ABSTRACT The present study examined the robustness of morphosyntactic information (inflectional case marking) vs. semantic information (animacy) in non-canonical SOV-and-V structures in Russian, a morphologically rich language with... more
ABSTRACT The present study examined the robustness of morphosyntactic information (inflectional case marking) vs. semantic information (animacy) in non-canonical SOV-and-V structures in Russian, a morphologically rich language with relatively free word order. Results from a self-paced moving window paradigm followed by a comprehension question indicated that case marking was a relatively weak cue during online reading and offline comprehension compared to animacy, which was relied upon heavily throughout. The results suggest that even in languages with rich inflectional morphology, morphosyntax is fragile. Furthermore, the results provide support for memory-based models of sentence processing in which similarity-induced interference affects memory for previously encountered constituents and the integration of incoming material.
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Two experiments are summarized that were designed to provide empirical evidence for the status of Korean and English dative structures in the bilingual mind. The experiments exploit structural priming across languages in Korean-English... more
Two experiments are summarized that were designed to provide empirical evidence for the status of Korean and English dative structures in the bilingual mind. The experiments exploit structural priming across languages in Korean-English bilingual production. The Korean-eykey-ul dative structure (eg, Halmeni-ka sonnye-eykey chayk-ul ilk-e cwu-ess-ta; grandma-ka granddaughter-eykey book-ul read) prime the English prepositional-object dative structure (eg, The lawyer sent the contract to his client) more than the Korean-ul-ul dative ...
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Auditory perceptual simulation (APS) during silent reading refers to situations in which the reader actively simulates the voice of a character or other person depicted in a text. In three eye-tracking experiments, APS effects were... more
Auditory perceptual simulation (APS) during silent reading refers to situations in which the reader actively simulates the voice of a character or other person depicted in a text. In three eye-tracking experiments, APS effects were investigated as people read utterances attributed to a native English speaker, a non-native English speaker, or no speaker at all. APS effects were measured via online eye movements and offline comprehension probes. Results demonstrated that inducing APS during silent reading resulted in observable differences in reading speed when readers simulated the speech of faster compared to slower speakers, and compared to silent reading without APS. Social attitude survey results indicated that readers' attitudes towards the native and non-native speech did not consistently influence APS-related effects. APS of both native speech and non-native speech increased reading speed, facilitated deeper, less good-enough, sentence processing, and improved comprehensio...
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We have developed a unix-based management system (named uneim) which supports the instructor in teaching English as a second language using a network of workstations. The present implementation is aimed at teaching English composition to... more
We have developed a unix-based management system (named uneim) which supports the instructor in teaching English as a second language using a network of workstations. The present implementation is aimed at teaching English composition to Japanese students at The University of Aizu. uneim has a convenient set-up mechanism designed to assist, in particular, the computer novice. While running, uneim takes care of the following tasks using the cron mechanism of unix: assignments are sent out via e-mail on preset dates; if ...
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All of the words that 51 Japanese EFL university students had looked up in their dictionaries were identified in a 41,024-word corpus of student writing. Forty-two percent of these “dictionary words” were found to have been used... more
All of the words that 51 Japanese EFL university students had looked up in their dictionaries were identified in a 41,024-word corpus of student writing. Forty-two percent of these “dictionary words” were found to have been used incorrectly in some way. An analysis of the errors themselves and of interviews with more and less successful dictionary users was conducted in an attempt to better understand why these errors were committed and what can be done to assist students in avoiding such errors. The findings indicate that successful ...
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Abstract: Examines through a text analysis of spoken and written discourse the meaning and function of the double genitive (DG) in English in comparison to the inflected preposed genitive. The study shows the DG to possess unique and... more
Abstract: Examines through a text analysis of spoken and written discourse the meaning and function of the double genitive (DG) in English in comparison to the inflected preposed genitive. The study shows the DG to possess unique and specific pragmatic functions not adequately described for nonnative students.(22 references)(Author/CK)
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Abstract: This paper analyzes a study by Fukushima (1990) of the English offers and responses of Japanese English as a foreign language (EFL) college students and reports on an experiment designed to address the perceived weaknesses of... more
Abstract: This paper analyzes a study by Fukushima (1990) of the English offers and responses of Japanese English as a foreign language (EFL) college students and reports on an experiment designed to address the perceived weaknesses of Fukushima's work. Fukushima's study found that many Japanese EFL learners could not use appropriate levels of politeness in English. Using the same interactive offer and response situations, the present study examined both Japanese and English offers and requests of Japanese EFL ...
The study of Japanese as a second language is not easy but it is made more difficult than it has to be by the fact that learning to read is a time consuming task. Furthermore, the difficulty is compounded by the lack of suitable reference... more
The study of Japanese as a second language is not easy but it is made more difficult than it has to be by the fact that learning to read is a time consuming task. Furthermore, the difficulty is compounded by the lack of suitable reference materials. Current paper and electronic Japanese- English dictionaries have two major drawbacks: they are not comprehensive enough to serve all potential users, and they do not offer easy and rapid methods of kanji lookup, the most difficult task facing a non-Japanese user. A hyperdictionary using our ...
