Abstract
We explore the implications of an event-based expectancy generation approach to language understanding, suggesting that one useful strategy employed by comprehenders is to generate expectations about upcoming words. We focus on two questions: (1) What role is played by elements other than verbs in generating expectancies? (2) What connection exists between expectancy generation and event-based knowledge? Because verbs follow their arguments in many constructions (particularly in verb-final languages), deferring expectations until the verb seems inefficient. Both human data and computational modeling suggest that other sentential elements may also play a role in predictive processing and that these constraints often reflect knowledge regarding typical events. We investigated these predictions, using both short and long stimulus onset asynchrony priming. Robust priming obtained when verbs were named aloud following typical agents, patients, instruments, and locations, suggesting that event memory is organized so that nouns denoting entities and objects activate the classes of events in which they typically play a role. These computations are assumed to be an important component of expectancy generation in sentence processing.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Altmann, G. T. M. (1998). Ambiguity in sentence processing.Trends in Cognitive Sciences,2, 146–152.
Altmann, G. T. M. (1999). Thematic role assignment in context.Journal of Memory & Language,41, 124–145.
Altmann, G. T. M. (2002). Predicting thematic role assignments in context. In P. Merlo & S. Stevenson (Eds.),The lexical basis of sentence processing: Formal, computational, and experimental issues (pp. 281–302). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Altmann, G. T. M., &Kamide, Y. (1999). Incremental interpretation at verbs: Restricting the domain of subsequent reference.Cognition,73, 247–264.
Anderson, S. J., &Conway, M. A. (1997). Representations of autobiographical memories. In M. A. Conway (Ed.),Cognitive models of memory (pp. 217–246). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Becker, C. A. (1980). Semantic context effects in visual word recognition: An analysis of semantic strategies.Memory & Cognition,8, 493–512.
Boland, J. E., Tanenhaus, M. K., Carlson, G., &Garnsey, S. M. (1989). Lexical projection and the interaction of syntax and semantics in parsing.Journal of Psycholinguistic Research,18, 563–576.
Brown, N. R., &Schopflocher, D. (1998). Event clusters: An organization of personal events in autobiographical memory.Psychological Science,9, 470–475.
Carlson, G. N., &Tanenhaus, M. K. (1988). Thematic roles and language comprehension. In W. Wilkins (Ed.),Thematic relations (pp. 263- 288). New York: Academic Press.
Christiansen, M., &Chater, N. (1999). Toward a connectionist model of recursion in human linguistic performance.Cognitive Science,23, 157–205.
Cohen, J., MacWhinney, B., Flatt, M., &Provost, J. (1993). PsyScope: An interactive graphic system for designing and controlling experiments in the psychology laboratory using Macintosh computers.Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers,25, 257–271.
Collins, A. M., &Quillian, M. R. (1969). Retrieval time from semantic memory.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,8, 240–247.
de Groot, A. M. B. (1984). Primed lexical decision: Combined effects of the proportion of related prime-target pairs and the stimulus-onset asynchrony of prime and target.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,36A, 253–280.
den Heyer, K., Briand, K., &Dannenbring, G. L. (1983). Strategic factors in a lexical-decision task: Evidence for automatic and attention-driven processes.Memory & Cognition,11, 374–381.
Dowty, D. (1991). Thematic proto-roles and argument selection.Language,67, 547–619.
Elman, J. L. (1990). Finding structure in time.Cognitive Science,14, 179–211.
Elman, J. L., Hare, M., &McRae, K. (2004). Cues, constraints, and competition in sentence processing. In M. Tomasello & D. I. Slobin (Eds.),Beyond nature-nurture: Essays in honor of Elizabeth Bates (pp. 111–138). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Federmeier, K. D., &Kutas, M. (1999). A rose by any other name: Long-term memory structure and sentence processing.Journal of Memory & Language,41, 469–495.
Ferreira, F., &Clifton, C. (1986). The independence of syntactic processing.Journal of Memory & Language,25, 348–368.
Ferretti, T. R. (2000).Situation schemas, thematic roles and grammatical morphemes. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Western Ontario.
Ferretti, T. R., McRae, K., &Hatherell, A. (2001). Integrating verbs, situation schemas, and thematic role concepts.Journal of Memory & Language,44, 516–547.
Fillmore, C. J. (1968). The case for case. In E. Bach & R. T. Harms (Eds.),Universals in linguistic theory (pp. 1–88). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Frazier, L. (1987). Syntactic processing: Evidence from Dutch.Natural Language & Linguistic Theory,5, 519–560.
