The processing and interpretation of verb phrase ellipsis constructions by children at normal and slowed speech rates.

PURPOSE: To examine children's comprehension of verb phrase (VP) ellipsis constructions in light of their automatic, online structural processing abilities and conscious, metalinguistic reflective skill. METHOD: Forty-two children ages 5 through 12 years listened to VP ellipsis constructions involving the strict/sloppy ambiguity (e.g., "The janitor untangled himself from the rope and the fireman in the elementary school did too after the accident.") in which the ellipsis phrase ("did too") had 2 interpretations: (a) strict ("untangled the janitor") and (b) sloppy ("untangled the fireman"). We examined these sentences at a normal speech rate with an online cross-modal picture priming task (n = 14) and an offline sentence-picture matching task (n = 11). Both tasks were also given with slowed speech input (n = 17). RESULTS: Children showed priming for both the strict and sloppy interpretations at a normal speech rate but only for the strict interpretation with slowed input. Offline, children displayed an adultlike preference for the sloppy interpretation with normal-rate input but a divergent pattern with slowed speech. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that children and adults rely on a hybrid syntax-discourse model for the online comprehension and offline interpretation of VP ellipsis constructions. This model incorporates a temporally sensitive syntactic process of VP reconstruction (disrupted with slow input) and a temporally protracted discourse effect attributed to parallelism (preserved with slow input).

Parallelism effects and verb activation: the sustained reactivation hypothesis.

This study investigated the processes underlying parallelism by evaluating the activation of a parallel element (i.e., a verb) throughout and-coordinated sentences. Four points were tested: (1) approximately 1,600 ms after the verb in the first conjunct (PP1), (2) immediately following the conjunction (PP2), (3) approximately 1,100 ms after the conjunction (PP3), (4) at the end of the second conjunct (PP4). The results revealed no activation at PP1, suggesting activation related to the initial presentation had decayed by this point; however, activation was observed at PP2, PP3, and PP4, suggesting the conjunction elicits reactivation that is sustained throughout the second conjunct. These findings support a specific hypothesis about parallelism, the sustained reactivation hypothesis. This hypothesis claims that, in conjoined structures, a cue that is associated with parallelism elicits the reactivation of material from the first conjunct and that this activation is sustained until integration with the second conjunct can be completed.

Processing Anaphoric Constructions: Insights from Electrophysiological Studies.

Anaphora is a common, universal, and critical aspect of communication. For quite some time, linguists and psycholinguists have applied introspective and behavioral techniques to the study of anaphora, yielding a large body of evidence and generating a number of theories and models of anaphoric usage and processing. The recent advent of the use of electrophysiological techniques to study language processing creates a unique opportunity to reevaluate these theories and models on the basis of neurophysiological data. This paper examines whether two key characteristics of anaphoric relationships (i.e. the underlying linguistic mechanism and the nature of the anaphor) have observable effects on neurophysiological processing. An exhaustive review of electrophysiological studies testing anaphoric constructions leads to the novel conclusion that the effects of these characteristics are reducible to differences in the time-course of the availability of information and the ability to form expectations about anaphoric relationships. This review also demonstrates that while theories of anaphoric usage are generally supported, finer-grained models of the time-course of anaphoric processing require revision to account for the new electrophysiological data.