Jan 21, 2009 ... [Woh naukar]1 [jisko us phalavaale ne]2 [jo bhaag rahaa thaa]3 [jagaayaa]2 [
gariib taa]1. That servant whom that fruit-seller ERG who running ...
Prosody of recursive embedding in Hindi and German
Overview 1. Theoretical background 2. Relative clauses in German and Hindi 3. Parsing relative clauses: the role of prosody 4. Discussion
Caroline Féry & Shravan Vasishth University of Potsdam, Germany
5 January 2009 Experimental Studies on Intonation Potsdam
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Relative clauses
Theoretical background
(with Fabian Schubö)
Prosody-syntax interface: Syntax projects higher prosodic phrases (Gussenhoven 1983, 1992, Selkirk 1984, Nespor & Vogel 1986,and many others after them). Questions we will address:
Recursivity in syntax: Syntactic domains are contained within each other.
Die Jungen, die das Kind, das Angst hat, ärgern,
- Are prosodic phrases recursive (in the sense that a pphrase of category n can dominate another p-phrase n)? -Do all languages organize the prosodic phrasing in the same way? - Does recursivity in phrasing guide parsing? 21.01.2009
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Relative clauses
The boys
who the child
who fear
has tease
sind böse. are
naughty
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Recursion in German relative clauses
Recursion differs from iteration. In iteration, syntactic domains do not overlap (Hunyadi 2006) The cat has found the cat that has chased the puppy that Mary just bought. Mary believes that John claims that Ann believes that Tom had painted the car. (Anna did some errands and bought) [a bottle of orange juice]P, [an apple]P, [sugar]P, [butter]P, [a pair of socks]P 21.01.2009
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Experimental material (6 sentences) Relative clauses Die Jungen, die das Kind, das Angst hat, ärgern, sind böse. The boys who the child who fear has tease are naughty Die Birnen, die an dem Baum, der grün ist, hängen, sind sauer The pears which from the tree which green is hang are sour No relative clause Die Jungen sind böse. Die Birnen sind sauer The boys are naughty The pears are sour
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German relative clauses
German relative clauses
Two possible prosodic phrase structures
Experimental design
No embedding of p-phrases (no recursion) [Die Jungen]P [die das Kind] P, [das Angst hat] P, [ärgern] P [sind böse]P
21 female native speakers of German, students at Potsdam university, aged between 20 and 30. Powerpoint presentation (one item per slide) with plenty of fillers between the target items.
Embedding of p-phrases (recursion) [Die Jungen [die das Kind [das Angst hat] P, ärgern]P sind böse]P
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The sentences were recorded on a DAT recorder.
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German relative clauses
German relative clauses
Recorded utterances were subdivided manually into subsequences with Praat © (Boersma & Weenink)
Figure 3.
Figure 4.
a. Die Birnen, | die an dem Baum, | der grün ist, | hängen,| sind sauer b. Die Birnen | sind sauer F0 measurements in the matrix clause: - Peak value of the subject noun = H of the first bitonal L*H - Peak value of the first word of the matrix VP = beginning of the matrix VP. 21.01.2009
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German relative clauses
German relative clauses Deviation from the normal case
Die Birnen, | die an dem Baum, | der grün ist, | hängen,| sind sauer 400
F0 measurements in the embedded clauses: - H of L*H of the first part of the first embedding (CP1), a noun - H of L*H in the second embedding (CP2), an adjective - H of L*H in the second part of the first embedding (CP1), a verb
300
200
100 Die Jungen
sind böse
0
1.42481 Time (s)
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German relative clauses
German relative clauses
Overall average pitch values of the two measurements in the main clauses NP peak VP begin
Figure 3.
No embeddin g 276 Hz 258 Hz
Difference between the two measurement points in the matrix clauses in sentences with and without embeddings with without
Embeddin g 316 Hz 249 Hz
Figure 4.
