@article {7373, title = {Voice mismatch and contrast in French Right-Node Raising}, journal = {Journal of Linguistics}, year = {2023}, url = {https://hal-cnrs.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03924688}, author = {Anne Abeill{\'e} and Aoi Shiraishi and Barbara Hemforth} } @article {7483, title = {Voice mismatch and contrast in French RNR}, journal = {Journal of Linguistics}, year = {2023}, pages = {1-28}, abstract = {

Right-Node Raising is generally considered to impose stricter identity conditions than other kinds of ellipsis, such as VP ellipsis, according to Hankamer \& Sag 1976 and Hardt 1993. In this paper, we investigate voice mismatch in French Right-Node Raising (RNR) through a corpus study and two experiments. We show that RNR with voice mismatch can be found in a written corpus (frTenTen 2012) and that many examples involve coordination of a reflexive active and a short passive form. We suggest this is because semantic contrast (here, between self and external agent) plays a role according to Hartmann (2000) and Abeillé and Mouret (2010). We ran two acceptability judgement experiments to test voice mismatch and semantic contrast. We did not find any penalty for voice mismatch with VP ellipsis but an interaction with semantic contrast. We also found an effect of semantic contrast when coordinating an active and a passive VP without participle ellipsis. We conclude that voice mismatch is acceptable with RNR and propose a Head-driven Phrase-Structure Grammar (HPSG) ana- lysis, following Chaves (2014) and Shiraïshi et al. (2019).

}, keywords = {contrast, ellipsis, French, Passive, reflexive, Right-Node Raising, voice mismatch}, author = {Anne Abeill{\'e} and Aoi Shiraishi and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {7282, title = {Acceptability of extractions out of adjuncts depends on discourse factors}, year = {2021}, month = {03/2021}, author = {Edward, Gibson and Barbara Hemforth and Winckel Elodie and Anne Abeill{\'e}} } @booklet {edward:hal-03506525, title = {Acceptability of extractions out of adjuncts depends on discourse factors}, year = {2021}, note = {Poster}, month = {Mar}, url = {https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03506525}, author = {Edward, Gibson and Barbara Hemforth and Winckel Elodie and Anne Abeill{\'e}} } @article {7268, title = {Corpus, experimental and modeling investigations of cross-linguistic differences in pronoun resolution preferences}, journal = {Glossa}, volume = {6}, year = {2021}, month = {05/2021}, chapter = {66}, abstract = {

We investigate the impact of syntactic alternatives on pronoun resolution in ambiguous constructions in English and French. Previous research detected language-specific preferences in pronoun resolution in utterances of the type \“The postman met the streetsweeper before he went home\”. These preferences have been attributed to the interaction of information structural and syntactic constraints inducing a subject bias on the one hand, and Gricean reasoning processes taking into account alternative syntactic constructions on the other hand. A corpus study of four English and French corpora shows that an alternative construction which takes a subject antecedent (\“The postman met the streetsweeper before going home\”) is much less frequent in spoken English than French. A Rational Speech Act (RSA) model with corpus frequencies integrated as language-specific costs on the use of each construction makes empirical predictions for pronoun resolution preferences in French and English for sentences with \“avant\”/\“before\” which have been tested before but also for sentences with \“après\”/\“after\” which have not been tested so far. New experimental data show a very good fit of the model predictions for pronoun resolution preferences in English as well as for the differences in antecedent choices between French and English. However, experimental data showing differences in antecedent choices between French sentences with \“après\” and \“avant\” deviate from model predictions, indicating that more factors need to be taken into account. The combination of Bayesian modeling, corpus analyses and experimental data shows that RSA models can make relevant and falsifiable predictions for cross-linguistic variation in processing.

