Verb argument structure predicts implicit causality: The advantages of finer-grained semantics

Hartshorne, Joshua K.; Snedeker, Jesse

doi:10.1080/01690965.2012.689305

Cited by 75 publications

(108 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…In a recent proposal, Hartshorne & Snedeker (2012) claim that the bias is due to the fact that because clauses specify the causing entity in a causal relation provided by the verb. On the face of it, this proposal may seem to be compatible with our analysis.…”

Section: General Discussion and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More generally, he points out that it has to be explained what constitutes the connection between thematic properties and causal dependencies (see also the discussion in Garnham 2001;Crinean & Garnham 2006;Pickering & Majid 2007). A recent proposal in this direction has been made by Hartshorne & Snedeker (2012) grounding IC in the semantics of VerbNet (Kipper-Schuler 2006).…”

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There exists to date no comprehensive account of the above observations. Thus, concerning the bias itself, no accounts (including a very recent one by Hartshorne & Snedeker 2012) have gone beyond establishing correlation patterns between the bias and the argument structure properties of IC verbs. However, argument structure does not readily lend itself to explaining a phenomenon which involves discourse.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From Verbs to Discourse: A Novel Account of Implicit Causality

Bott

Solstad

2014

Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics

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We present a semantic theory of causal discourse which allows us to derive expectations about upcoming discourse, specifically when to expect various types of explanations. We apply our theory to the phenomenon of implicit causality and show how the semantics of implicit causality verbs interacts with discourse structure. In particular, we show why certain verbs trigger explanations per default, what kind of explanations are triggered, and why these explanations are closely related to specific coreference patterns. Predictions derived from the theory were tested in a large-scale crosslinguistic production study comparing discourse continuations in German and Norwegian -two languages which display differing discourse structuring properties. The production study fully confirmed our predictions, with explanation types and implicit causality bias distributing as expected. The study furthermore reveals that our semantic account of implicit causality is cross-linguistically valid.

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Section: General Discussion and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From Verbs to Discourse: A Novel Account of Implicit Causality

Bott

Solstad

2014

Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics

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“…On this hypothesis, the mapping mechanism between syntax and semantics must be flexible enough to assign agent and patient onto Romeo and Juliet, just as the usual mapping of agent to subject and patient to object can be overridden in passive voice, or with experiencer--stimulus verbs such as 'fear' (Hartshorne & Snedeker, 2012).…”

Section: Similar Changes In Event Construal Have Been Found With Othementioning

confidence: 99%

It takes two to kiss, but does it take three to give a kiss? Categorization based on thematic roles

Wittenberg

Snedeker

2013

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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“…The connective vì 'because' was used in all targets, to keep the coherence relation constant. Regarding verb selection, we chose twenty-four verbs that we expected to be equi-biased -i.e., to not have a strong bias toward either the preceding subject or object, based on the English norms published in (Hartshorne & Snedeker, 2013). We tried to avoid verbs with a strong inherent subject or object bias, in order to make it easier to detect potential effects of pronominal form.…”

Section: Experiments 2 -Sentence Completion Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of grammatical roles and topicality on Vietnamese referential form production

Ngo

Kaiser

2018

Proc Ling Soc Amer

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Abstract.We conducted two studies on the use of null and overt pronouns and noun phrases in Vietnamese, with a focus on referents' grammatical roles, grammatical parallelism and topicality. Vietnamese overt pronouns differ from English-type languages as they also function as kin terms. The first study investigated narratives and finds that referential form choice is influenced by the grammatical role and grammatical position of the antecedent: When the subject of the current clause refers to the subject of the preceding clause (subject parallelism), we find a high rate of (null and overt) pronouns. Lack of parallelism triggers mostly NPs. When the object of the current clause refers to the object of the preceding clause (object parallelism), we also find more pronouns than in non-parallel cases. Interestingly, null pronouns only occur in parallel cases. Crucially, we find no clear differences in the distribution of null vs. overt pronouns, suggesting that grammatical roles and parallelism have the same effects on both pronoun types. Using passivization to manipulate topicality, Experiment 2 further investigated the null vs. overt pronoun choice and found that pronouns are strongly preferred for topicalized subjects in passives and that null pronouns exhibit a stronger sensitivity to topicality than overt pronouns. To our knowledge, these experiments are the first experimental investigation of a kin-termbased pronoun system.

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Verb argument structure predicts implicit causality: The advantages of finer-grained semantics

Cited by 75 publications

References 49 publications

From Verbs to Discourse: A Novel Account of Implicit Causality

From Verbs to Discourse: A Novel Account of Implicit Causality

It takes two to kiss, but does it take three to give a kiss? Categorization based on thematic roles

Effects of grammatical roles and topicality on Vietnamese referential form production

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