Are complex function words processed as semantically empty strings? A reading time and ERP study of collocational complex prepositions

Language and Cognitive Processes

Volumn 28, Issue 6, 2013, Pages 762-788

  Molinaro, Nicola ^a   Canal, Paolo ^b,c   Vespignani, Francesco ^d   Pesciarelli, Francesca ^c   Cacciari, Cristina ^c  

^a BASQUE CENTER ON COGNITION   (Spain)

^b UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX   (United Kingdom)

^c UNIVERSITY OF MODENA AND REGGIO EMILIA   (Italy)

^d UNIVERSITY OF TRENTO   (Italy)

Author keywords

Collocational complex prepositions; LAN; N400; Sentence processing

Indexed keywords

ADULT; ARTICLE; AUTOMATION; COLLOCATIONAL COMPLEX PREPOSITION; COMPREHENSION; EVENT RELATED POTENTIAL; FEMALE; HUMAN; LONG TERM MEMORY; MALE; PRIORITY JOURNAL; READING; SEMANTIC MEMORY; SEMANTICS; WORD RECOGNITION;

EID: 84879523327     PISSN: 01690965     EISSN: 14640732     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01690965.2012.665465     Document Type: Article

References (75)

1. Anderson, J. E., & Holcomb, P. J. 2005. An electrophysiological investigation of the effects of coreference on word repetition and synonymy. Brain and Language, 94 (2), 200 - 216. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2005.01.001
2. Arnon, I., & Snider, N. 2010. More than words: Frequency effects for multi-word phrases. Journal of Memory and Language, 62, 67 - 82. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2009.09.005
3. Baayen, R. H. 2008. Analyzing linguistic data. A practical introduction to statistics using R, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
4. Baayen, R. H. and Milin, P. 2010. Analyzing reaction times. International Journal of Psychological Research, 3: 12 - 28.
5. Baroni, M., Bernardini, S., Comastri, F., Piccioni, L., Volpi, A., Aston, G., & Mazzoleni, M. 2004. Introducing the 'la Repubblica' corpus: A large, annotated, TEI(XML)-compliant corpus of Italian newspaper. Proceedings of LREC 2004.
6. Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S. and Finegan, E. 1999. Grammar of spoken and written English, Harlow, England: Longman.
7. Bobrow, S. A. and Bell, S. M. 1973. On catching on to idiomatic expressions. Memory & Cognition, 1: 343 - 346.
8. Bouma, G., & Villada, B. 2002. Corpus-based acquisition of collocational prepositional phrases. Language and Computers, Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands 2001. In M. Theune, A. Nijholt, & H. Hondorp, Selected papers from the twelfth CLIN meeting (pp. 23 - 37). Amsterdam, New York.
9. Brown, C. M., Hagoort, P., & ter Keurs, M. 1999. Electrophysiological signatures of visual lexical processing: Open- and closed-class words. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 11, 261 - 281. doi: 10.1162/0898929999563382
10. Bybee, J. and Hopper, P. 2001. Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
11. Cacciari, C. and Glucksberg, S. 1991. " Understanding idiomatic expressions: The contribution of word meanings ". In Understanding word and sentence, Edited by: Simpson, G. B. 217 - 240. North-Holland: Elsevier Science Publishers.
12. Cacciari, C. and Glucksberg, S. 1994. " Understanding figurative language ". In Handbook of psycholinguistics, Edited by: Gernsbacher, M. A. 447 - 477. Waltam, MA: Academic Press.
13. Cacciari, C., & Tabossi, P. 1988. The comprehension of idioms. Journal of Memory & Language, 27, 668 - 683. doi: 10.1016/0749-596X(88)90014-9
14. Canal, P., Vespignani, F., Molinaro, N., Pesciarelli, F., & Cacciari, C. 2011. Brain potentials differentiate compositional and non-compositional processing of Multi-Word Expressions: The case of idioms. Poster presented at the CUNY 2011 conference on human sentence processing. Stanford, CA, March 24-26.
15. Conklin, K., & Schmitt, N. 2008. Formulaic sequences: Are they processed more quickly than nonformulaic language by native and nonnative speakers? Applied Linguistics, 29, 72 - 89. doi: 10.1093/applin/amm022
16. Coulson, S., King, J., & Kutas, M. 1998. Expect the unexpected: Event-related brain response to morphosyntactic violations. Language and Cognitive Processes, 13, 21 - 58. doi: 10.1234/12345678
