LING158: Advanced Psycholinguistics

Movement in Real-time

UC Santa Cruz Department of Linguistics
Spring 2015

Course Details

Lecture
M/W, 3-4:40pm; 232 Stevenson
Instructor
Matt Wagers
Instructor office hours
Th 12-2pm, or by app't; 231 Stevenson

Summary

This course is about the incremental processing of long-distance dependencies and, in particular, A-bar dependencies. We will ask questions about real-time grammatical accuracy, prediction and memory in a quarter-long workshop-style lab group.

Requirements

Course materials

Readings consist of primary and secondary articles, available via our course Mendeley group (via invitation).

Schedule

Week 1

Foundational issues
April 1, 2015:
McCloskey, J. (1988). Syntactic theory. In F. Newmeyer, ed., Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey, Vol. 1: 18–59, Cambridge University Press. Read through §2.1 (§2.2 for your own interest).
Background handout on the major island types

Week 2

Techniques for detecting dependency formation
April 6, 2015:
Stowe, L. A. (1986). Parsing WH-constructions: evidence for on-line gap location. Language and Cognitive Processes, 1(3), 227–245. doi:10.1080/01690968608407062 (Valery & Queena)
Traxler, M.K. & Pickering, M.J. (1996). Plausibility and the processing of unbounded dependencies: an eye-tracking study. Journal of Memory and Language, 35:454-75. (Carol & Amelia)
April 8, 2015:
McElree, M. & Bever, T.G. (1989). The psychological reality of linguistically-defined gaps. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 18(1), 21-35. (Craig & Jake)
Nicol, J., & Swinney, D. (1989). The Role of Structure in Coreference Assignment During Sentence Comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 18(1), 5–19. (Matt)

Week 3

April 13, 2015
Read Phillips, C. & Wagers, M. (2007). Relating Structure and Time in Linguistics and Psycholinguistics. In G. Gaskell (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics, pp. 739-756. Oxford University Press.
Pick an island domain and propose the design of three experiments to test whether comprehenders ever construct filler-gap dependencies inside the island. The first experiment should use the filled-gap effect, the second should use a plausibility manipulation, and the third should use probe recognition. Be sure each design includes appropriate controls. Place your notes in the online course portfolio (Google Drive).
Aoshima, S., Phillips, C. & Weinberg, A. (2004). Processing Filler-Gap Dependencies in a Head-Final Language. Journal of Memory & Language, 51, 23-54.
April 15, 2015
Wanner, E. & Maratsos, M. (1978). An ATN Approach to Comprehension. In M. Halle, J. Bresnan, & G.A. Miller, eds., Linguistic Theory and Psychological Reality, pp. 119–160.
Section experts, who will pay especially close attention to one section and take good notes:
  • “Why Augmented Transition Networks?” (pp. 119–122) Matt
  • “An Illustration of the ATN” (pp. 123–131) Queena & Carol
  • “An ATN Model of Relative Clause Comprehension” (pp. 132–137) Craig
  • “The HOLD Hypothesis” - “Experiment 1” (pp. 137–147) Jake & Amelia
  • “Experiment 2” - end (pp. 147–159) Valery

Week 4

Maintenance & Retrieval

April 20, 2015
Fiebach, C. J., Schlesewsky, M., & Friederici, A. D. (2001). Syntactic Working Memory and the Establishment of Filler-Gap Dependencies: Insights from ERPs and fMRI. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 30(3), 321–338. (Craig)
Phillips, C., Kazanina, N., & Abada, S. H. (2005). ERP effects of the processing of syntactic long-distance dependencies. Cognitive Brain Research, 22(3), 407–428. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogbrainres.2004.09.012
April 22, 2015
Van Dyke, J. A., & McElree, B. (2006). Retrieval interference in sentence comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 55(2), 157–166. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2006.03.007 (Carol)
Wagers, M. W., & Phillips, C. (2014). Going the distance: Memory and control processes in active dependency construction. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67(7), 1274–304. http://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2013.858363 (Queena)

Week 5

More on syntactic distance; esp. relation to successive cyclicity/phases.

April 27, 2015
Gibson, E., & Warren, T. (2004). Reading-time Evidence for Intermediate Linguistic Structure in Long-distance Dependencies. Syntax, 7(1), 55–78. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1368–0005.2004.00065.x (Amelia)
Keine, S. On the reality of syntactic cycles – but only some. March 21, 2015: Poster presented at the 28th CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, University of Southern California (poster). (Jake)
April 29, 2015
Debriefing and project brainstorming

Week 6

May 4, 2015
Lewis, R. L., & Vasishth, S. (2005). An Activation-Based Model of Sentence Processing as Skilled Memory Retrieval. Cognitive Science, 29(3), 375–419. doi:10.1207/s15516709cog0000_25.
Lewis, R. L., Vasishth, S., & Van Dyke, J. A. (2006). Computational principles of working memory in sentence comprehension. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(10), 447–54. 10.1016/j.tics.2006.08.007
May 6, 2015
McElree, B., Foraker, S., & Dyer, L. (2003). Memory structures that subserve sentence comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 48, 67–91. (Valery)

What are my responsibilities?

You are expected to take responsibility for your own learning. So here are the usual reminders for optimizing your performance in the class.

Attend class. You are responsible for material in your readings as well as those presented in lecture. Keep in mind that readings will often be primary sources or professional reviews, and it is during class that unfamiliar concepts will be explained and discussed.

Participate. Ask questions and offer ideas in class. Take responsibility in group work.

Complete your written work in a timely manner. Pay attention to instructions and due dates so you can plan the required research. Even in short responses or technical lab reports, the quality of your prose writing matters. It is an important goal of this class to hone your skills in communicating scientifically. You will be in a better position to do so, the less you have to rush. The late work policy is spelled out above.

Adhere to standards of academic honesty. This class involves a fair amount of collaboration in the form of lab work. For each assignment, I will make it clear what is expected of each individual. I will also ask you to list who you worked with. But here are the general guidelines: I encourage you to work together to understand material, to work out design of experiments, to share the responsibility for collecting data, and to help one another understand how to execute the data analysis afterwards. However, all analysis and written work must be completed by the individual.

The Academic Integrity web site contains the policies and procedures that bind us both for suspected academic dishonesty: here.

Request accommodation if necessary. If you qualify for classroom accommodations because of a disability, please obtain an Accommodation Authorization from the Disability Resource Center (DRC) and submit it to me in person within the first two weeks of the quarter. Contact DRC at 459-2089 (voice), 459-4806 (TTY), or http://drc.ucsc.edu for more information on the requirements and process.

Communicate. Lastly, but importantly, never hesitate to get in touch. If you get into difficulty, it is entirely appropriate to seek help. Come by office hours, or send me an email. Likewise, if you are having a problem that adversely affects your classroom participation, contact me.