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.

In two experiments, we test a family of theories that treat the 'more than one' meaning component of the plural morpheme as an implicature rather than an inherent part of its semantics (Sauerland, Anderssen & Yatsushiro 2005, Spector 2007, Zweig 2009). We find that under certain circumstances, this meaning component appears to be canceled, in the manner of an implicature. Our findings suggest that the implicature is relatively difficult to cancel, and that cancelation is facilitated by employing a linguistic environment in which plural marking contributes to the presupposed but not the asserted content. The notion that implicatures may be more easily canceled when they contribute to the presuppositional component is a novel contribution of the study.

This study investigated whether readers are more likely to assign a male referent to man-suffix terms (e.g. chairman) than to gender-neutral alternatives (e.g., chairperson) during reading, and whether this bias differs as a function of age. Younger and older adults' eye movements were monitored while reading passages containing phrases such as "The chairman/chairperson familiarized herself with..." On-line eye fixation data provided strong evidence that man-suffix words were more likely to evoke the expectation of a male referent in both age groups. Younger readers demonstrated inflated processing times when first encountering herself after chairman relative to chairperson, and they tended to make more regressive fixations to chairman. Older readers did not show the effect when initially encountering herself, but they spent disproportionately longer looking back to chairman and herself. The study provides empirical support for copy-editing policies that mandate the use of explicitly gender-neutral suffix terms in place of man-suffix terms.

No abstract

In two experiments, we test a family of theories that treat the 'more than one' meaning component of the plural morpheme as an implicature rather than an inherent part of its semantics (Sauerland, Anderssen & Yatsushiro 2005, Spector 2007, Zweig 2009). We find that under certain circumstances, this meaning component appears to be canceled, in the manner of an implicature. Our findings suggest that the implicature is relatively difficult to cancel, and that cancelation is facilitated by employing a linguistic environment in which plural marking contributes to the presupposed but not the asserted content. The notion that implicatures may be more easily canceled when they contribute to the presuppositional component is a novel contribution of the study.