17. DeLong, K. A., Urbach, T. P., & Kutas, M. 2005. Probabilistic word pre-activation during language comprehension inferred from electrical brain activity. Nature Neuroscience, 8, 1117 - 1121. doi: 10.1038/nn1504
18. Ellis, N. C. 1996. Sequencing in SLA. Phonological memory, chunking, and points of order. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 91 - 126. doi: 10.1017/S0272263100014698
19. Federmeier, K. D. 2007. Thinking ahead: The role and roots of prediction in language comprehension. Psychophysiology, 44, 491 - 505. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2007.00531.x
20. Fraser, B. 1970. Idioms within a transformational grammar. Foundations of Language, 6: 22 - 42.
21. Friederici, A. D. 1982. Syntactic and semantic processes in aphasic deficits: The availability of prepositions. Brain and Language, 15, 249 - 258. doi: 10.1016/0093-934X(82)90059-1
22. Friederici, A. D. 2002. Towards a neural basis of auditory sentence processing. Trends in Cognitive Science, 6 (2), 78 - 84. doi: 10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01839-8
23. Gibbs, R. W. Jr, Nayak, N. P., & Cutting, C. 1989. How to kick the bucket and not decompose: Analyzability and idiom processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 28, 576 - 593. doi: 10.1016/0749-596X(89)90014-4
24. Glucksberg, S. 2001. Understanding figurative language: From metaphors to idioms, New York: Oxford University Press.
25. Just, M. A., Carpenter, P. A. and Wooley, J. D. 1982. Paradigms and processes in reading comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 111: 228 - 238.
26. Kim, A., & Osterhout, L. 2005. The independence of combinatory semantic processing: Evidence from event-related potentials. Journal of Memory and Language, 52, 205 - 225. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2004.10.00
27. King, J. W., & Kutas, M. 1995. Who did what and when? Using word-and clause-level ERPs to monitor working memory usage in reading. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 7, 376 - 395. doi: 10.1162/jocn.1995.7.3.376
28. King, J. W., & Kutas, M. 1998. Neural plasticity in the dynamics of visual word recognition. Neuroscience Letters, 244 (2), 61 - 64. doi: 10.1016/S0304-3940(98)00140-2
29. Kluender, R., & Kutas, M. 1993. Bridging the gap: Evidence from ERPs on the processing of unbounded dependencies. Journal of Cognitive Neurosciences, 5 (2), 196 - 214. doi: 10.1162/jocn.1993.5.2.196
30. Konopka, A. E., & Bock, K. 2009. Lexical or syntactic control of sentence formulation? Structural generalizations from idiom production. Cognitive Psychology, 58, 68 - 101. doi: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2008.05.002
31. Kuperberg, G. R. 2007. Neural mechanisms of language comprehension: Challenges to syntax. Brain Research, 1146, 23 - 49. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2006.12.063
32. Kuperberg, G. R., Sitnikova, T., Caplan, D., & Holcomb, P. 2003. Electrophysiological distinctions in processing conceptual relationships within simple sentences. Cognitive Brain Research, 17, 117 - 129. doi: 10.1016/S0926-6410(03)00086-7
33. Kutas, M., & Federmeier, K. D. 2011. Thirty years and counting: Finding meaning in the N400 component of event related potential (ERP). Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 621 - 647. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.13112
34. Kutas, M., & Hillyard, S. A. 1980. Reading senseless sentences: Brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity. Science, 207, 203 - 205. doi: 10.1126/science.7350657
35. Kutas, M., & Hillyard, S. A. 1984. Brain potentials during reading reflect word expectancy and semantic association. Nature, 307, 161 - 163. doi: 10.1038/307161a0
36. Kutas, M., Van Petten, C., & Besson, M. 1988. Event-related potential asymmetries during the reading of sentences. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 69, 218 - 233. doi: 10.1016/0013-4694(88)90131-9
37. Kutas, M., Van Petten, C. and Kluender, R. 2006. " Psycholinguistic electrified II: 1994-2005 ". In Handbook of psycholinguistics, 2nd ed, Edited by: Traxler, M. and Gernsbacher, M. A. 659 - 724. New York, NY: Elsevier.
38. Lau, E. F., Phillips, C., & Poeppel, D. 2008. A cortical network for semantics: [De]constructing the N400. Nature Reviews: Neuroscience, 9, 920 - 933. doi: 10.1038/nrn253
