syntax 1 day 30 – nov 6, 2013 brain & language ling 4110-4890-5110-7960 nsci 4110-4891-6110...

SYNTAX 1DAY 30 – NOV 6, 2013

Brain & Language

LING 4110-4890-5110-7960

NSCI 4110-4891-6110

Harry Howard

Tulane University

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Course organization• The syllabus, these slides and my recordings are

available at http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LING4110/.• If you want to learn more about EEG and neurolinguistics,

you are welcome to participate in my lab. This is also a good way to get started on an honor's thesis.

• The grades are posted to Blackboard.

11/06/13 Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University

http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LING4110/

REVIEW

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Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 4

Associations for “pig” in LH/RH terms

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Summary of lateralization of word semanticsLH RH

a. Slowly selects multiple meanings (divergent processing) that are weakly associated.

b. Primes words that share few semantic features > loosely associated words.

c. Primes the less frequent meaning of an ambiguous word.

d. Primes function, collectives, goal-oriented classes.

e. Priming stays same with more words.

f. Priming is same for unstructured sentences.

g. Priming is same for incongruent sentences.

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a. Quickly selects most familiar or dominant meaning (convergent processing) while suppressing other less closely related meanings.

b. Primes words that share many semantic features > closely associated words.

c. Primes the most frequent meaning of an ambiguous word.

d. Primes category, but not others.

e. Priming is faster with more words.

f. Priming is slower for unstructured sentences.

g. Priming is slower for incongruent sentences.


Two types of semantic processing

Convergent semantic processing

i. … in linguistic tasks which elicit a limited number of responses.

ii. In such tasks, subjects must suppress alternate meanings or select a single best item from many choices.

iii. For instance, a subject may be presented with a noun such as ‘hammer’ and be asked to supply a verb, giving the response ‘(to) pound’.

Divergent semantic processing

i. … in linguistic tasks which elicit a wide number of responses.

ii. In such tasks, subjects must produce alternate meanings or list as many items as possible.

iii. For instance, the experiment just mentioned can be continued by asking the subject to supply yet another verb, resulting in a response such as ‘(to) throw’.

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Summary of lateralization of phonologyLH

small window of temporal integration

no overlap between windows

• high temporal frequency:• rapid cues, like stops

• high spectral frequency: • formants

• categorical distinctions: • lexical, phrasal, clausal

stress;• lexical tone in Thai/Chinese

RH

large window of temporal integration

overlap between windows

• low temporal frequency: • slow cues, like vowels

• low spectral frequency: • fundamental

• graded/coordinate distinctions:• emotional intonation,• sentence type?


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A conversion to resolutionLeft hemisphere, fine coding:

9 neurons index 9 regions of space

Right hemisphere, coarse coding:

4 neurons index 12+ regions of space



Associations for “pig” in LH/RH terms

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SENTENCE COMPREHENSION AND SYNTACTIC PARSINGIngram IV. Sentence comprehension, §12


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Linguistic model, Fig. 2.1 p. 37


Discourse model

SyntaxSentence prosody

MorphologyWord prosody

Segmental phonologyperception

Acoustic phonetics Feature extraction

Segmental phonologyproduction

Articulatory phonetics Speech motor control

INPUT

SEMANTICS

Sentence level

Word level

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What is syntactic processing?• “Narrowly defined, syntactic processing involves the

assignment of syntactic structure to word strings that qualify as a ‘sentences’”. (p. 244)


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What is a sentence?• Some definitions

• A complete thought.• Mary kissed John.• Mary kissed.• Mary.• Kissed.• Kissed John.

• A subject and a predicate.• Mary kissed John.• Mary kissed.• Mary.• Kissed.• Kissed John.

• A string of words starting with a capital letter and ending with a period.


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What we said at the beginning• S = NP VP, or• [S NP VP]

• [S Mary [VP kissed John]]


S

NPMary

VP

Vkissed

NPJohn

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But …• … we very often utter incomplete sentences:

a) Who kissed John?

b) Mary.

c) What did Mary do?

d) Kiss John.

• So the missing information can be filled in by the context:a) Who kissed John?

b) [S Mary [VP Ø]]

c) What did Mary do?

d) [S [NP Ø] [VP kiss John]]


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What is a grammar?• “A grammar is an explicit set of rules for distinguishing the

well-formed sentences of a language from those that are ill-formed (ungrammatical).” (p. 245)

• We have already seen a fragment of a grammar of English:① S → NP VP

② VP → V NP

• Which of these strings are ill-formed (ungrammatical), according to this grammar?• Mary kissed John.• Mary kissed.• Mary.• Kissed.• Kissed John.


**

**

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Another example• Let’s change to Ingram’s example, “A cat is on the couch.”• We need to augment our grammar:

③ NP → Det N, where Det is one of {a(n), the, some}

④ VP → V PP

⑤ PP → P NP, where P is one of {on, in, at, by, etc.}

• Write down the syntactic structure for Ingram’s example:• [S [NP a cat] [VP is [PP on [NP the couch]]]]


S

NPa cat

VP

Vis

PPon the couch

NEXT TIMEContinue with §12 Sentence comprehension and syntactic parsing

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syntax 1 day 30 – nov 6, 2013 brain & language ling 4110-4890-5110-7960 nsci 4110-4891-6110...

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