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Sentence 1 (hosen)
67,80
19,05
Sentence 2 (jungen)
83,74
9,95
Sentence 3 (birnen)
72,65
29,89
Sentence 4 (bären)
57,73
15,34
Sentence 5 (blumen)
76,82
17,01
Sentence 6 (bauern)
45,05
16,69
Average
67,30
17,99
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German relative clauses
German relative clauses
Results for embedded clauses: the high tones of the embedded clauses are scaled in a way that reflects the recursive syntactic structure: downstep and reset (see especially number 4 whose value is intermediate between 2 and 3)
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Results for duration: embedded relative clauses DieBirnen, | die an dem Baum,| der grün ist, | hängen,| sind sauer break1 break 2 break3 break 4 Second de-embedding causes the longest break, first deembedding the second longest (see Hunyadi 2006 for Hungarian).
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(n=21)
Break 1
Break 2
Break 3
Break 4
Sum
0,4152
0,2761
0,5456
0,8729
Sum/number of speakers
0,0197
0,0131
0,0259
0,0415
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German relative clauses
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Hindi relative clauses
Prosodic structure closely follows the syntactic structure And is compatible with a recursive prosodic structure
Same experiment in Hindi: 20 speakers recorded in Delhi, students at Delhi University, all female and in their twenties.
Embedding of prosodic phrases [Die Jungen, [die das Kind, [das Angst hat,] P ärgern,] P sind böse]P
The relative clauses were adapted from the stimuli in (Vasishth & Lewis, Language, 2006).
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Hindi relative clauses
Hindi relative clauses 400
Material: 6 sentences
H
H
[Woh naukar]1 [jisko us phalavaale ne] 2 [jo bhaag rahaa thaa] 3 [jagaayaa]2 [gariib taa]1 That servant whom that fruit-seller ERG who running was woke up poor was That servant whom the fruit-seller who was running woke up was poor.
150
H
l
l
0
H
l
H
l
l
H
l 4.5856
Time (s) 1
Question is similar to the one for German: Is the prosodic structure recursive in the same way as syntax?
H
l
l
2
3
woh
naukar
jisko
us
phalavaale
that
servant
whom
that
fruit-seller
0
4
ne
jo
ERG who
5
bhaag
rahaa
running
6
7
thaa
jagaayaa
gariib
thaa
was
woke up
poor
was 4.5856
Time (s)
Points of measurement were more numerous than in German 21.01.2009
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Hindi relative clauses
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Hindi relative clauses
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Results for duration
Hindi relative clauses Prosodic structure does not closely follow the syntactic structure. Instead a downstep pattern is visible throughout. Prosodic phrases are not embedded into each other. [Woh naukar]P [jisko us phalavaale ne]P [jo bhaag rahaa thaa]P [jagaayaa]P [gariib taa]P [That servant whom that fruit-seller ERG who running was woke up poor was
Break 1 (n=33) (NP|CP1) Sum Sum divided by total number of speakers (n=21)
Break 2 (n=43) (CP1|CP2)
Break 3 (n=40) (CP2|CP1)
Break 4 (n=46) (CP1| VP)
1,5117
1,6607
1,7088
1,4429
0,0720
0,0791
0,0814
0,0687
All breaks are of roughly equal strength, except for the last one, the second deembedding, which is slightly weaker [Woh naukar] P [jisko us phalavaale ne]P [jo bhaag rahaa thaa]P [jagaayaa] P [gariib taa]P break1 break2 break3 break4 The result for duration corroborates the absence of prosodic correlates of recursive embedding in Hindi.
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Conclusion for relative clauses
Conclusion for relative clauses
Prosodic structure closely follows the syntactic structure for German, and allows embedding of prosodic phrases if there is syntactic embedding. In Hindi, no embedding of prosodic structure was found for relative clauses.