Frazier, L., Clifton, C., &Randall, J. (1983). Filling gaps: Decision principles and structure in sentence comprehension.Cognition,13, 187–222.
Garnsey, S. M., Pearlmutter, N. J., Myers, E., &Lotocky, M. A. (1997). The contribution of verb-bias and plausibility to the comprehension of temporarily ambiguous sentences.Journal of Memory & Language,37, 58–93.
Garrod, S. C., &Sanford, A. J. (1981). Bridging inferences and the extended domain of reference. In J. [B.] Long & A. [D.] Baddeley (Eds.),Attention and performance IX (pp. 331–346). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Gentner, D. (1975). Evidence for the psychological reality of semantic components: The verbs of possession. In D. A. Norman & D. E. Rumelhart (Eds.),Explorations in cognition (pp. 211–246). San Francisco: Freeman.
Gentner, D. (1982). Why nouns are learned before verbs: Linguistic relativity versus natural partitioning. In S. Kuczaj II (Ed.),Language development: Vol. 2. Language, thought and culture (pp. 38–62). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Gruber, J. S. (1965).Studies in lexical relations. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, MA.
Hare, M., McRae, K., &Elman, J. L. (2003). Sense and structure: Meaning as a determinant of verb subcategorization preferences.Journal of Memory & Language,48, 281–303.
Hare, M., McRae, K., &Elman, J. L. (2004). Admitting that admitting verb sense into corpus analyses makes sense.Language & Cognitive Processes,19, 181–224.
Hare, M., McRae, K., Friedrich, J., Kelly, S., & Thomson, C. (2005).Activating aspects of event knowledge from nouns denoting events, locations, and instruments. Manuscript in preparation.
Hess, D. J., Foss, D. J., &Carroll, P. (1995). Effects of global and local context on lexical processing during language comprehension.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,124, 62–82.
Kahan, T. A., Neely, J. H., &Forsythe, W. J. (1999). Dissociated backward priming effects in lexical decision and pronunciation tasks.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,6, 105–110.
Kamide, Y., Altmann, G. T. M., &Haywood, S. L. (2003). The timecourse of prediction in incremental sentence processing: Evidence from anticipatory eye movements.Journal of Memory & Language,49, 133–156.
Kamide, Y., &Mitchell, D. C. (1999). Incremental pre-head attachment in Japanese parsing.Language & Cognitive Processes,14, 631–662.
Kamide, Y., Scheepers, C., &Altmann, G. T. M. (2003). Integration of syntactic and semantic information in predictive processing: Crosslinguistic evidence from German and English.Journal of Psycholinguistic Research,32, 37–55.
Kim, A. E., Srinivas, B., &Trueswell, J. C. (2002). The convergence of lexicalist perspectives in psycholinguistics and computational linguistics. In S. Stevenson & P. Merlo (Eds.),The lexical basis of sentence processing (pp. 109–135). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Kolodner, J. L. (1984).Retrieval and organizational strategies in conceptual memory: A computer model. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Kutas, M., &Hillyard, S. A. (1984). Brain potentials during reading reflect word expectancy and semantic association.Nature,307, 161–163.
Lancaster, J. S., &Barsalou, L. W. (1997). Multiple organizations of events in memory.Memory,5, 569–599.
MacDonald, M. C. (1994). Probabilistic constraints and syntactic ambiguity resolution.Language & Cognitive Processes,9, 157–201.
MacDonald, M. C., Pearlmutter, N. J., &Seidenberg, M. S. (1994). The lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity resolution.Psychological Review,101, 676–703.
Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (1975). Sentence perception as an interactive parallel process.Science,189, 226–228.
Marslen-Wilson, W. D., &Welsh, A. (1978). Processing interactions and lexical access during word recognition in continuous speech.Cognitive Psychology,10, 29–63.
McRae, K., Ferretti, T. R., &Amyote, L. (1997). Thematic roles as verb-specific concepts.Language & Cognitive Processes,12, 137–176.
McRae, K., Spivey-Knowlton, M. J., &Tanenhaus, M. K. (1998). Modeling the influence of thematic fit (and other constraints) in online sentence comprehension.Journal of Memory & Language,38, 283–312.
Moss, H. E., Ostrin, R. K., Tyler, L. K., &Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (1995). Accessing different types of lexical semantic information: Evidence from priming.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,21, 863–883.
Myers, J. L. (1979).Fundamentals of experimental design. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Novick, J. M., Kim, A., &Trueswell, J. C. (2003). Studying the grammatical aspects of word recognition: Lexical priming, parsing, and syntactic ambiguity resolution.Journal of Psycholinguistic Research,32, 57–75.
