From owner-cse575-fa07-list@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Mon Oct 1 11:10:18 2007 Received: from ares.cse.buffalo.edu (ares.cse.buffalo.edu [128.205.32.79]) by castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU (8.13.6/8.12.10) with ESMTP id l91FAIZj010479 for ; Mon, 1 Oct 2007 11:10:18 -0400 (EDT) Received: from front1.acsu.buffalo.edu (coldfront.acsu.buffalo.edu [128.205.6.89]) by ares.cse.buffalo.edu (8.13.8/8.13.6) with SMTP id l91F7baJ051677 for ; Mon, 1 Oct 2007 11:07:37 -0400 (EDT) Received: (qmail 1299 invoked from network); 1 Oct 2007 15:07:32 -0000 Received: from mailscan8.acsu.buffalo.edu (128.205.7.55) by front1.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 1 Oct 2007 15:07:32 -0000 Received: (qmail 15388 invoked from network); 1 Oct 2007 15:07:31 -0000 Received: from deliverance.acsu.buffalo.edu (128.205.7.57) by front2.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 1 Oct 2007 15:07:31 -0000 Received: (qmail 12103 invoked from network); 1 Oct 2007 15:05:47 -0000 Received: from listserv.buffalo.edu (128.205.7.35) by deliverance.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 1 Oct 2007 15:05:47 -0000 Received: by LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 14.5) with spool id 2799697 for CSE575-FA07-LIST@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU; Mon, 1 Oct 2007 11:05:47 -0400 Delivered-To: cse575-fa07-list@listserv.buffalo.edu Received: (qmail 14319 invoked from network); 1 Oct 2007 15:05:47 -0000 Received: from mailscan1.acsu.buffalo.edu (128.205.6.133) by listserv.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 1 Oct 2007 15:05:47 -0000 Received: (qmail 3015 invoked from network); 1 Oct 2007 15:05:43 -0000 Received: from castor.cse.buffalo.edu (128.205.32.14) by smtp1.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 1 Oct 2007 15:05:43 -0000 Received: from castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU (rapaport@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU (8.13.6/8.12.10) with ESMTP id l91F5hTg010184; Mon, 1 Oct 2007 11:05:43 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from rapaport@localhost) by castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU (8.13.6/8.12.9/Submit) id l91F5h39010183; Mon, 1 Oct 2007 11:05:43 -0400 (EDT) X-UB-Relay: (castor.cse.buffalo.edu) X-PM-EL-Spam-Prob: : 7% Message-ID: <200710011505.l91F5h39010183@castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU> Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 11:05:43 -0400 Reply-To: "William J. Rapaport" Sender: Introduction to Cognitive Science From: "William J. Rapaport" Subject: CogSci, 10/3, D.Roland, Discourse Context & Eng. Obj. Rel. Clauses Comments: To: cogsci-local-list@listserv.buffalo.edu To: CSE575-FA07-LIST@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Precedence: list List-Help: , List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Owner: List-Archive: X-UB-Relay: (castor.cse.buffalo.edu) X-PM-EL-Spam-Prob: : 7% X-DCC-Buffalo.EDU-Metrics: castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU 1029; Body=0 Fuz1=0 Fuz2=0 X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.5 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.1.8 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.8 (2007-02-13) on ares.cse.buffalo.edu X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.90.2/4445/Mon Oct 1 04:32:46 2007 on ares.cse.buffalo.edu X-Virus-Status: Clean Status: R Content-Length: 4058 ======================================================================== THIS WEEK THIS WEEK THIS WEEK THIS WEEK THIS WEEK THIS WEEK ======================================================================== Center for Cognitive Science, University at Buffalo presents Doug Roland Department of Linguistics, University at Buffalo http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~droland/ Wednesday, 3 October 2007; 2:00 p.m.; Park 280 Discourse Context and English Object Relative Clauses ABSTRACT While object relative clauses such as (1) (1) The lady that the banker visited enjoyed the dinner very much. are generally more difficult to process than subject relative clauses such as (2), (2) The lady that visited the banker enjoyed the dinner very much. a variety of factors such as the pronominal status and givenness of the embedded NP have been shown to reduce or eliminate this difficulty. We argue that this reduction in difficulty is not the result of the pronominal status of the embedded NP per se, but is the result of changes in the relationship between the object relatives and the larger discourse context in which they appear. In normal language use, object relatives tend to be used to ground the modified NP in the discourse context, while subject relatives are more likely to be used for other purposes. Thus, (2) would be likely to occur whether or not the banker had been mentioned already, while (1) would be likely to occur only if the banker had been the discourse topic. If discourse factors rather than pronominal status or frequency factors were responsible for previous results, the difficulty of object relative clauses with full NPs should be reduced when they are embedded in an appropriate discourse context. A participant-paced moving window paradigm was used to examine the influence of discourse context on the processing of relative clauses. Preceding context sentences either provided a discourse context where the embedded NP of the relative clause was the topic (e.g., 3), (3) The banker was very friendly. The lady that ... or was related to the target sentence, but did not topicalize the embedded NP (e.g., 4). (4) There was a dinner party on Saturday night. The lady that ... We found that when an appropriate discourse context was provided, object relatives with full NPs were read as quickly as subject relatives in the regions containing the embedded NP and relative clause verb. However, we also found that, regardless of discourse context, the main clause verb was read more slowly for object relatives than subject relatives. While providing an appropriate discourse context did not completely eliminate processing difficulties associated with object relatives, given the reading time results at the main verb, it did eliminate previously observed processing differences between subject and object relatives in the relative clause itself. Thus, our results suggest that the pronominal object relative effect may be due, in part, to the better fit between the typical discourse use of object relatives and experimental contexts in which they appeared. Wednesday, 3 October 2007; 2:00 p.m.; Park 280 Coffee and cookies may (or may not) be served. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ For further information, please visit: http://www.cogsci.buffalo.edu/ or contact: William J. Rapaport Colloquium Chair, Center for Cognitive Science Associate Professor of Computer Science Affiliated Faculty, Philosophy & Linguistics 201 Bell Hall | (716) 645-3180 x 112 Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering | fax: (716) 645-3464 University at Buffalo (SUNY) | rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu Buffalo, NY 14260-2000 | http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport Buffalo Restaurant Guide: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/restaurant.guide/ Good Things about Buffalo: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/buffalo.html