Ling 423/640G: Cognitive Linguistics

Ben Bergen

Meeting 21: Grammar [3]

November 5, 2008

These experiments tested whether people use the meaning of grammatical constructions when processing language.

Experiment 1

Research questions

• Do adults know relationships between syntactic forms and their meaning [i.e. constructions]?
• Even when using new words [that have no existing form and meaning?]
• Are the meanings of constructions used when processing new words?

Method

Sentence choice task. Do adults have access to the meaning of grammatical constructions?

Participants saw pairs of sentences, e.g. [1], [2] [innovative] or [3], [4] [conventional].

[1] Lyn crutched Tom her apple so he wouldn’t starve. [double-object form]

[2] Lyn crutched her apple so Tom wouldn’t starve. [transitive form]

[3] Lindsay bought Sam a sweater to please him. [double-object form]

[4] Lindsay bought a sweater to please Sam. [transitive form]

And one of two inference statements. One [e.g. [5]] was consistent with the meaning of the double-object form, while the other [e.g. [6]] was consistent with the meaning of the transitive form. Ss indicated which sentence most strongly implied that the inference statement was true.

[5] Tom got the apple.

[6] Lyn acted on the apple.

If Ss are sensitive to constructional meaning, then they should choose the member of the sentence pair consistent with the inference statement. As the innovative denominal verbs do not have a preexisting “transfer component” to their meaning, any such meaning found in the sentence must arise from the syntactic form.

Meaning-choice task. Addresses the question of whether constructional meanings can provide constraints on the interpretation of innovative denominal verbs.

Ss saw the denominal verb sentences from above and indicated which of two meanings provided [e.g., “to act on using a crutch” or “to transfer using a crutch”] more closely matched the meaning of the verb in the sentence.

If the argument structure constrains the meaning of these innovative verbs, participants should be more likely to select the transfer definition for verbs in the double-object construction and more likely to select the “act on” meaning for the same verbs in the transitive construction.

Results

Experiment 2

Experiment 1 showed that Ss can access and use meanings of grammatical constructions. But can they do so even when the meanings are not explicitly presented to them?

Method

Presented the denominal verb sentences from Experiment 1 with a context that set up a potential transfer scene.

Ss performed one of two tasks, either to paraphrase the critical sentence or to paraphrase the verb.

Scoring

Transfer score [0 or 1] indicated whether the paraphrase conveyed transfer by explicitly indicating that the object to be transferred was received by the intended recipient. Thus, “Lyn pushed the apple through the crack” would be scored as 0 because it does not explicitly state that Tom got the apple.

Verb score [0 or 1] was based solely on the verb used in the paraphrase. It was 1 if the verb appeared on Pinker’s [1989] list of verbs that take the double-object construction.

Results