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Separating Effects of Verb Properties

in Processing Garden Path Sentences


Ryan King & David J. Townsend
Montclair State University
kingr7@montclair.edu

Abstract

Method

Judgment Results

Since Bever (1970), various verb properties have been


proposed to explain the difficulty of garden path sentences
(Malaia et al., 2009, 2012; OBryan et al., 2013; Stevenson &
Merlo, 1997; Hare et al., 2007; McKoon & Ratcliff, 2003;
MacDonald,1994). We use speakers judgments about verb
properties as covariates to isolate the effects of endpoints
and patient roles in garden path processing. Our results
support the endpoint hypothesis: a verbs requirement for an
inherent endpoint reduces the difficulty of a garden path.

Eye Tracking Study

Progressive Entailment. The proportion of yes responses


was larger for hard verbs (M = .58 and .39), F1 (1, 37) =
23.5, p < .001, F2 (1, 15) = 9.44, p < .01 (red bars in Figure
2)
Causative Alternation. The proportion of yes responses was
smaller for hard verbs (M = .17 and .46), F1 (1, 37) = 72.2, p
< .001, F2 (1, 15) = 9.55, p < .01 (green bars in Figure 2)

Introduction
Sequences such as The prisoner taught .: are
ambiguous between
o taught is the main verb and prisoner is its subject
o taught is a passive participle in a relative clause and
prisoner is its object
Continuations such as by the guard tried to escape
establish that the second structure is correct, and they
increase processing time.
Event structure may predict garden path difficulty
(OBryan, 2003)
o Telic verbs denote an inherent endpoint and a change in
state
o Atelic verbs denote a homogenous situation and no
change in state
Progressive Entailment
If the man was building a house, did he definitely build the
house? No
If the boy was pushing a cart, did the boy definitely push the
cart? Yes
If a verb in the progressive form
o does not entail that the event occurred, it is telic
o does entail that the event occurred, it is atelic
The Endpoint Hypothesis (EH): when the parser
recognizes a telic verb it seeks an entity that could
undergo a change of state to mark the endpoint of the
event.
Causative Alternation
If the instructor halted the student, did the student halt? Yes
If the instructor taught the student, did the student teach? No
If the subject of an intransitive verb can appear as a
transitive object, the verb is telic; otherwise it is atelic
(Olsen,1998; Schafer, 2009)
The Patient Role Hypothesis (PRH): when the parser
recognizes a telic verb that undergoes causative
alternation, it assigns the patient role to the initial noun
To what extent do the properties of progressive entailment
and causative alternation predict a garden path?

84 native English speakers from Montclair State University


2 experiments with 120 / 133 sentences including 16 test
sentences from Malaia et al. (2009, 2012)
2 Structure Type (RC/UC) x 2 Verb Type (easy/hard)
Example sentences:
o RC Hard: The prisoner taught by the agent tried to
escape.
o RC Easy: The prisoner halted by the agent tried to
escape.
o UC Hard: The prisoner that was taught by the agent
tried to escape.
o UC Easy: The prisoner that was halted by the agent
tried to escape.
No Verb Type difference in number of characters or
frequency of occurrence (Davies, 2009), both ps > .10
11 verbs were potentially intransitive (PI) verbs and 5 were
transitive only (TO)
A probe question followed each sentence
Eye Link 1000, <http://www.umass.edu/eyelab/software/>
Measures:
o First pass time: the sum of fixation times from first
entering a region until leaving the region
o Go-Past time: the sum of fixation times from first
entering a region until going past it to the next region
Tests on the by-phrase by participants and by items,
broken down by potential transitivity

Judgment Study

Covariate Results

38 native English speakers from Montclair State University


Participants judged progressive entailment (PE) and
causative alternation (CA)
o PE: Does The agent is now halting the prisoner mean
that the agent has halted the prisoner?
o CA: If the agent halted the prisoner, did the prisoner
halt?
Materials adapted from those in the eye tracking study
Tests on proportion of yes responses by participants and
by items

No Covariate. RREs were larger for hard verbs (204 vs.


