the

verb

in Dutch

matrix

clauses

must

appear

in second

preceded by exactly one constituent (the PP in @a)). A sequence may not precede the (highest) verb - only items which may constituent may do so.

position,

of constituents form a single

,IP (= S)

P

V

\/ V (= aanbieden) b. [Aan]

wie [bied] je de dranken P

]aan]? P

‘\/ V (= aanbieden) As a consequence, restructuring of the representation shown under (5a) will be required at some point, as shown in (5b). If syntactic information requiring “aan” to be a preposition is consulted by the relevant processor before the complete verb analysis of “aan” plus “bied” is considered, then we should not observe any difficulty due to the potential morphological garden-path in forms like (3b). Thus,

Although it is irrelevant to the MI model, which does not specify the relative order of the constituents of an integration node, it is perhaps of interest to the reader that the particle may precede the stem, as in Schreuder’s (1990) example: “Dat aan te willen vallen lijkt mij gevaarlijk”, “Wanting to attack that seems dangerous to me”. (Literally: “That to to-want fall seems me dangerous”, where the verb “aan-vaIlen” means “attack”.)

L. Frazier

the

experiment

below

tests

both

the

et al. I Cognition

predictions

47 (199.?) 219-249

of the

MI

model

and

225

the

hypothesis that prior syntactic context does not influence the lexical/morphological hypotheses identified on the basis of bottom-up input. Of course, simply determining whether (3b) takes longer to process than (3a) would not by itself constitute a strong test on the MI model since (3b) might be complex

relative

independent

to (3a)

differences

for some between

independent (3a)

and

(3b),

reason. the

Hence, present

to control perfect

forms

for in

(3c,d) were included. The present perfect may add complexity to the processing of both questions (3a,b) since it involves a complex tense/aspect. However, it should also remove the incorrect analysis predicted to occur in processing the present tense prepositional phrase question (3b), since “aan” and “heb” do not form a complex verb and thus no incorrect integration node will be activated and result in an incorrect complex verb being postulated. Thus the MI model predicts an interaction between question form (noun phrase vs. prepositional phrase) and ‘tense’ (present vs. present perfect).

THE DUTCH

EXPERIMENT

In this experiment, grammatical questions containing separable prefix verbs of the four types exemplified in (3a,b,c,d) were presented to readers in a grammaticality judgment task.

Methods Materials

Twelve tetrads of sentences of the type exemplified in (3a,b,c,d) constituted the experimental material. The sentence forms necessarily differ in their syntactic structure, because the (a,c) forms involve a noun phrase (NP) extraction in a sentence lacking any prepositional phrase (PP), whereas the (b,d) forms involve a PP extraction. This is the reason why the relevant predictions concern the relation of the processing complexity of the critical (a) and (b) forms relative to the complexity of processing their present perfect counterparts which exhibit all of the syntactic differences between the (a) and (b) forms but eliminate the potential morphological garden-path of the (b) form. Since the prepositional (b,d) forms necessarily contained one word more than the NP (a,c) forms (namely the preposition), a short adverbial phrase (now, often) was added to the a,c forms to equate for sentence length measured in terms of number of words. All experimen-

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tal sentences appear in Appendix 1 along with a gloss. A translation for the simple verb plus preposition meaning is also given in the Appendix, even though this is not the ultimately sentences. For both sentence

correct

forms,

analysis

of the verb in any of the experimental

(3a) and (3b), the simple verb analysis but is no longer permissible sentence,

is permissible by the end.

at the beginning of the Typically this analysis becomes impossible or unlikely at least by the time the direct object is encountered, although the exact point of disambiguation (disconfirmation

of the

first

analysis)

differs

somewhat

across

sentences.

Crucially,

alongside the PP + simple verb analysis of sentences like (3b), there exists an NP + simple verb analysis of the sentences like (3a). Therefore, the number or type of temporarily permissible syntactic analyses of the sentence does not differ for the (a) versus (b) sentence forms. The complex verbs in the experimental sentences ranged from examples with clearly non-compositional meanings - “omslaan” (“to wrap”, literally to “hit-around”) - to examples with a fairly straightforward relation between the meaning of the whole and the meaning of its literally to “write-for”) or “aan-prijzen” parts - “voor-schrijven” (“to prescribe”, (“to recommend”, literally to “praise-to”). The sentences were divided into four lists in such a way that each list contained an equal number of each experimental form of a sentence, but no list contained more than one form of a single experimental sentence. They were presented along with 64 other one- and two-clause sentences and questions of varying types, and 38 ungrammatical sentences containing number agreement violations, extra or missing arguments or selection violations.

Subjects Sixty-four participated

students at the University of Nijmegen, all native in the experiment as volunteer paid subjects.

Dutch

speakers,

Procedure The sentences were presented visually on an Aphigraph display controlled by a PDP11/45 computer. Each sentence appeared one word at a time, each word being exposed for 300 ms, and appearing one line lower and beginning one character to the right of the preceding word. At the end of the sentence, the subject gave a grammaticality judgment by indicating as fast as possible whether the sentence was grammatical (“goed” /“good”) or not (“fout” /“error”) by pressing the appropriate response key.

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Results The

results - average

presented

latencies

1. The

in giving

the

grammaticality

judgment

- are

of variance gave the following results. The by subjects effect of sentence form (“aan wie” vs. “wie”) was not significant (Fl = 2.07; 1, 60 d.f, p > .05) nor by items (F2 = 1.35; 1, 11 d.f., p > .05), while the effect of tense, which is very clear in the table, was highly significant both in the

in Table

analysis

by subjects and by items (Fl = 24.32; 1, 60d.f., p < .OOl; F2 = of the two factors (Fl = 17.76; 1, 11 d.f., p < .OOl), as was the interaction

ANOVA

20.15,

1, 60d.f.,p<.OOl; F2=11.19; 1, lld.f.,p<.OOl). The perfect form of both sentence types was more complex than the simple present, as might be expected given that the perfect form is a compound form consisting of a present tense auxiliary and the perfect participle of the main verb. Recall that the crucial prediction concerns the difference between the present tense forms (a) and (b), relative to their present perfect forms (c) and (d). The difference between the perfect and the present form was very large for the “wie” sentence forms (226 ms), while it was small (39 ms) for the “aan wie” forms, despite the addition of an extra morpheme (auxiliary “have”) in the complex tense/aspect forms. We attribute this to the inflated response times for the present form of the “aan wie” sentences, where a garden-path was predicted to occur. The perfect form of the “aan wie” sentences, while presumably complex in terms of tense/aspect, also was predicted to facilitate these sentences by eliminating the incorrect analysis of the simple present tense forms. And this is exactly what the data suggest happened. In the present perfect where no morpholgical garden-path is present, the “aan wie” form is processed faster than the “wie” form. This suggests that it may be helpful to perceivers to have advanced knowledge of the (likely) thematic role of the questioned constituent. The thematic role of the question word can be inferred immediately only when the question word “wie” (“who”) is introduced by a preposition. If this is the correct explanation for why “aan wie” forms are processed more quickly than the “wie” forms in the present perfect, then the observed difficulty of the “aan wie” forms in the present tense is really larger than it appears to be since the complexity introduced by the hypothesized morphologi-

Table

1.