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This paper presents a qualitative analysis of differences in the way that kanji are perceived by different users of Japanese language. Most non-native users of Japanese dictionaries find it difficult to use these dictionaries, because the... more
This paper presents a qualitative analysis of differences in the way that kanji are perceived by different users of Japanese language. Most non-native users of Japanese dictionaries find it difficult to use these dictionaries, because the data are organized in the conventional way, that is similar to dictionaries for native Japanese users. These present compilations are based on the assumption that each user has sufficient knowledge of the language. However, the non-native users, in particular at the beginner's level, have a ...
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Abstract: Pedagogical features and implementation of a UNIX-based management system (UNIEM) designed to support the instructor in teaching English as a second language using a network of workstations are described. The application... more
Abstract: Pedagogical features and implementation of a UNIX-based management system (UNIEM) designed to support the instructor in teaching English as a second language using a network of workstations are described. The application discussed here is for teaching English composition to students at the University of Aizu (Japan). UNIEM is constructed to assist the computer novice in these tasks: sending out assignments using electronic mail (e-mail) on pre-set dates; reminders of missing homework when necessary; sorting of ...
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Résumé/Abstract This paper proposes an analysis of variability in sentence production in the'nonconfigurational'Algonquian language Odawa. In doing so, the role played by various hierarchies at work in the language is... more
Résumé/Abstract This paper proposes an analysis of variability in sentence production in the'nonconfigurational'Algonquian language Odawa. In doing so, the role played by various hierarchies at work in the language is demonstrated, and it is shown how these hierarchies interact to explain the frequencies with which certain constructions occur in various contexts. In doing so, a version of Optimality Theory is employed, which, although technically'non-standard', is consistent with recent work on language variation and variation in the ...
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We report 3 experiments that examined younger and older adults' reliance on" good-enough" interpretations for garden-path sentences (eg," While Anna dressed the baby played in the crib") as indicated by their responding" Yes" to questions... more
We report 3 experiments that examined younger and older adults' reliance on" good-enough" interpretations for garden-path sentences (eg," While Anna dressed the baby played in the crib") as indicated by their responding" Yes" to questions probing the initial, syntactically unlicensed interpretation (eg," Did Anna dress the baby?").
The three experiments in human sentence processing reported here were conducted in the Algonquian language of Odawa. They represent the first psycholinguistic experiments to be conducted in an indigenous North American language.
Abstract We show how to construct tools for language analysis in research and teaching using the Bourne-shell, sed and awk under UNIX.
Theories of sentence comprehension have addressed both initial parsing processes and mechanisms responsible for reanalysis. Three experiments are summarized that were designed to investigate the reanalysis and interpretation of relatively... more
Theories of sentence comprehension have addressed both initial parsing processes and mechanisms responsible for reanalysis. Three experiments are summarized that were designed to investigate the reanalysis and interpretation of relatively difficult garden-path sentences (eg, While Anna dressed the baby spit up on the bed). After reading such sentences, participants correctly believed that the baby spit up on the bed; however, they often confidently, yet incorrectly, believed that Anna dressed the baby.
In the literature dealing with the reanalysis of garden path sentences such as While the man hunted the deer ran into the woods, it is generally assumed either that people completely repair their initial incorrect syntactic... more
In the literature dealing with the reanalysis of garden path sentences such as While the man hunted the deer ran into the woods, it is generally assumed either that people completely repair their initial incorrect syntactic representations to yield a final interpretation whose syntactic structure is fully consistent with the input string or that the parse fails. In a series of five experiments, we explored the possibility that partial reanalyses take place.
A structural priming experiment investigated whether grammatical encoding in production consists of one or two stages and whether oral bilingual language production is shared at the functional or positional level [Bock, JK, Levelt,... more
A structural priming experiment investigated whether grammatical encoding in production consists of one or two stages and whether oral bilingual language production is shared at the functional or positional level [Bock, JK, Levelt, W.(1994). Language production. Grammatical encoding. In MA Gernsbacher (Ed.), Handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 945–984). San Diego, CA: Academic Press] by manipulating syntactic structure and argument order in structurally parallel Korean and English dative sentences.
In another paper submitted to this conference [Abramson et al, 1995] we discuss the general notion of “hyperdictionary”, and in particular, a Japanese↔ English multimedia hyperdictionary based on modern large memory technology such as... more
In another paper submitted to this conference [Abramson et al, 1995] we discuss the general notion of “hyperdictionary”, and in particular, a Japanese↔ English multimedia hyperdictionary based on modern large memory technology such as CD-ROMs or magneto-optical (MO) disks.
The hypothesis that morphological processing is supported by a mental dictionary of stored entries plus a set of mental computations based on rules is examined using event-related fMRI. If a rules-plus-memory model (Pinker, 1999) reflects... more
The hypothesis that morphological processing is supported by a mental dictionary of stored entries plus a set of mental computations based on rules is examined using event-related fMRI. If a rules-plus-memory model (Pinker, 1999) reflects the actual organization of the language faculty, two distinct patterns of brain activation should be observed for production of German irregular and regular noun and verb inflections.
IMPLICATIONS• Processing of error disfluencies leads to initial perseveration of looks to mistakenly introduced objects, followed by inhibition of looks to those objects.• Processing of negation leads to 'point fixation'(Cooper, 1974), a... more
IMPLICATIONS• Processing of error disfluencies leads to initial perseveration of looks to mistakenly introduced objects, followed by inhibition of looks to those objects.• Processing of negation leads to 'point fixation'(Cooper, 1974), a reduced tendency to intiate eye movements.