Why wait for the verb? Turkish speaking children use case markers for incremental language comprehension

Özge, Duygu; Küntay, Ayli̇n C.; Snedeker, Jesse

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2018.10.026

Cited by 40 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 90 publications

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“…That is, in both English and Spanish, as soon as listeners heard the first attribute, whether it was the modifier (English) or noun (Spanish), they immediately launched a search for the referent; target fixations were boosted when the first-mentioned attribute, rather than the secondmentioned attribute, discriminated the referent. This is in line with findings from Eberhard et al (1995) and our current study, as well as with other studies showing that language processing proceeds incrementally across different languages (e.g., Kamide, Altmann, & Haywood, 2003;Knoeferle, Crocker, Scheepers, & Pickering, 2005;Özge, Küntay, & Snedeker, 2019). With particular reference to the incremental processing of over-specification across different languages, based on our findings, we predict that in the simultaneous presence of the visual display, if an earlier-mentioned attribute fully discriminates, the late inclusion of an additional attribute is unlikely to speed up the execution of referent selection relative to a shorter description without the additional attribute, even when it increases target fixations (Experiment 2A).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 94%

Overspecification and incremental referential processing: An eye-tracking study.

Fukumura¹,

Carminati²

2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Using eye-tracking, we examined if over-specification hinders or facilitates referent selection, and the extent to which this depends on the properties of the attribute mentioned in the referring expressions and the underpinning processing mode. Following spoken instructions, participants selected the referent in a visual display while their eye movements were monitored. The referring expressions were presented either simultaneously with the displays, so the attributes could be incrementally processed in sequence, or before the display presentation, so the attributes could be processed in parallel from the outset of search. Experiment 1 showed that when the attributes were processed incrementally, how quickly an earlier-mentioned attribute discriminated determined whether a late-mentioned, over-specified attribute contributed to discrimination: When color was mentioned first and is fully discriminating, the referent was selected fast regardless of the secondmentioned pattern, whereas when pattern was mentioned first and is fully discriminating, the second-mentioned color facilitated discrimination. Experiment 2 found that under incremental processing, color mention after a fully discriminating pattern increased fixations but delayed referent selection relative to a pattern-only description; under parallel processing, however, color mention immediately eliminated alternatives and sped up referent selection. Experiment 3 showed that pattern mention after a fully discriminating color delayed referent selection and tended to reduce fixations relative to a color-only description in both processing modes. Hence, additional attributes can speed up referent selection but only when they can discriminate much faster than alternative attributes mentioned in a more concise description, and critically, when they can be used early for referent search.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 94%

Overspecification and incremental referential processing: An eye-tracking study.

Fukumura¹,

Carminati²

2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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“…There has been evidence that learning from contextual frames universally relies on items at the morpheme level instead of the word level 78 . Also, for morphologically complex languages such as Turkish, previous studies have revealed the importance of verbal morphology and case marking for language comprehension, especially for understanding causal meaning 84 – 86 . Hence, to generalize our findings to typologically diverse languages, future research should look at semantic learning from distributional information in raw input at both word and morpheme levels.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Child-directed speech is optimized for syntax-free semantic inference

You

Bickel

Daum

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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The way infants learn language is a highly complex adaptive behavior. This behavior chiefly relies on the ability to extract information from the speech they hear and combine it with information from the external environment. Most theories assume that this ability critically hinges on the recognition of at least some syntactic structure. Here, we show that child-directed speech allows for semantic inference without relying on explicit structural information. We simulate the process of semantic inference with machine learning applied to large text collections of two different types of speech, child-directed speech versus adult-directed speech. Taking the core meaning of causality as a test case, we find that in child-directed speech causal meaning can be successfully inferred from simple co-occurrences of neighboring words. By contrast, semantic inference in adult-directed speech fundamentally requires additional access to syntactic structure. These results suggest that child-directed speech is ideally shaped for a learner who has not yet mastered syntactic structure.

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“…Studies from child language in Turkish have also shown correct production of case marking as early as 2 years of age (Ketrez 2004;Ketrez & Aksu-Koç, 2009). Turkish-speaking 4year-olds can also interpret nominative and accusative case marking cues in their online processing of simple sentences (Özge, Küntay, & Snedeker, 2019). Findings reporting intact production of case marking in Turkish and German Broca's patients do not concur with the findings from German-speaking children who acquire case rather late (Knoll et al, 2013;Dittmar et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Son Edinilen İlk Unutulur Prensibi: Tipik Gelişim Gösteren Çocuklar ve Broka Afazili Bireylerin Türkçe İlgi Tümcelerini Anlamlandırma Süreçleri

Özge

Çiyiltepe

Tekman

2020

Dilbilim Araştırmaları Dergisi

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The present study addresses whether adults with Broca's aphasia who have damage in their Posterior Left Inferior Frontal Gyrus (PLIFG) show similar performance to typically developing children in their processing of complex syntax. We tested comprehension of Turkish relative clauses using a sentence-picture matching task in Broca's patients and children with typical development (aged: 3;04-4;03). Both groups showed better performance in subject relative clauses compared to object relative clauses. Children's similar performance to Broca's patients might be due to the fact that PLIFG is a latematuring neural region. Our participants had more errors in object relative clauses despite the first referent was the agent so there was no evidence for the agent-first strategy. Poor performance in object relative clauses was linked to the morphosyntactic complexity in these structures.

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Why wait for the verb? Turkish speaking children use case markers for incremental language comprehension

Cited by 40 publications

References 90 publications

Overspecification and incremental referential processing: An eye-tracking study.

Overspecification and incremental referential processing: An eye-tracking study.

Child-directed speech is optimized for syntax-free semantic inference

Son Edinilen İlk Unutulur Prensibi: Tipik Gelişim Gösteren Çocuklar ve Broka Afazili Bireylerin Türkçe İlgi Tümcelerini Anlamlandırma Süreçleri

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