Average response time in the Dutch experiment (ms)

NP (Wie) PP (Aan wie)

Simple tense (present)

Complex tense/aspect (present perfect)

542 624 -82

768 663 10.5

Difference

226 39

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cal misanalysis must offset the otherwise expected advantage of the “aan forms. This observation emphasizes again that the important predictions findings directly

of our study concern not the complexity to the (a) form, but instead this difference

wie” and

of the (b) form compared relative to an appropriate

control, namely, the present perfect counterpart of each sentence form. Viewed this way, there is a sizeable morphological garden-path effect (187 ms) in the “aan wie” forms, not the smaller (82 ms) effect which appears when the “aan wie” and “wie”

present

Sentence

tense

completion

forms

are compared

against

each other

directly.

and rating experiments

Before accepting the existence of a morphological garden-path in sentences like (3b), we must consider the possibility that the (b) sentence forms have some other property which could account for their processing complexity. Perhaps the incorrect simple verb analysis of the sentence is initially more plausible in the (b) forms than in the (a) forms, or it might remain viable longer in the (b) forms than in the corresponding (a) forms. If so, the (b) forms might be difficult to comprehend for one of these reasons alone. To assess these possibilities, two additional studies were conducted.

EXPERIMENT

A: SENTENCE

COMPLETION

Method Initial fragments of the (a) and (b) sentence forms were presented to subjects to assess the relative plausibility of the simple verb versus complex verb completions as indicated by subjects’ continuations. Subjects were asked to continue these sentence fragments to form a complete question. They had to complete the fragment with the first continuation that came to mind. The fragments consisted of the experimental questions up to and including the post-verbal subject (“Wie bied je _?” “Aan wie bied je _?“). Two lists were constructed so that each list contained six sentence fragments of the (a) form (noun phrase question) and six sentence fragments of the (b) form (prepositional phrase question). No list contained more than a single form of a single experimental question. Each sentence fragment was presented on a separate page. Order of presentation of the 12 sentence fragments was random. The experimental sentence fragments were preceded by two practice fragments. Twenty-two native Dutch speakers participated in the experiment. They participated voluntarily and were tested in groups of one or two persons. The experiment took about 5 min.

L. Frazier el al. I Cognition47 (1993) 219-249 Table

2.

229

Proportions of sentence continuations with simple or complex verbs (all particles or only the particles used in experimental sentences) Initial fragment

Verb ((a) form) Preposition + verb

Verb (continuation) Simple

Complex (all particles)

Complex (exp. particles)

,576 .500

.424 .SOo

,402

,288

((b) form)

Results when no particle was added to the Continuations were classified as “simple” sentence fragment. Continuations were classified as “complex” when a particle was added and the verb in the sentence was complex. Proportions of complex and simple continuations are presented in Table 2. Continuations for (a) and (b) questions are arranged in Appendix 2. In order to test the difference between the proportions of simple and complex z-scores were calculated for incontinuations of the (a) and (b) questions, dependent proportions (the observed difference between the proportions was divided by the estimate of the standard error of the obtained difference). The value of z for the proportions of the complex continuations (all particles) in the (a) and (b) sentences is 1.25. This value is not significant in a two-tailed test. The value of z for the proportions of complex continuations with only the particular particles used in the experimental sentences is 1.93. This value is also not significant in a two-tailed test. In short, there is no evidence that the simple verb analysis is more plausible in the (b) sentence forms than in the (a) forms.

EXPERIMENT B: ACCEPTIBILITY OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ON THE SIMPLE VERB ANALYSIS

SENTENCES

Method Subjects were given the full (a) and (b) questions. They were asked to indicate at which word a question becomes unacceptable on the simple verb analysis. Each trial started with a simple verb and was followed by a sentence containing this simple verb. Subjects were asked to read this sentence carefully and to keep in mind the meaning of the verb in that sentence. Beneath the first sentence, a full (a) or (b) experimental question containing the corresponding complex verb was presented. Subjects were instructed to cover the second sentence with a piece of cardboard before reading it. They had to

230

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move the cardboard

in such a way that they could read the question

only word by

word. Their task was to underline the first word where they probably could not continue the sentence on the simple verb analysis (classified as “probably unacceptable”) and to put a circle around the word where they were absolutely sure the question could not be continued on the simple verb analysis (classified as “certainly word

unacceptable”).

Subjects

were allowed

to underline

and circle the same

in a sentence.

Two lists of items were constructed. Each list contained six questions of the (a) form (noun phrase question) and six questions of the (b) form (prepositional phrase question). No list contained more than a single form of a single experimental question. Each trial was presented on a separate page. Order of presentation was random. The 12 experimental trials were preceded by three practice trials. Twenty-two native speakers of Dutch participated in the experiment. They were paid for their participation and tested in groups of one or two persons. The experiment took about 15 min.

Results Each word in a sentence was scored for the number of subjects who had classified it as probably unacceptable or certainly unacceptable. Frequency distributions of all (a) and (b) sentences are presented in Appendix 3. It should be noted that the point at which a sentence becomes probably or certainly unacceptable differs widely, as noted earlier in our description of the materials. This must be due to idiosyncratic lexical and semantic factors since all (a) and (b) sentences had the same syntactic structure. on the simple verb analysis was Acceptability of the (a) and (b) sentences evaluated by the assignment of different weights to the frequency scores obtained for the particles. Weighted scores were obtained by assigning a weight of 1 to the number of subjects who had classified a particle as probably unacceptable (frequency x 1) and a weight of 2 to the number of subjects who had classified a particle as certainly unacceptable (frequency X 2). A t-test for independent samples was peformed on the weighted scores for the particles in the (a) and (b) sentences which were classified as probably unacceptable (t(22) = -1.0233, p > .lO). Means of the weighted scores of the particles in the (a) and (b) sentences are respectively 1.500 (s.d. = 2.067) and 2.417 (s.d. = 2.314). A t-test was also performed on the weighted scores for the particles in the (a) and (b) sentences which were classified as certainly unacceptable (t(22) = -0.0854, p > .lO). Means of the weighted scores of the particles in the (a) and (b) sentences are respectively 8.667 (s.d. = 3.229) and 8.833 (s.d. = 5.937). For each sentence, weighted scores for both classifications (probably unacceptable and certainly unacceptable) were added up. Again differences between (a)

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231

and (b) sentences were not significant (t(22) = -0.6022, p > .lO). Mean scores for are respectively 10.167 (s.d. = 4.914) and particles in the (a) and (b) sentences 11.917 (s.d. = 8.785). In sum, there is no evidence that the simple verb analysis persists longer in the (b) sentences than in the (a) sentences.