39. Laudanna, A., Thornton, A. M., Brown, G., Burani, C., & Marconi, L. 1995. A written contemporary Italian corpus from the receiver side. In S. Bolasco, L. Lebart, & A. Salem, Three international days of statistic analysis of text data (Vol. I, pp. 103 - 109). Roma, Italy: Cisu.
40. Libben, M., & Titone, D. 2008. The multidetermined nature of idiom processing. Memory and Cognition, 36, 1103 - 1121. doi: 10.3758/MC.36.6.1103
41. Marslen-Wilson, W. 1984. Function and process in spoken word recognition: A tutorial review. In H. Bouma & D. Bouwhuis, Attention and performance: Vol. 10. Control of language processes (pp. 25 - 148). Hillsdale, NJ. Erlbaum.
42. Metting van Rijn, A. C., Peper, A., & Grimbergen, C. A. 1990. Highquality recording of bioelectric events. Part 1. Interference reduction, theory and practice. Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing, 28, 389 - 397. doi: 10.1234/12345678
43. Mitchell, D. C. 2004. " On-line methods in language processing: Introduction and historical review ". In The on-line study of sentence comprehension: Eye-tracking, ERP and beyond, Edited by: Carreiras, M. and Clifton, C. 15 - 32. London, UK: Routledge.
44. Molinaro, N., & Carreiras, M. 2010. Electrophysiological evidence of interaction between contextual expectation and semantic integration during the processing of collocations. Biological Psychology, 83 (3), 176 - 190. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2009.12.006
45. Molinaro, N., Conrad, M., Barber, H. A., & Carreiras, M. 2010. On the functional nature of the N400: Contrasting effects related to visual word recognition and contextual semantic integration. Cognitive Neuroscience, 1 (1), 1 - 7. doi: 10.1080/17588920903373952
46. Molinaro, N., Vespignani, F., Canal, P., Fonda, S., & Cacciari, C. 2008. Cloze-probability does not only affect N400 amplitude: The case of complex prepositions. Psychophysiology, 45 (6), 1008 - 1012. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2008.00694.x
47. Munte, T. F., Heinze, H. J., Matzke, M., Wieringa, B. M., & Johannes, S. 1998. Brain potentials and syntactic violations revisited: No evidence for specificity of the syntactic positive shift. Neuropsychologia, 36, 217 - 226. doi: 10.1016/S0028-3932(97)00119-X
48. Munte, T. F., Wieringa, B. M., Weyerts, H., Szentkuti, A., Matzke, M., & Johannes, S. 2001. Differences in brain potentials to open and closed class words: Class and frequency effects. Neuropsychologia, 39, 91 - 102. doi: 10.1016/S0028-3932(00)00095-6
49. Neville, H. J., Mills, D. L., & Lawson, D. S. 1992. Fractionating language: Different neural subsystems with different sensitive periods. Cerebral Cortex, 2, 244 - 258. doi: 10.1093/cercor/2.3.244
50. Nunberg, G., Sag, I. A. and Wasow, T. 1994. Idioms. Language, 70: 491 - 538.
51. Osterhout, L., Allen, M., & McLaughlin, J. 2002. Words in the brain: Lexical determinants of word-induced brain activity. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 15, 171 - 187. doi: 10.1016/S0911-6044(01)00036-7
52. Osterhout, L., Bersick, M., & McKinnon, R. 1997. Brain potentials elicited by words: Word length and frequency predict the latency of an early negativity. Biological Psychology, 46, 143 - 168. doi: 10.1016/S0301-0511(97)05250-2
53. Osterhout, L., & Holcomb, P. J. 1992. Event-related brain potentials elicited by syntactic anomaly. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 785 - 806. doi: 10.1016/0749-596X(92)90039-Z
54. Osterhout, L. and Holcomb, P. J. 1995. " Event-related brain potentials and language comprehension ". In Electrophysiology of mind: Event-related brain potentials and cognition, Edited by: Rugg, M. D. and Coles, M. G. H. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
55. Osterhout, L., & Mobley, L. A. 1995. Event-related potentials elicited by failure to agree. Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 739 - 773. doi: 10.1006/jmla.1995.1033
56. Peterson, R. R., Burgess, C., Dell, G. S., & Eberhard, K. M. 2001. Dissociation between syntactic and semantic processing during idiom comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 27, 1223 - 1237. doi: 10.1037/0278-7393.27.5.1223
57. Quirk, R., & Mulholland, J. 1964. Complex prepositions and related sequences. English Studies, 45, 64 - 73. doi: 10.1080/00138386408597188
