Investigating Thematic Roles through Implicit Learning: Evidence from Light Verb Constructions

Wittenberg, Eva, Khan, Manizeh, & Snedeker, Jesse (2017): Investigating Thematic Roles through Implicit Learning: Evidence from Light Verb Constructions. Frontiers in Psychology, 8:1089.

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01089/full

Abstract:

The syntactic structure of a sentence is usually a strong predictor of its meaning: Each argument noun phrase (i.e., Subject and Object) should map onto exactly one thematic role (i.e., Agent and Patient, respectively). Some constructions, however, are exceptions to this pattern. This paper investigates how the syntactic structure of an utterance contributes to its construal, using ditransitive English light verb constructions, such as “Nils gave a hug to his brother”, as an example of such mismatches: Hugging is a two-role event, but the ditransitive syntactic structure suggests a three-role event. Data from an eye-tracking experiment and behavioral categorization data reveal that listeners learn to categorize sentences according to the number of thematic roles they convey, independent of their syntax. Light verb constructions, however, seem to form a category of their own, in which the syntactic structure leads listeners down an initial incorrect assignment of thematic roles, from which they only partly recover. These results suggest an automatic influence of syntactic argument structure on semantic interpretation and event construal, even in highly frequent constructions.

Nina Semushina awarded CARTA Anthropogeny Fellowship

Graduate student Nina Semushina just received a CARTA Anthropogeny Fellowship for 2017-2018 year! She joined Anthropogeny Student Specialization Track a year ago, and since then she has actively participated in the program. This winter she got an MA in Linguistics from our Department and now is preparing for her future qualifying exam. Her thesis will be about the impact of delayed first language acquisition on quantitative reasoning and acquisition of numerical concepts.

More information about the Graduate Specialization in Anthropogeny can be found here: http://ling.ucsd.edu/grad/anthropogeny-specialization.html