THE

ENGLISH

We turn

EXPERIMENT

now to an experiment

on English.

An anonymous

reviewer

suggested

to

us that we might test English sentences to ensure that the difficulty of the PP extraction sentences observed in Dutch disappears in English sentences where no potential morphological garden-path exists. In English, PP extraction may in general be more complex than NP extraction. Thus the real test is whether the complexity of PP extractions in English is equally great, relative to their NP extraction controls, regardless of tense/aspect. In English, we expect a complex tense/aspect to increase complexity in both the NP and PP extraction sentences, since in English the appearance of no increase in the complexity of the present perfect PP forms cannot be attributed to the inflated complexity of their simple tense counterparts (induced by the hypothesized morphological garden-path in the Dutch simple tense PP extractions). With the help of Chuck Clifton and Catherine Walther, we conducted a visual (“got it”) comprehension study on the English counterparts to the Dutch sentences.

Methods Materials Twelve tetrads of English questions were tested: NP (6a,c) versus PP (6b,d) extractions in either a simple (past) tense (6a,b) or a complex (present perfect) tense/aspect (6c,d), as illustrated below in (6).2 All experimental sentences are presented (6)

a. b. c. d.

in Appendix

4:

Who did you offer the drinks to? To whom did you offer the drinks? Who have you offered the drinks to? To whom have you offered the drinks?

*The tenses of English and Dutch are not used in entirely comparable circumstances. Our impression is that the simple past tense is relatively rare in colloquial spoken Dutch. Therefore we used the present as the simple tense in the Dutch study. In English, the past tense is not rare in the colloquial language so we used this as the simple tense. In English questions, auxiliary “do” must be present. So morphologically a simple tense in English (present or past) is at least in some superficial sense morphologically closer to the complex forms, such as the present perfect form used in the Dutch and English experiments, where auxiliary “have” occurs together with the perfect participle form of the stem.

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232

Subjects Forty-eight undergraduate students at the Amherst, participated in the study. Twelve tested were

discarded

because

of their erratic

University of Massachusetts, at the very end of the semester

and highly variable

data.

Procedure The experimental sentences were counterbalanced across lists. The sentences of each list were randomized and presented together with 148 distractor sentences of various syntactic forms. The sentences were presented word by word, for 200 ms per word plus 12 ms per letter in the word. Each subject was instructed to press a button labeled “get it” as soon as he or she understood a sentence; a button labeled “didn’t get it” was provided for trials where feel that the sentence could be understood correctly.

the subject

did not

Results The results of the experiment are presented in Table 3. As in Dutch, the present perfect forms took longer than their simple tense counterparts. Also, PP extractions tended to take longer to comprehend than their NP extraction counterparts for both the simple tense and the complex tense forms. Only the effect of tense was significant and only in the subject analysis, Fl( 1, 35) = 5.70, p < .03; F2( 1, 11) = 2.88, p > .lO. The effect of sentence type was non-significant, even in the simple tense questions, as was the interaction of tense and sentence type. Before returning to the main argument we note that in English the complexity effect associated with a complex tense is smaller than what we observed in Dutch. This is not surprising given that in the Dutch perfect an additional morpheme, the auxiliary “have”, is added to the morphemes already present in the simple tense sentences, whereas in English the morpheme “have” replaces the auxiliary “do” which must be present in simple tense questions in English. Thus we do not find the smaller complexity increase in the English perfect forms very surprising.

Table

3.

Average

response time in the English experiment

NP (Who) PP (To whom)

(ms)

Simple tense (preterite)

Complex tense/aspect (present perfect)

769 848 -79

867 8’)7 - 30

98 49

L. Frazier et al. I Cognition 47 (1993)

Finding

a large

complexity

increase

extractions

relative

to the present

in the

tense

form

perfect

form

219-249

of the

is not surprising,

Dutch

given

that

233

NP the

tense/aspect is a complex one and given the addition of an extra morpheme. What is surprising is the lack of an increase in the complexity of the Dutch perfect form of the PP extraction. It is this latter observation which we explain by positing that latencies for the PP extraction in the simple tense are inflated by a morphological garden-path in Dutch - a garden-path which is eliminated by the presence extraction exists,

of “have” in the type x tense/aspect

strengthens

GENERAL

perfect form. The in English, where

our interpretation

of the Dutch

absence of an interaction of no morphological garden-path findings.

DISCUSSION

The results of the experiments support the MI model: activation of the constituents of an integration node lead to activation of that node, correctly in (3a) and incorrectly in (3b). The difficulty of (3b) cannot be attributed to differences in how long the simple verb analysis persists in (3b) given the completion and rating study results, nor can it be attributed to any factor shared by the Dutch questions and their English counterparts. The findings thus support the predictions of the MI mode1 for recognizing discontinuous words during sentence processing. The predictions of the MI model are also confirmed by the existence of a garden-path in Dutch sentences like (7a), pointed out to us by Haverkort (persona1 communication). In (7a), the first “aan” is consciously interpreted by perceivers as the stranded particle of the verb “aanbieden”. When the second “aan” arrives, the first analysis must be revised to an analysis where the first “aan” is taken to be a post-position pronominal (non-locative) interpretation of people: (7)

with “waar’ of “waar”,

as its object, permitting the where it may refer to a group

a. Waar bied je de dranken aan aan? (“Waaraan” = “to where/what group”) “Where verb you the drinks to particle. 7” (verb+particle=“aanbieden”, “to offer”) (To whom (=group of people) did you offer the drinks?) b. Waar bied je de dranken aan? “Where verb you the drinks particle?” (Where did you offer the drinks?)