58. Schmitt, N. and Underwood, G. 2004. " Exploring the processing of formulaic sequences through a self-paced reading task ". In Formulaic sequences, Edited by: Schmitt, N. 171 - 89. Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
59. Siyanova-Chanturia, A., Conklin, K., & Van Heuven, W. J. B. 2011. Seeing a phrase "Time and Again" matters: The role of phrasal frequency in the processing of multiword sequences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 37, 776 - 784. doi: 10. 1037/a0022531
60. Streb, J., Rosler, F., & Hennighausen, E. 1999. Event-related responses to pronoun and proper name anaphors in parallel and non-parallel discourse structures. Brain and Language, 70 (2), 273 - 286. doi: 10.1006/brln.1999.2177
61. Swinney, D., & Cutler, A. 1979. The access and processing of idiomatic expressions. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 18, 523 - 534. doi: 10.1016/S0022-5371(79)90284-6
62. Tabossi, P., Arduino, L., & Fanari, R. 2011. Descriptive norms for 245 Italian idiomatic expressions. Behavioral Research Methods, 43, 110 - 123. doi: 10.3758/s13428-010-0018
63. Tabossi, P., Fanari, R., & Wolf, K. 2009. Why are idioms recognized fast? Memory and Cognition, 37, 529 - 540. doi: 10.3758/MC.37.4.529
64. Titone, D. A., & Connine, C. M. 1994. Comprehension of idiomatic expressions: Effects of predictability and literality. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 20, 1126 - 1138. doi: 10.1037/0278-7393.20.5.1126
65. Trawinski, B. 2003. Licensing complex prepositions via lexical constraints. In F. Bond, A. Korhonen, D. McCarthy, & A. Villavicencio, Proceedings of the ACL 2003 workshop on multiword expressions: Analysis, acquisition and treatment (pp. 97 - 104). Association for Computational Linguistics, Stroudsburg, PA.
66. Trawinski, B., Sailer, M. and Soehn, J. 2006. Combinatorial aspects of collocational prepositional phrases. Computational Linguistics Dimensions of Syntax and Semantics of Prepositions, Series: Text, Speech and Language Technology, 29: 181 - 196.
67. Tremblay, A. and Baayen, R. H. 2010. " Holistic processing of regular four-word sequences: A behavioral and ERP study of the effects of structure, frequency, and probability on immediate free recall ". In Perspectives on formulaic language: Acquisition and communication, Edited by: Wood, D. 151 - 173. London and New York: Continuum.
68. Tremblay, A., Derwing, B., Libben, G., & Westbury, C. 2010. Processing advantages of lexical bundles: Evidence from self-paced reading and sentence recall tasks. Language Learning, 61, 569 - 613. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2010.00622.x
69. Underwood, G., Schmitt, N. and Galpin, A. 2004. " The eyes have it: An eye-movement study into the processing of formulaic sequences ". In Formulaic sequences, Edited by: Schmitt, N. 153 - 172. Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
70. van de Meerendonk, N., Kolk, H. H. J., Chwilla, D. J., & Vissers, C. Th. V. M. 2009. Monitoring in language perception. Language and Linguistics Compass, 3, 1211 - 1224. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2009.00163.x
71. Van de Voort, M. E. C. and Vonk, W. 1995. " You don't die immediately when you kick an empty bucket: A processing view on semantic and syntactic characteristics of idioms ". In Idioms: Structural and psychological perspectives, Edited by: Evaraert, M., van der Linden, E. J., Schenk, A. and Schreuder, R. 283 - 299. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
72. Van Petten, C. and Kutas, M. 1991. Influences of semantic and syntactic context on open- and closed-class words. Memory and Cognition, 19: 95 - 112.
73. Vespignani, F., Canal, P., Molinaro, N., Fonda, S., & Cacciari, C. 2010. Predictive mechanisms in idiom comprehension. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22 (8), 1682 - 1700. doi: 10.1162/jocn.2009.21293
74. Walter, W. G., Cooper, R., Aldridge, V. J., McCallum, W. C., & Winter, A. L. 1964. Contingent negative variation: An electric sign of sensorimotor association and expectancy in the human brain. Nature, 203 (4943), 380 - 384. doi: 10.1038/203380a0
75. Wasow, T., Sag, I. A., & Nunberg, G. 1982. Idioms: An interim report. Proceedings of the XIIIth international congress of linguistics. Tokyo, Japan.