Peterson, R. R., &Simpson, G. B. (1989). Effect of backward priming on word recognition in single-word and sentence contexts.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,15, 1020–1032.
Pollatsek, A., &Well, A. D. (1995). On the use of counterbalanced designs in cognitive research: A suggestion for a better and more powerful analysis.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,21, 785–794.
Potts, G. R., Keenan, J. M., &Golding, J. M. (1988). Accessing the occurrence of elaborative inferences: Lexical decision versus naming.Journal of Memory & Language,27, 399–415.
Rayner, K., Carlson, M., &Frazier, L. (1983). The interaction of syntax and semantics during sentence processing.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,22, 358–374.
Reiser, B. J., Black, J. B., &Abelson, R. P. (1985). Knowledge structures in the organization and retrieval of autobiographical memories.Cognitive Psychology,17, 89–137.
Rumelhart, D. E., &Levin, J. A. (1975). A language comprehension system. In D. A. Norman & D. E. Rumelhart (Eds.),Explorations in cognition (pp. 179–208). San Francisco: Freeman.
Sag, I., &Wasow, T. (1999).Syntactic theory: A formal introduction. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Sanford, A. J., &Garrod, S. C. (1981).Understanding written language: Explorations of comprehension beyond the sentence. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley.
Schank, R. C. (1982).Dynamic memory: A theory of reminding and learning in computers and people. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Spivey-Knowlton, M. J., &Tanenhaus, M. K. (1998). Syntactic ambiguity resolution in discourse: Modeling the effects of referential context and lexical frequency.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,24, 1521–1543.
Stolz, J. H., &Neely, J. H. (1995). When target degradation does and does not enhance semantic context effects in word recognition.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,21, 596–611.
Tabor, W., &Tanenhaus, M. K. (2001). Dynamical systems for sentence processing. In M. H. Christiansen & N. Chater (Eds.),Connectionist psycholinguistics (pp. 177–211). Westport, CT: Ablex.
Tanenhaus, M. K., Spivey-Knowlton, M. J., Eberhard, K. M., &Sedivy, J. C. (1995). Integration of visual and linguistic information in spoken language comprehension.Science,268, 1632–1634.
Tanenhaus, M. K., &Trueswell, J. C. (1995). Sentence comprehension. In J. L. Miller & P. D. Eimas (Eds.),Speech, language, and communication (Handbook in Perception and Cognition, Vol. 11, pp. 217–262). San Diego: Academic Press.
Tomasello, M. (1992).First verbs: A case study of early grammatical development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Trueswell, J. C., &Kim, A. (1998). How to prune a garden path by nipping it in the bud: Fast priming of verb argument structure.Journal of Memory & Language,39, 102–123.
Trueswell, J. C., Tanenhaus, M. K., &Garnsey, S. M. (1994). Semantic influences on parsing: Use of thematic role information in syntactic ambiguity resolution.Journal of Memory & Language,33, 285–319.
Trueswell, J. C., Tanenhaus, M. K., &Kello, C. (1993). Verbspecific constraints in sentence processing: Separating effects of lexical preference from garden-paths.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,19, 528–553.
Truitt, T. P., & Zwaan, R. A. (1997, November).Verb aspect affects the generation of instrument inferences. Paper presented at the 38th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Philadelphia.
Van Berkum, J. J. A., Brown, C. M., Zwitserlood, P., Kooijman, V., &Hagoort, P. (2005). Anticipating upcoming words in discourse: Evidence from ERPs and reading times.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,31, 443–467.
Vu, H., Kellas, G., &Paul, S. T. (1998). Sources of sentence constraint on lexical ambiguity resolution.Memory & Cognition,26, 979–1001.
Vu, H., Kellas, G., Petersen, E., &Metcalf, K. (2003). Situationevoking stimuli, domain of reference, and the incremental interpretation of lexical ambiguity.Memory & Cognition,31, 1302–1315.
Wicha, N. Y. Y., Moreno, E. M., &Kutas, M. (2003). Expecting gender: An event related brain potential study on the role of grammatical gender in comprehending a line drawing within a written sentence in Spanish.Cortex,39, 483–508.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This work was supported by NIH Grant MH6051701 to the first three authors and NSERC Grant OGP0155704 to the first author. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to K. McRae,
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
McRae, K., Hare, M., Elman, J.L. et al. A basis for generating expectancies for verbs from nouns. Memory & Cognition 33, 1174–1184 (2005). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193221
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193221