The second “aan” in (7a) may then be interpreted as the stranded particle of the (obligatorily ‘sentence final) verb “aanbieden”. Native Dutch speakers seem quite clear about their intuitive judgments of the sentences in (7). Sentence (7a) is clearly problematic whereas (7b) is not. Apparently (7a) is judged to be an acceptable Dutch sentence only after some thought and, not surprisingly given the

234

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evidence

et al.

presented

i Cognition

here

(and

47 (1993)

perhaps

219-249

other

reasons

such

as the

“aan

aan”

sequence itself), even then it is considered to be awkward stylistically. The results of the experiment, along with the intuitive support for the MI model provided by the above intuitions, existence of distinct lexical and syntactic

are of interest because processing subsystems,

they support the each sensitive to

the information state within its own subsystem. If distinct processing subsystems were not postulated, then the analysis of “aan” as a constituent of “aanbieden” in (3b) would entail

that a single lexical-syntactic

system ignored

its own information

state in assigning an analysis to the particle “aan”. The sentence-initial preposition “aan” in (3b) must be syntactically analyzed as a preposition taking the noun phrase “wie” (who) as its object. This is required because the material preceding a verb in second position in Dutch must be analyzed as a single constituent in order for the sentence to be grammatical. This is only possible if “aan” is analyzed as a preposition taking “wie” as its object. Hence, assuming that syntactic analysis of the sentence proceeds as the words of the sentence are encountered, the analysis of “aan” as a preposition will have been syntactically disambiguated before the point at which a morphological analysis of “aan” and “bied” as a complex verb becomes an issue, that is, at the point when “bied” is encountered in the input. We assume that a linguistic processing subsystem does not make decisions at odds with its own information state including the analysis already assigned to an input, plus inferences derived from its own information resources (see discussion of the no bookkeeping constraint in Frazier, 1990b). Given this assumption, the results support the existence of two subsystems: one, the syntactic processor, able to draw syntactic implications about the analysis of an input; and the other, a lexical or morphological processor, unable to appreciate the global syntactic implications of its local morphological or lexical analysis. The syntactic processor may recognize that the sentence-initial “aan” cannot be analyzed as a particle in the experimental sentences, but this does not prevent the lexical/morphological processor from identifying this analysis which is, after all, lexically permissible. Under these assumptions, there is simply no need to assume that one monolithic system exists and makes morphological decisions which are both inconsistent with a correct syntactic decision it has already made and is at odds with the very information that gave rise to the correct syntactic decision in the first place. A “blind” lexical/morphological system will identify complex words and postulate lexical analyses that will later prove to be syntactically untenable. For example, perhaps a preposition outside a syntactic island will be related to a verb stem inside the island, leading to recognition of a lexically permissible complex verb that must be rejected on syntactic grounds, for example, the counterpart to recognizing “throw-up” in “Up the man who threw his dinner went”. This sort of unconcious morphological garden-path is predicted to occur even when prior syntactic disambiguation could in principle prevent the incorrect lexical analysis. Each subsystem, of course, must have access to the relevant output from

L. Frazier et al. I Cognition

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235

related subsystems, that is, output couched in a representational vocabulary which has consequences for the subsystem in question, given its own restricted vocabulary

and

knowledge

resources.

The

lexical/morphological

processor

may

be

assumed to deliver all of its successful analyses to the syntactic processor, presumably in whatever order they become available. We might view this as adding,

below

each terminal

symbol

of the phrase

structure

representation,

the

first and alternative lexical analyses that have been identified by the lexical/ morphological processor. In the case of lexical ambiguity involving the major syntactic category features (+N, ?V), we assume that the processor delays attachment of the new item until the syntactic category has been determined (see Frazier & Rayner, 1987, for supporting evidence). Here we assume that particles like “aan” bear prepositional features whether they are analyzed as prepositions or separable prefixes. In other words, what separates the two analyses of “aan” is not the categorial specification of the items but rather it concerns whether “aan” is the head of a word. When it is (when it occurs as a preposition, not when it occurs within a complex verb), it may project features and structure within the syntax since it may serve as the head (X0) of a syntactic phrase (Xmax). Ordinarily, the syntactic processor may or may not need to consult any but the first lexical analysis, depending on the success of the initial analysis of the input. But, in the case of complex word analyses identified by the lexical/morphological system, presumably the syntactic processor has no choice but to consider the complex word analysis, since it directly entails a claim about the hierarchical structure of the sentence which is distinct from the relations in the current syntactic analysis. This assumes that the complex word analysis (like other lexical analyses) is attached to the terminal symbol(s) representing the item for which it is an analysis. In other words, lexical hypotheses are hypotheses about the analysis of some particular portion(s) of the input, not “floating” hypotheses that a word occurred just anywhere in the sentence. This is illustrated in (8a) and (8b). In (8b), the complex verb analysis is listed as the second analysis on the assumption that the stem node is activated regardless of whether it occurs alone or in a complex verb, and thus the stem always has a higher cluster frequency than the complex verb analysis: ..

(8) a. The [bank]. I (

I Noun-money

Noun-river b. [Aan] wie [bied] I ’ \ P-goal’,

I I ) V-bid

\I V-offer

.

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Given an ambiguity about the meaning of a word, the syntactic processor may simply ignore all but the first-listed analysis, for example, all but the “money” analysis of “bank” in (Sa). Of course, if some analysis lower on the list is considered at some point in the processing of the sentence, it might well have implications for the syntactic analysis of the sentence. But, until the alternative to the first-listed

analysis

is considered,

the syntactic

processor

need

not attend

to

the alternative, since it has added no new syntactic claim about the constituent structure of the current analysis. Not so in (8b), where the complex verb analysis appears

as an alternative

lexical

analysis

of the input.