}, issn = {2397-1835}, doi = {https://doi. org/10.5334/gjgl.1142}, author = {Miriam Schulz and Heather Burnett and Barbara Hemforth} } @article {hedier:hal-03506518, title = {S{\oe}urs de M{\^e}me Taille : attachement d{\textquoteright}une phrase relative aux syntagmes nominaux coordonn{\'e}s}, journal = {Langages}, volume = {N{\textdegree} 223}, number = {3}, year = {2021}, pages = {125-141}, publisher = {Armand Colin (Larousse jusqu{\textquoteright}en 2003)}, doi = {10.3917/lang.223.0125}, url = {https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03506518}, author = {Hedier, Antoine and Su, Peijia and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {6679, title = {The acceptability of extractions from subjects depends on the discourse status of the subject}, year = {2020}, month = {09/2020}, address = {Postdam (Virtual Conference)}, url = {https://amlap2020.github.io/a/239.pdf}, author = {Anne Abeill{\'e} and Barbara Hemforth and Winckel, Elodie and Gibson, Edward} } @conference {6673, title = {Acceptability of VP ellipsis: discourse conditions vs. syntactic identity}, year = {2020}, month = {03/2020}, address = {Amherst (MA) (Virtual Conference)}, url = {https://people.umass.edu/bwdillon/CUNY_2020_Abstracts/A66_Final_Manuscript.pdf}, author = {Philip Miller and Barbara Hemforth} } @article {6669, title = {The Effect of Semantic and Discourse Features on the Use of Null and Overt Subjects - A Quantitative Study of Third Person Subjects in Brazilian Portuguese. }, journal = {DELTA: Documenta{\c c}{\~a}o de Estudos em Ling{\"u}{\'\i}stica Te{\'o}rica e Aplicada,}, volume = {36}, year = {2020}, doi = {https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1678-460x2020360107}, author = {Eduardo Correa Soares and Philip Miller and Barbara Hemforth} } @article {6475, title = {Empathy influences how listeners interpret intonation and meaning when words are ambiguous}, journal = {Memory and Cognition}, year = {2020}, doi = {10.3758/s13421-019-00990-w}, author = {Nuria Gibert Esteve and Shafer, Amy and Barbara Hemforth and Cristel Portes and Pozniak, Celine and D{\textquoteright}Imperio, Mariapaola} } @article {6668, title = {Extraction from subjects: Differences in acceptability depend on the discourse function of the construction}, journal = {Cognition}, year = {2020}, abstract = {

In order to explain the unacceptability of certain long-distance dependencies - termed syntactic islands by Ross (1967) - syntacticians proposed constraints on long-distance dependencies which are universal and purely syntactic and thus not dependent on the meaning of the construction (Chomsky, 1977; Chomsky, 1995 a.o.). This predicts that these constraints should hold across constructions and languages. In this paper, we investigate the \"subject island\" constraint across constructions in English and French, a constraint that blocks extraction out of subjects. In particular, we compare extraction out of nominal subjects with extraction out of nominal objects, in relative clauses and wh-questions, using similar materials across constructions and languages. Contrary to the syntactic accounts, we find that unacceptable extractions from subjects involve (a) extraction in wh-questions (in both languages); or (b) preposition stranding (in English). But the extraction of a whole prepositional phrase from subjects in a relative clause, in both languages, is as good or better than a similar extraction from objects. Following Erteschik-Shir (1973) and Kuno (1987) among others, we propose a theory that takes into account the discourse status of the extracted element in the construction at hand: the extracted element is a focus (corresponding to new information) in wh-questions, but not in relative clauses. The focus status conflicts with the non-focal status of a subject (usually given or discourse-old). These results suggest that most previous discussions of islands may rely on the wrong premise that all extraction types behave alike. Once different extraction types are recognized as different constructions (Croft, 2001; Ginzburg \& Sag, 2000; Goldberg, 2006; Sag, 2010), with their own discourse functions, one can explain different extraction patterns depending on the construction.

}, doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104293}, author = {Anne Abeill{\'e} and Barbara Hemforth and Winckel, Elodie and Gibson, Edward} } @conference {6677, title = {Mathematical to language priming: New evidence from French}, year = {2020}, month = {09/2020}, address = {Potsdam (Virtual Conference)}, url = {https://amlap2020.github.io/a/187.pdf}, author = {Hedier, Antoine and Pozniak, Celine and Barbara Hemforth} } @inproceedings {6690, title = {Missing antecedents found}, volume = {5}, year = {2020}, pages = {822{\textendash}834}, publisher = {Linguistic Society of America}, edition = {LSA}, address = {New Orleans}, doi = { https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v5i1.4795 }, author = {Philip Miller and Barbara Hemforth and Pascal Amsili and Gabriel Flambard} } @conference {6678, title = {Non-syntactic constraints on syntactic alternations - L1 acquisition of French partial interrogatives by TD children}, year = {2020}, month = {09/2020}, address = {Postdam (Virtual Conference)}, author = {Thiberge, Gabriel and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {6674, title = {(Pseudo-)reflexive possessive binding: crosslinguistic experiments}, year = {2020}, month = {03/2020}, address = {Amherst (MA) (Virtual Conference)}, url = {https://osf.io/c7bzv/}, author = {Suzanne Lesage and Barbara Hemforth and Olivier Bonami} } @conference {6670, title = {The subject island as a case of focus-background conflict}, year = {2020}, month = {02/2020}, address = {T{\"u}bingen}, author = {Anne Abeill{\'e} and Barbara Hemforth and Winckel, Elodie and Gibson, Edward} } @conference {6675, title = {Subject island: PP extraction depends on the construction}, year = {2020}, month = {03/2020}, address = {Amherst (MA) (Virtual Conference)}, url = {https://osf.io/ndtvw/}, author = {Anne Abeill{\'e} and Barbara Hemforth and Winckel, Elodie and Gibson, Edward} } @conference {6672, title = {Subject NP island? A case of focus-background conflict. }, year = {2020}, month = {04/2020}, address = {MIT (Virtual Workshop)}, author = {Anne Abeill{\'e} and Barbara Hemforth and Winckel, Elodie and Gibson, Edward} } @conference {6671, title = {Unacceptable VPE with identical antecedents: Disentangling the effects of discourse conditions and mismatch on the acceptability of Verb Phrase Ellipsis}, year = {2020}, month = {02/2020}, address = {T{\"u}bingen}, author = {Philip Miller and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {6676, title = {Verbal mismatch in French Right-Node Raising: Speeded grammaticality judgments}, year = {2020}, month = {07/2020}, address = {Paris (Virtual Conference)}, url = {http://drehu.linguist.univ-paris-diderot.fr/ecbae-2020/fichiers/abstracts/hemforth.pdf}, author = {Barbara Hemforth and Antoine Heider and Theodor Cucu and Lisa Hemforth and Hugo Techer and Yair Haendler and Joanna Dos Reis and Doriane Gras} } @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} } @conference {6412, title = {Discourse conditions on Verb Phrase Ellipsis and the question of syntactic identity: new evidence from acceptability experiments}, year = {2019}, month = {09/2019}, address = {Moscou, Russie}, author = {Philip Miller and Barbara Hemforth} } @article {6409, title = {The effect of verbal agreement marking on the use of null and overt subjects: a quantitative study of first person singular in Brazilian Portuguese}, journal = {F{\'o}rum Lingu{\'\i}stico}, volume = {16}, year = {2019}, pages = {3579-3600}, chapter = {3579}, abstract = {

In a corpus study and two acceptability experiments, we investigated whether there is a preference for null or overt subjects with ambiguous (syncretic) and exclusive (unambiguous) verbs in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Previous literature has proposed that BP (i) is deactivating the \“Avoid Pronoun Principle\” and (ii) is a partially pro-drop language, whose morphosyntactic contexts for null subjects are restricted. The corpus study and the acceptability experiments show that there is an effect of person syncretism in the verbal paradigm on the relative frequency of null subjects and on the acceptability of sentences with null subjects in the first-person singular: there is a tendency to avoid ambiguity due to null subjects with ambiguous verb forms, but only in contexts with competing antecedents. These results are analyzed in the light of a general theory of anaphora resolution (ARIEL, 1990, etc.), as resulting from a calculation taking into account the accessibility of potential antecedents and the cost of the anaphoric form (ALMOR, 1996).

