@conference {6364, title = {Alternative constructions and scope ambiguities: What counts as an alternative?}, year = {2019}, month = {03/2019}, doi = {DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.29520.97282}, url = {https://www.colorado.edu/event/cuny2019/sites/default/files/attached-files/c51_hemforth_konieczny.pdf}, author = {Barbara Hemforth and Lars Konieczny} } @inbook {6158, title = {When all linguists did not go to the workshop, none of the Germans but some of the French did: The role of alternative constructions for quantifier scope}, booktitle = {Grammatical Approaches to Language Processing Essays in Honor of Lyn Frazier}, volume = {SITP 48}, year = {2019}, pages = {167-185}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, edition = {Katy Carlson, Charles Clifton jr., \& Janet Dean Fodor}, address = {Dordrecht}, abstract = {

In this paper, we will present crosslinguistic data on the interpretation of negation over quantifier scope in sentences like \“All children did not go to the zoo.\” Questionnaire data show that English as well as German speakers prefer a linear scope interpretation of the quantifier and the negation, where it is true for all children that they did not go to the zoo. French speakers, however, strongly prefer the inverse scope interpretation where some but not all children did not go to the zoo. The preference for linear scope is moreover stronger for German speakers than for English speakers. It diminishes with age for French and English, but not for German speakers. We will argue that language differences result from two constraints: the availability of a \“close\” alternative in the language and the topicality of a preverbal subject. An unambiguous alternative corresponding to inverse scope in the \“all-not\” construction can easily be achieved in English and German by fronting the negation as in \“Not all children went to the zoo\”. The corresponding construction is not available in standard French.\ \ A second questionnaire study shows that adding \“Not\…all\” sentences in the experiment, thus increasing their availability, increases the linear scope preference in English. The particularly strong preference for linear scope in German will be argued to be linked to the stronger topicality of preverbal subjects in German main clauses.\ 

}, author = {Barbara Hemforth and Lars Konieczny} } @article {5547, title = {Don{\textquoteright}t underestimate the benefits of being misunderstood}, journal = {Psychological Science}, year = {2017}, abstract = {

Being a non-native speaker of a language poses challenges. Individuals often feel embarrassed by the errors they make when talking in their second language (L2). However, here we report an advantage of being an L2 speaker: native speakers give foreign-accented speakers the benefit of the doubt when interpreting their utterances, such that apparently implausible utterances delivered in a foreign accent are more likely to be interpreted in a plausible way. Across three replicated experiments, we demonstrate that native English speakers are more likely to interpret implausible utterances such as \“the mother gave the candle the daughter\” as similar plausible utterances (\“the mother gave the candle to the daughter\”) when those utterances are produced with a foreign accent. This result follows from the general model of language interpretation in a noisy channel (Gibson et al., 2013), under the hypothesis that listeners assume a higher error rate in foreign-accented speech.

}, url = {http://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/5IResZSFhWjyHkAk4a8n/full}, author = {Gibson, Edward and Tana, Caitlin and Futrella, Richard and Mahowalda, Kyle and Lars Konieczny and Barbara Hemforth and Fedorenko, Evelina} } @article {4511, title = {Relative clause attachment in German, English, Spanish and French: Effects of position and length}, journal = {Lingua}, year = {2015}, abstract = {

German, English, Spanish, and French versions of short (ia) and long (ib) relative clauses were tested in written questionnaire studies. The noun phrases containing the clauses appeared in either object position (as in i) or in subject/topic position, and the relative clauses ambiguously modified the first or the second noun of the noun phrase.

(i). a. The doctor met the son of the colonel who died.
b. The doctor met the son of the colonel who tragically died of a stroke.

In the first experiment, German, English and Spanish were tested. In all three languages, more high attachment (first noun modification) interpretations were observed for long relative clauses than for short ones, perhaps reflecting differences in implicit prosodic phrasing provided by participants when they read the questionnaire. Across languages, more high attachment was observed in object position than in subject/topic position, but this effect was larger for German and Spanish than for English. In addition, although more low attachment than high attachment was observed in every case except German object position, German showed more high attachment than Spanish or English. A second questionnaire indicated that the preference for high attachment in German object position relative clauses cannot be attributed to readers taking these relative clauses to be extraposed. In a third questionnaire in French, we found a generally higher preference for high attachments as in German, but no position effect, as observed in English. We provide an account of these data, which does not require any special theory of relative clause attachment or parameterization for languages. It requires only general processing principles together with independently required grammatical differences among the languages studied involving the focus properties of object vs. non-object position and the availability in Spanish and German, but not English and French, of separate positions for topical vs. nontopical subjects.\ 

}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2015.08.010}, author = {Barbara Hemforth and Susana Fernandez and Charles Clifton Jr. and Lyn Frazier and Lars Konieczny and Michael Walter} } @inbook {4432, title = {Conversational Implicatures in Anaphora Resolution: Alternative Constructions and Referring Expressions}, booktitle = {Psycholinguistic Approaches to Meaning and Understanding across Languages}, series = {Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics}, number = {44}, year = {2014}, pages = {197-212}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, address = {Dordrecht}, issn = {978-3-319-05674-6}, author = {Baumann, Peter and Lars Konieczny and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {1088, title = {The acquisition of English dative alternation: Proficiency effects in French L2 learners}, volume = {25}, year = {2012}, month = {03/2012}, pages = {152}, url = {http://cuny2012.commons.gc.cuny.edu/files/2012/03/cuny2012_152.pdf}, author = {Wurm, Mirjana and Lars Konieczny and Barbara Hemforth}, editor = {Bradley, Dianne and Fernandez, Eva and Fodor, Janet} } @conference {1089, title = {Grounding of anaphora in pointing gestures: Order of mention and prominence}, volume = {25}, year = {2012}, month = {03/2012}, pages = {193}, address = {New York}, url = {http://cuny2012.commons.gc.cuny.edu/files/2012/03/cuny2012_193.pdf}, author = {Barbara Hemforth and Homassel, Anne-Sophie and M{\"u}ller-Feldmeth, Daniel and Lars Konieczny}, editor = {Bradley, Dianne and Fernandez, Eva and Fodor, Janet} }