Here,

new

dominance

nodes have been added to the phrase marker. It is the task of the syntactic processor to draw implications from this potential analysis of “aan” and “bied”, to determine whether the hierarchical claim imposed by the dominance links in (Sb) should be accepted or erased. Following the minimal revisions principle (Frazier, 1990a), we assume the syntactic processor will accept the complex verb analysis if it involves only an addition of structure to the already assigned syntactic structure (no revision) or if accepting it involves fewer revisions than available alternative analyses. Unlike the lexical/morphological processor which may consider multiple analyses at once, we assume the syntactic processor takes the first available analysis, and tries analyses with fewer revisions before analyses entailing more revisions, following essentially a least-effort principle at each step of the analysis. Of course, as in the case of simple lexical ambiguities, the semantic interpretation of the first analysis may not be sensible. This might force the processor to abandon the structurally preferred analysis of the input. In general, much work remains to be done before we will truly understand the interplay of form and meaning during the revision of a structurally preferred analysis. However, on the view advocated here, no special principles need to be added to the theory of the human sentence-processing mechanism to govern the interaction between the lexical/morphological and the syntactic subsystems. The interplay of these two systems with each other falls out automatically without any stipulation. In general, restructuring of a sentence seems to be easier when fewer revisions of structure and/or meaning are required than when more substantial changes are necessitated, as claimed by the minimal revisions principle. This suggests that adopting a clearly non-compositional complex verb as part of a revised analysis of a sentence may be computationally more costly than revising a structure to include a more nearly compositional complex verb. Although a revision would be required in either case, the revision might take longer for the non-compositional verb because the meaning originally assigned to the verb and its arguments might have to be completely revamped. Although we would not be surprised if this turns out to be the case, our own study was not designed to explore

this issue.

L. Frazier et al. I Cognition 47 (1993) 219-249

237

The MI model We turn now to discussion of the MI model and the general principles underlying the postulated organization of the lexical/morphological system. Two questions must be addressed: (i) in the general case, when does an MI node exist, and why? (ii) why do MI nodes have the properties they do? (a) their activation must persist discontinuous nodes.

longer than that of other nodes (to account for recognition of a complex verb), and (b) unlike other nodes, they inhibit their input

We tentatively

propose

that (i) and (iia) receive

a common

answer,

and we

question the validity of the property in (iib), suggesting instead that only the existence and decay properties of MI nodes need to be specified and explained. In general, how do lexical (access node) representations get “laid down” and organized in the human memory system ? Following DiSciullo and Williams (1987) we will assume that lexical representations are just the frequently encountered forms of the language. If an item occurs on its own in speech, there will be a corresponding access node; if it is composed of items already present with their own access representation, then the item will be represented by an MI node fed by the access nodes of its constituents. Hence, complex forms consisting of potential words will have an MI node. Why does the activation of MI nodes persist longer than that of access nodes? Perhaps this follows simply from the fact that they represent items composed of already analyzed material. It is independently known that structured material persists longer in human memory than unstructured material. For example, in RSVP more words are remembered in syntactically less complex sentences than in more complex sentences (Forster, 1970), presumably because they may be incorporated into a syntactic-level analysis. Being already analyzed within a linguistic/conceptual vocabulary (vs. being represented only as a sensory trace) presumably increases the activation duration of a representation by itself. When this already analyzed item is itself structured together with another already analyzed element to form a coherent constituent, presumably activation persists still longer. We think these considerations alone might explain why the activation of MI nodes persists longer than that of access nodes. An alternative to the above view is the view that the lexical system is designed to permit (all and only) syntactically legitimate material to intervene between the constituents of a word. This alternative view is not implausible. Indeed, in the case of auditory word recognition, recent evidence suggests that both temporal and structural factors influence the effect of subsequent context on word recognition (Connine, Blasko, & Hall, 1991). We will not explore this possibility here, however, because it conflicts with our finding of independence between the lexical and syntactic subsystems - a position which deserves to be articulated and explored since it makes the strongest claims about the possible (non)-interaction between subsystems.

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Our general hypothesis about how the lexical/morphological system is organized may be cast in terms of the principles in (9)-( 11). Notice that the principles in (9)-( 11) all have independent motivation. The free form principle (9) is motivated

by much of the work analyzed

in the framework

of the satellite

model

(Lukatela, Kostic, Feldman, & Turvey, 1983), as well as the work of Taft (1990). The hierarchical structure principle (10) could perhaps be motivated by the work on idioms (Swinney & Cutler, 1979), which suggests that idiomatic analyses of an input

are processed

at the same time as compositional

analyses,

not at some later

stage. Much of the early psycholinguistic work on memory for linguistic supports (ll), such as the finding by Epstein (1961) that grammatically nonsense words are easier to remember than uninflected ones:

material inflected

Free form principle: free linguistic forms, those which may stand alone, have a corresponding access representation in the mental lexicon, unless they satisfy (10) .3 (10) Hierarchical structure principle: commonly occurring forms consisting of constituents with their own access representation have a corresponding MI node. (11) Memory principle: items consisting of already analyzed constituents persist longer in human memory than items formed of unstructured or less structured material, such as items structured at fewer levels of analysis, for example, the phonological but not the lexical level. (9)

We might assume that constituents of a larger representation (e.g., the current syntactic representation) continue to be salient so long as they are connected to the representation currently being constructed. Must anything beyond (9)-(11) be said about the organization of the lexical/ However, from the principles in (9)-( 11) morphological system? Undoubtedly.4-6 we may already derive the MI model’s stipulation that complex verbs with separable prefixes do have corresponding MI nodes, regardless of whether they are compositional in meaning, whereas inseparable prefix verbs do not. Further, these principles make predictions about a wide class of structures beyond those

%ee Taft (1990) for evidence that differences exist in the lexical processing of items which may stand alone versus those which may not, even within the closed class vocabulary. The free form principle presupposes that the ability of an item to bear stress is part of its lexical representation. But this assumption is independently required, given that in simple words too minimal pairs exist which are differentiated only by the obligatory lack of stress on one of their constituents. The degree of prominence that an item actually receives in context may, of course, be affected by its position in a sentence. But this in principle is no different from other features, such as lexically specified voicing. “We do not wish to imply that the access representations may not themselves be organized, for example, in the manner claimed by the satellite model (Lukatela et al., 1983) or that the representations attached to access nodes may not have internal structure.