73), F (1, 30) = 5.19, p < .05 (red bars in Figure 3)
PE Covariate. RREs did not differ (186 vs. 91), F (1, 29) =
2.30, p > .10 (black bars in Figure 3)
CA Covariate. RREs were larger for hard verbs (208 vs.
68), F (1, 29) = 4.48, p < .05 (green bars in Figure 3)
Only TO verbs. RREs did not differ with PE as a covariate
(221 vs. 34), F (1, 7) = 3.28, p > .10
o RREs were larger for hard verbs with CA as a covariate
(231 vs. 24), F (1, 7) = 7.22, p < .05

Covariate Analysis
Reduced Relative Effect (RRE): fixation time for RC minus
fixation time for UC
Tests on RRE with no covariate and with PE and CA as
covariates
Variances and regression slopes did not differ, all ps > .10

Previous Studies

Eye Tracking Results

Telic verbs were found to occur in a wider variety of


syntactic constructions (Townsend & Seegmiller, 2004)
Decision times on the by-phrase in a word maze task were
faster with telic verbs than with atelic verbs (OBryan,
2003)
Lexical priming was greater for the subject noun when the
verb was telic intransitive rather than atelic intransitive
(Friedman et al., 2007)
ERPs in reduced relatives were less negative with telic
verbs than with atelic verbs (Malaia et al., 2009, 2012)

Structure Type
Reading time was longer for reduced clauses in first pass
time (513 vs. 473), F1 (1, 83) = 13.0, p = .01, F2 (1, 15) =
9.83, p = .01 and go past time (780 vs. 634), F1 (1, 83) =
19.0, p < .001, F2 (1, 15) = 5.15, p = .05

The Present Study


We tested the endpoint and patient role hypotheses
Sentences with easy verbs were from sentence lists that
produced little disruption in ERPs in Malaia et al., (2009,
2012)
o Sentences with hard verbs produced large disruption in
ERPs in Malaia et al. (2009, 2012)
We used progressive entailment scores (PE) and causative
alternation scores (CA) as a covariate in the analysis of eye
fixation time in order to separate the effects of these
variables

Figure 2. Mean Proportion of Yes Responses on Judgment Tasks

Verb Type in Reduced Clauses


o First pass time did not differ for hard and easy verbs
(517 vs. 476), all ps > .10
o Go-past time was longer for hard verbs than for easy
verbs (838 vs. 722), F1 (1, 83) = 7.64, p = .01, F2 (1,
15) = 5.15, p = .05 (red bars in Figure 1)
Potential Transitivity
o For PI verbs Verb Type had no effect on RREs
(193 vs. 93), F (1, 20) = 1.79, p > .10
o For TO verbs RREs were larger for hard verbs (228 vs.
28), F (1, 8) = 4.84, p = .059

Figure 1. Mean Go Past Time (ms) in the By-Phrase

Figure 3. Reduced Relative Effects (RRE) with No Covariate, with Progressive


Covariate (PE) and with Causative Covariate (CA)

Discussion

Garden path effect in first pass time and go past time


Garden path effect smaller for easy verbs
Verb Type effect only in go past time
Hard verbs had higher PE and lower CA scores
Verb Type effect on the garden path
o disappeared when PE was a covariate, supporting EH
o It remained when CA was a covariate, refuting PRH
PE effects on the garden path suggest that frequency of
passive usage is a major factor (Hare et al., 2007)
Analysis of covariance is useful for separating effects of
correlated properties

References

Hypotheses
Endpoint hypothesis (EH): fixation time will be longer for
verbs with high PE scores only when PE is not a covariate
Patient role hypothesis (PRH): fixation time will be longer for
verbs with low CA scores only when CA is not a covariate
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health under Grant
1R15HD055680-01A1

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