Assuming a structure with different names for levels does not help [
[
[[
] P[ [
[
]ip
]IP
]U
]P[ [
] P] ip[
] P] IP[
] P] U
There is at least one smaller p-phrase inside of each larger domain. 21.01.2009
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Conclusion for relative clauses
Implications for parsing The prosody of recursive structures in German could provide an important cue for maintaining memory for the level of embedding. The role of silent prosody (e.g. Fodor 2002) has largely been studied in the context of ambiguity resolution. We provide evidence from eyetracking and self-paced reading studies that the prosody of recursion in German might assist in maintaining memory for level of embedding.
The distinction between different kinds of higher levels of prosodic structure is difficult to maintain. It is preferable to assume a recursive prosodic structure. What is important is that some prosodic domains are separated from their neighbors by larger breaks than others. A recursive structure achieves this aim easily.
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Ungrammatical but acceptable embeddings
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Ungrammatical but acceptable embeddings This preference for the ungrammatical structure turns out to be reflected in online processing (selfpaced reading and eyetracking).
Frazier (1985) pointed out that the ungrammatical sentence (a) is perceived as acceptable but the grammatical version (b) is not: a. The apartment that the maid who the service had sent over was well decorated. b. The apartment that the maid who the service had sent over was cleaning every week was well decorated.
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Details in: Short-term forgetting in sentence comprehension: Cross-linguistic evidence from head-final structures. Vasishth, Suckow, Lewis & Kern (submitted). 29
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English center embeddings (SPR)
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English center embeddings (eyetracking)
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German center embeddings (SPR)
German center embeddings Thus, English readers slow down at the matrix verb in the grammatical condition; they are faster in the ungrammatical condition. German readers, however, show the opposite pattern.
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German center embeddings (eyetracking)
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Hindi center embeddings In an informal grammaticality judgement task (n=14), we found that Hindi speakers overwhelmingly reject center embeddings, grammatical or ungrammatical. Ek puliisvaalaa [ jisne ek aadmii-ko [ jo ek aurat-ko One policemen who one man-acc
who one woman-acc
maar rahaa thaa] dekhaa] bhaag uthaa hitting was
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saw
ran off
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The puzzle
A proposal
Why do German speakers show a different pattern from English and Hindi speakers in the ungrammatical but acceptable structures? One possibility: German relative clauses require commas. Commas might provide a cue for tracking level of embedding. However, commas help only in German, not in English (Vasishth et al, submitted).
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German readers may be using prosodic cues in recursive structures to track the embedding level. Hindi (and possibly also English) speakers do not have these prosodic cues, making center embeddings difficult and making it difficult for them to track level of embedding.
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Concluding remarks Prosodic structure mirrors syntactic recursive structure in German but not Hindi. Prosodic marking of embedding level could enhance memory for structure during parsing. Such a role for prosody in parsing would be very different from prosody guiding attachment decisions.
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Féry, C. & G. Kentner (2008) The prosody of grouping names in German and Hindi. Submitted. Féry C. & F. Schubö (2008) Hierarchical structures in the intonation of recursive sentences. Potsdam. Ms. Hunyadi, László (2006) Grouping, the cognitive basis of recursion in language. Kossuth Egyetemi Kiadó, Debrecen. Argumentum, 2. 67-114. Ito, J. and A. Mester. 2007. Categories and projections in prosodic structure. Paper presented at Old World Conference in Phonology-4, Rhodes, Greece. Patil, U., A. Gollard, G. Kentner, F. Kügler, C. Féry & S. Vasishth (2007) Focus, word order and intonation in Hindi. Journal of South Asian Linguistics 1. 53-70. Selkirk, E. O. (1984) Phonology and syntax. The relation between sound and structure. Cambridge: MIT Press. Wagner, M. (2005) Prosody and recursion. Doctoral Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. Watson, D. and Gibson, E. (2004) Making Sense of the Sense Unit Condition. Linguistic Inquiry 35.3. S. 508-517.
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