L. Frazier et al. I Cognition 47 (1993) 219-249

handled

by the original

MI model,

such as idioms,

compounds,

239

or verb particle

constructions in English. The above principles, unlike the original MI model, that MI nodes, once activated, inhibit the access nodes

do not specify or entail that feed them. But this

assumption

seems

about

the inhibition

properties

of MI nodes

both problematic

and unnecessary. It is problematic because MI nodes would always inhibit the compositional analysis of an input in cases of ambiguity such as the fully ambiguous (12a) or the temporarily ambiguous (12b). This prediction is disconfirmed

by the intuitive

evidence

that the compositional

analysis

of sentences

like

those in (12) is available without suffering a parsing breakdown, possibly even in (12a) which remains fully ambiguous. MI nodes would also inhibit the compositional analysis of idioms. This prediction runs counter to the evidence on idiom processing (Swinney & Cutler, 1979): (12)

a. When I arrived at the construction site, the carpenter his work. b. John threw the pizza up the stairs.

called me up to see

The reason why MI nodes were stipulated to inhibit the access nodes connected to them was to explain why, when presented in isolation in a naming task, the complex verb analysis was computed for separable prefix verbs like “aanbieden”. But no special stipulation about MI nodes is required in order to account for this. In general, the language processor exhibits a preference to interpret a linguistic 5We suspect the principles in (A) and (B) will eventually need to be added to the MI model to refine the basic organization of the lexicon established by principles (9) and (10). A. Morphological principle: items which form a morphological class with items represented at one level may receive a representation at that level. B. Syntactic principle: a bound form has a corresponding access representation if it always occurs only with a phrasal constituent, that is, with X”““. The motivation for principle A is simply the prevalent effect of systematicity in natural language the pressure for elements to behave like other elements of their class. Thus, if most members of some morphological class do receive a node at either the access or integration level by virtue of satisfying principle (9) or (lo), it would be surprising if comparable representation were denied to an upstanding member of the same morphological class (construed narrowly to exclude classes subsuming all items of a category at each level). For example, an exceptional compound formed of a bound stem and a free form might nevertheless qualify for an MI node, presumably entailing the existence of an access representation for the bound form, due to pressure from the treatment of other compounds. The syntactic principle (B) is likely to be needed in particular for establishing an access representation for those closed class items which may not occur as free forms. ‘It is an interesting question whether an MI node may have input from an access representation and a node specified only for syntactic category, not for a particular lexical item. This sort of “constrained variable’, a node specified only for syntactic class, might allow the lexical processor to recognize a broader class of items, such as Dutch verb-raising examples, or perhaps even productive cases of verb plus preposition reanalysis in a language like English (see Frazier & Clifton, under revision). The use of this type of underspecified node might also suggest interesting possibilities for the representation of inflection - a topic which takes us beyond the scope of the present paper.

240

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input as corresponding to a complete fragment rather than one missing an obligatory constituent (see Gorrell, 1990, for example). One might talk about this in terms of the complete fragment inhibiting the incomplete one, but we find such talk

potentially

analyses Gorrell

misleading.

It suggests

believed to be stored in precomputed Whether it is necessary to stipulate remains

that

mental

representations

of both

are already available to inhibit each other, whereas the cases studied by (1990) involved typical phrase-level syntactic structures not normally

unclear.

It may

be

form. that MI nodes inhibit

sufficient

to invoke

the

their input general

nodes thus

preference

for

complete or more highly structured analyses over less complete or less structured ones to account for the available data. To settle this issue securely, it would be necessary to map out the time course of the activiation/decay pattern of the second constituent of the discontinuous word in various contexts with the word’s first constituent present or absent. This could determine if the simple verb stem is deactivated earlier under circumstances where a potential prefix is present than under circumstances where it has not yet been encountered (see also discussion in Zwitserlood, 1990). To summarize, during sentence processing the availability to the syntactic processor of the complex verb analysis will be guaranteed, even in cases where its lexical/morphological identification lags behind that of the simple verb plus preposition analysis. This is because the complex verb analysis inherently makes a claim about hierarchical structure and thus it presumably cannot be ignored by the syntactic processor (or maintained merely as a back-up alternative possibly to be considered later), as discussed above. To assume that MI nodes inhibit their input access nodes is only to complicate the account of the morphological syntactic interface. Further, this stipulation is unnecessary to account for the complex verb preference for separable prefix verbs in isolation or the availability of complex word analyses during sentence processing. Thus, the current evidence does not seem to demand the conclusion that MI nodes inhibit their input nodes.

Conclusions We have presented evidence supporting the predictions of the MI model during sentence processing and have made some suggestions concerning how the model can be extended to cover a wider range of constructions and to cover constructions in languages other than Dutch. The results argue for the existence of distinct lexical/morphological and syntactic subsystems, each behaving as a coherent system, using only its own knowledge resources and responding to those tasks with implications within its own subsystem, for example, the identification of hierarchical structure in the case of the syntactic subsystem. No special principles

L. Frazier et al. I Cognition 47 (1993)

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needed

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241

to account

for the interplay Their interaction _ - of these subsystems. automatically falls out of the characterization of each subsystem as responding to the information and tasks relevant to its own knowledge resources.

References Booij,

G. (1990). The boundary between morphology and syntax: Separable complex verbs in Dutch. In A. Jongman & A. Lahiri (Eds.), Yearbook of morphology (Vol. 3. pp. 45-64). Dordrecht: Foris Publications. Connine. C., Blasko, D.G., & Hall. M. (1991). Effects of subsequent context iii auditory word recognition: Temporal and linguistic constraints. Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 234-250. DiSciullo. A.M., & Williams, E. (1987). On the definition of word. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Emmorey, K. (1989). Auditory morphological priming in the lexicon. Language and Cognitive Processes, 4, 73-92. Epstein, W. (1961). The influence of syntactical structure on learning. American Journal of f’sychology, 74, 80-85. Forster, K.1. (1970). Visual perception of rapidly presented word sequences of varying complexity. Perception and Psychophysics, 8. 215-221. Frazier. L. (1990a). Identifying structure under X”. In A. Jongman & A. Lahiri (Eds.), Yearbook of morphology (Vol. 3, pp. 1-19). Dordrecht: Foris Publication. Frazier, L. (1990b). Exploring the architecture of the language processor. In G. Altmann (Ed.), Cognitive models of speech processing: Psycholinguistic and computational perspectives (pp. 409-433). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Frazier. L.. & Clifton, C. (under revision). Complex predicates and syntactic identification of lexical structure. Frazier, L., & Rayner, K. (1987). Resolution of syntactic category ambiguities: Eye movements in parsing lexically ambiguous sentences. Journal of Memory and Language, 26, 505-526. Gorrell. P. (1990). Modularity in the grammar and processor. Paper presented at Psycholinguistic Symposium, University of Connecticut, Storrs. Jarvella, R.J.. Job. R., Sandstrom, G., & Schreuder, R. (1987). Morphological constraints on word recognition. In A. Allport, D. MacKay, W. Prinz, & E. Scheerer (Eds.). Language Perception and Production. London: Academic Press. Lukatela, G., Kostic, A., Feldman, L.B., & Turvey. M.T. (1983). Grammatical priming of inflected nouns. Memory and Cognition, 11. 59-63. Model, J. (1991). Incorporatie in het Nederlands. Gramma, 15. 57-88. Schreuder. R. (1990). Lexical processing of verbs with separable particles. In A. Jongman & A. Lahiri (Eds.), Yearbook of morphology (Vol. 3. pp. 65-79). Dordrecht: Foris Publications. Stanners, R., Neiser, J., Hernon. W., & Hall, R. (1979). Memory representation for morphologically related words. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 18, 399-412. Swinney, D., & Cutler, A. (1979). The access and processing of idiomatic expressions. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. 18. 523-534. Taft, M. (1979). Recognition of affixed words and the word frequency effect. Memory and Cognition, 7, 263-272. Taft, M. (1990). Lexical processing of functionally constrained words. Journal of Memory and Language, 29, 245-258. Taft, M., & Forster, K. (1975). Lexical storage and retrieval of prefixed words. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 14, 638-647. Tyler, L.K., & Marslen-Wilson, W. (1986). The effect of context on the recognition of polymorphemic words. Journal of Memory and Language, 25, 741-752. Zwitserlood, P. (1990). Comments on the paper by Schreuder. In A. Jongman & A. Lahiri (Eds.), Yearbook of morphology (Vol. 3, pp. 81-86). Dordrecht: Foris Publications.

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Appendix

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1

All experimental items appear below in the same order described for example (3) in the text. An English gloss appears under each form of sentence (1) and under the (d) form of all other sentences. The first line of each example gives a gloss for the complex verb; the compositional meaning of the simple verb and preposition is presented in square brackets. The adverbs used to lengthen the (a) and (c) forms include “nu” (now), “vaak” (often), “soms” (sometimes), “nou” (now, rather)

and “buiten”

(outside).

(1) aanbieden “to offer” [aan “to”, bieden a. Wie bied je nu de dranten aan?

“bid”]

b. Aan wie bied je de dranken aan? “To whom verb + PRES you the drinks particle?” c. Wie heb je nu de dranken aangeboden? “Who have you now the drinks offered?” d. Aan wie heb je de dranken aangeboden? “To whom have you the drinks offered?” (2) aanbevelen “to recommend” [aan “to”, bevelen a. Wie beveel je nu deze baan aan? b. Aan wie beveel je deze baan aan? c. Wie heb je nu deze baan aanbevolen? d. Aan wie heb je deze baan aanbevolen? “To whom have you this job recommended?”

“command”]

(3) voorschrijven “to prescribe” [voor “for”, schrijven a. Wie schrijf je vaak medicijnen voor? b. Voor wie schrijf je medicijnen voor? c. Wie heb je vaak medicijnen voorgeschreven? d. Voor wie heb je medicijnen voorgeschreven? “For/to whom have you medicines (drugs) (4) aanprijzen “to recommend” [aan “to”, prijzen a. Wie prijs je nou deze auto aan? b. Aan wie prijs je deze auto aan? c. Wie heb je nou deze auto aangeprezen? d. Aan wie heb je deze auto aangeprezen? “To whom have you this car recommended?” (5)

aanwijzen “to point out” [aan “to”, a. Wie wijs je vaak het huis aan?

wijzen

“write”]

prescribed?” “praise”]

“point”]

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b. Aan wie wijs je het huis aan? c. Wie heb je vaak het huis aangewezen? d. Aan wie heb je het huis aangewezen? “To whom have you the house pointed-out?” (6) omslaan

“to wrap”

a. Wie sla je buiten

[om “around”, een deken

slaan

“hit”]

om?

b. Om wie sla je een deken om? c. Wie heb je buiten een deken omgeslagen? d. Om wie heb je een deken omgeslagen? “Around who have you a blanket wrapped?” (7) voorlezen a. Wie b. Voor c. Wie d. Voor “For

“to read (out loud)” [voor “for”, lees je soms het verhaal voor? wie lees je het verhaal voor? heb je soms het verhaal voorgelezen? wie heb je het verhaal voorgelezen? whom have you the story read?”

(8)

“to prove” [aan “to”, tonen “show”] toon je soms een vergissing aan? wie toon je een vergissing aan? heb je soms een vergissing aangetoond? wie heb je een vergissing aangetoond? whom have you a mistake shown?”

aantonen a. Wie b. Aan c. Wie d. Aan “To

(9) aanreiken a. Wie b. Aan c. Wie d. Aan

lezen

“read”]

“to hand” [aan “to”, reiken “reach”] reik je soms dit kopje aan? wie reik je dit kopje aan? heb je soms dit kopje aangereikt? wie heb je dit kopje aangereikt?

“To whom

have you this cup handed?”

“to pass, hand” [aan “to”, geven geef je vaak de suiker aan? wie geef je de suiker aan? heb je vaak de suiker aangegeven? wie heb je de suiker aangegeven? whom have you the sugar handed?”

(10)

aangeven a. Wie b. Aan c. Wie d. Aan “To

(11)

voordoen “to demonstrate” [voor “for”, a. Wie doet je weleens dit dansje voor?

“give”]

doen

“do”]

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219-249

voor?

c. Wie heb je weleens dit dansje voorgedaan? d. Voor wie heb je dit dansje voorgedaan? “For whom have you this little-dance demonstrated?” (12)

vijvullen

“to refill (or top off)”

[bij “by”

vullen

“fill”]

a. Wie vu1 je nu het glas bij? b. Bij wie vu1 je het glas bij? c. Wie heb je nu het glas bijgevuld? d. Bij wie heb je het glas bijgevuld? “With/for whom have you the glass refilled?”

Appendix

2

Continuations of the preposition + verb). ( prep.) + verb bieden aan + bieden bevelen aan + bevelen schrijven voor + schrijven prijzen aan + prijzen wijzen aan + wijzen slaan om + slaan

(a)

and

(b)

simple verb(S) or s c c c aan aan aan c c c c aan aan aan aan s c s s aan c c c s aan aan aan S

s c

s

s s

in c c aan aan c s aan c s aan s c in s s

sentence

fragments

(respectively

complex s c aan c c aan aan s c aan s c aan

verb (C) c c aan aan c c aan aan s c aan c s aan

+ particular particle c s c aan aan c c c aan aan aan c s s aan c s s aan

s

c

s

s

s

s

s

s

c

s c

terug s s s c

s c

s c

s c

s s

s c

oP s c

aan c aan s

aan c aan s

aan c c aan aan s s s s c af

verb

in c aan s

c c s aan aan s s s

c toe s

aan c c aan aan s c aan c s aan s s

s

s

s

s

s

aan c aan c aan c aan s

c c heenheenaf

aan c aan s s c dood c

and

L. Frazier et al. I Cognition 47 (1993)

c voorvoor

c c c c c voorvoorvoorvoorvoor

voor + lezen

s

s

s

s

c s voor

c c c voorvoorvoor

c c voor voor

tonen

s

s

s

s

s

s

s

s

s

s

c aan

aan + tonen reiken

s

s

s

s

s

s

s

s

c c s aan aan

s

s s

s c

s c

s c

s c

s

s

s

s c door c s voor

s s

s s

c uit s s

toe c uit s s

uit c aan s s

aan c uit s s

aan c aan s s

c na

s

c s aan

c aan

s

s

s

s

s

s

s

s

s

c voor

c aan c in

c aan c in

c bij c in

c in c in

c uit s

s

c in

c in

c in c in

c in c in

c aan c in

geven aan + geven

c uit s s

c uit s s

doen

s

s

voor + doen

s

s

vullen

c c aan aan c s in

bij + vullen

Appendix

c uit s s

Weighted

bied

je

nu

de

dranken

11501 0 0400 wie

2 0 11001 Wie

c

who classified a word as probably unacceptable (pu) and (cu), followed by the weighted scores of the particles in the in Experiment B.

Sentence

Aan

c

3

Number of subjects certainly unacceptable (a) and (b) sentences

Wie

s

245

c voor voor

lezen

aan + reiken

s

219-249

beveel

je

de

je

0 0 10 (1 missing value) 0 000

2 5

dranken

100 deze 4 146

2 10

Pu cu

7 14

Pu cu

4

Pu

12

cu

aan?

1 1 nu

Classification

aan?

1 2 bied

score

7 7 baan aan? 14

246

L. Frazier et al. I Cognition 47 (1993)

219-249

Weighted

Sentence Aan

wie

3 2

1 1

Wie 0 0

schrijf

je

0 0 wie

0 0 schrijf

Voor

beveel je 1014 102 vaak 0 0 je

deze

baan

aan? 1 3 voor?

2 medicijnen

6

0401 4300 lees je

10 2 verhaal

Pu cu

12

Pu cu

0

8 0

4 1

soms het voor? 1 08101 0 2 02500 2 Voor wie lees je het verhaal voor? 3 1 5 1000 (1 missing value) 1 7 0 2 100 Wie toon je soms een vergissing aan? 3 6 0 1 1 0 0 2 8 0 0 1 0 0 Aan wie toon je een vergissing aan? 5 3 10002 7 3 0 1000

Pu cu Pu cu

6

PU cu

1 10

Pu cu

1

PU

8

cu

0 10 0

2

Classification

6

1

10 5

medicijnen voor? 0 10 1 0 0 0 4 6 0 1 0 0 deze auto aan? Wie prijs je nou 13015 10 0 400 2 3 2 Aan wie prijs je deze auto aan? 82000 0 1 24001 13 het huis aan? Wie wijs je vaak 0 360 10 1 0 2 1 2 1 0 5 Aan wie wijs je het huis aan? 10 0 0 0 0 0 1 24 100 0 4 Wie sla je buiten een deken om? 0334 0 10 5 03 0 12 0 Om wie sla je een deken om? 5 0 Wie

score

vu cu

4

Pu cu

4

Pu cu

3

Pu

14

cu

3 16

Pu cu

5 14

Pu cu

L. Frazier

el al.

Sentence Wie

I Cognition

Weighed

reik

je

soms

1721 12.5111 Aan 9

wie reik 0100

2 Wie

5 geef

0 0 000104 Aan wie

je

dit

kopje

0

0

dit

kopje 10

200 je vaak

de

0 suiker

1

3

5

0

0

0

0

247

219-249

Classification

Pu cu

aan? 0

2 aan? 2

6 geef je de suiker aan? 6 112 1 6 001 4 je weleen dit dansje voor? 0 10 1 0 0 0

4: Materials

score

aan? 0

0 0 0 0 Wie doet 0 0 007211 Voor wie doe je dit dansje voor 3 10002 5 7 0 1000 3 Wie vu1 je nu het glas bij? 3010 0 2 5 0 2412 0 2 Bij wie vu1 je het glas bij? 3 0000 2 6 0 1 0 0 0 0 10

Appendix

47 (1993)

for English experiment

(1)

a. b. c. d.

Who did you offer the drinks to? To whom did you offer the drinks? Who have you offered the drinks to? To whom have you offered the drinks?

(2)

a. b. c. d.

Who did you recommend this job to? To whom did you recommend this job? Who have you recommended this job to? To whom have you recommended this job?

(3)

a. Who did you prescribe drugs for? b. For whom did you prescribe drugs?

4

Pu cu

2 12

Pu cu

6 12

Pu cu

0 0

Pu cu

3 14

Pu cu

0

4

Pu cu

6 20

Pu cu

24X

L. Frazier

et al. I Cognition

47 (lYY.?)

c. Who have you prescribed d. For whom (4)

219-249

drugs for?

have you prescribed

a. Who did you praise

drugs?

this car to?

b. To whom did you praise this car? c. Who have you praised this car to? d. To whom (5)

a. b. c. d.

have you praised

Who did you point out the To whom did you point out Who have you pointed out To whom have you pointed

this car? house to? the house? the house to? out the house?

(6) a. b. c. d.

Who did you wrap a blanket around? Around whom did you wrap a blanket? Who have you wrapped a blanket around? Around whom have you wrapped a blanket?

(7) a. b. c. d.

Who did you read the story for? For whom did you read the story? Who have you read the story for? For whom have you read the story?

(8) a. Who did you show a mistake to? b. To whom did you show a mistake? c. Who have you shown a mistake to? d. To whom

have you shown

a mistake?

(9) a. Who did you hand this cup to? b. To whom did you hand this cup? c. Who have you handed this cup to? d. To whom

have you handed

this cup?

(10)

a. b. c. d.

Who did you give the sugar to? To whom did you give the sugar? Who have you given the sugar to? To whom have you given the sugar?

(11)

a. b. c. d.

Who For Who For

did you demonstrate this little dance for? whom did you demonstrate this little dance? have you demonstrated this little dance for? whom have you demonstrated this little dance?

L. Frazier

(12)

et al.

a. Who did you refill the glass for? b. For whom did you refill the glass? c. Who have you refilled the glass for? d. For whom

have you refilled

the glass?

I Cognition

47 (lYY.?)

219-249

249