}, issn = {ISSNe 1984-8412}, doi = { }, url = {https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/forum/article/view/1984-8412.2019v16n1p3579}, author = {Eduardo Correa Soares and Philip Miller and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {6366, title = {A Rational Speech Act model of cross-linguistic differences in pronoun resolution preferences}, year = {2019}, month = {03/2019}, doi = {https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331983817_A_Rational_Speech_Act_model_of_cross-linguistic_differences_in_pronoun_resolution_preferences}, url = {https://www.colorado.edu/event/cuny2019/sites/default/files/attached-files/d42_schulz_etal.pdf}, author = {Miriam Schulz and Heather Burnett and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {6365, title = {Same sized sisters: Relative clause attachment to conjoined NPs}, year = {2019}, month = {03/2019}, doi = {10.13140/RG.2.2.32876.41609}, url = {https://www.colorado.edu/event/cuny2019/sites/default/files/attached-files/c55_hedier_etal.pdf}, author = {Hedier, Antoine and Su, Peiha and Maouche, Fahima and Barbara Hemforth} } @article {6149, title = {Seeing events vs. entities: The processing advantage of Pseudo Relatives over Relative Clauses}, journal = {Journal of Memory and Language}, year = {2019}, month = {08/2019}, pages = {128-151}, abstract = {

We present the results of three offline questionnaires (one attachment preference study and two acceptability judgments) and two eye-tracking studies in French and English investigating the resolution of the ambiguity between Relative Clause and Pseudo Relative interpretations. This structural and interpretive ambiguity has recently been shown to play a central role in the explanation of apparent cross-linguistic asymmetries in Relative Clause attachment (Grillo \& Costa,\ 2014;\ Grillo et al.,\ 2015). This literature has argued that Pseudo Relatives are preferred to Relative Clauses because of their structural and interpretive simplicity. This paper adds to this growing body of literature in two ways. First we show that, in contrast to previous find- ings, French speakers prefer to attach Relative Clauses to the most local antecedent once Pseudo Relative availability is controlled for. We then provide a direct test for the Pseudo Relatives pref- erence, showing that Relative Clause disambiguation of strings that are initially compatible with a Pseudo Relative interpretation leads to degraded acceptability and longer fixation durations.

}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.04.001}, url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749596X19300415}, author = {Pozniak, Celine and Barbara Hemforth and Yair Haendler and Andrea Santi and Nino Grillo} } @conference {6410, title = {Subject-island constraint? The discourse function of the construction matters}, year = {2019}, month = {09/2019}, address = {Moscou, Russie}, author = {Anne Abeill{\'e} and Barbara Hemforth and Winckel, Elodie and Gibson, Edward} } @inbook {6067, title = {Is there a canonical order in Persian ditransitive constructions? Corpus based and experimental studies}, booktitle = {Ditransitive constructions in a cross-linguistic perspective}, year = {2019}, publisher = {Reichert}, organization = {Reichert}, edition = {Agnes Korn, Andrej Malchukov, Carina Jahani}, address = {Wiesbaden}, author = {Pegah Faghiri and Samvelian, Pollet and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {6592, title = {Variation in French Partial Interrogatives: Social meaning as a key factor.}, year = {2019}, month = {06/2019}, address = {Edinburgh, Scotland}, author = {Thiberge, Gabriel and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {6411, title = {Variation in French partial interrogatives: social meaning tells us what?}, year = {2019}, month = {09/2019}, address = {Moscou, Russie}, author = {Thiberge, Gabriel and Barbara Hemforth} } @article {6492, title = {Verbal mismatch in Right-Node Raising}, journal = {Glossa}, volume = {4}, year = {2019}, month = {10/2019}, pages = {1-26}, chapter = {1}, abstract = {

Right-Node Raising (RNR, Ross 1967; Chaves 2014) has been claimed to require phonological identity between the missing material and the shared element. Our corpus investigations provide examples of RNR with verb form mismatch with and without syncretism in English and French. Two acceptability experiments show that lack of phonological identity does not affect the acceptability of RNR. We argue further that RNR without phonological identity cannot be taken to be a case of cataphoric VP-ellipsis in French and that it should not be analyzed as such in English. As regards the status of RNR with verb form mismatch, two positions are available: either it is considered to be grammatical, in which case the phonological resolution principle of Pullum \& Zwicky (1986) does not hold, or it is considered to be ungrammatical but repaired (or \“recycled\”, Arregui et al. 2006; Frazier 2013). The high acceptability of cases with mismatch compared with ungrammatical controls casts doubt on the applicability of the recycling hypothesis in such cases. In order to account for the broader range of data established by our corpus and experimental results, we propose a new analysis of RNR based on lexeme identity rather than form identity.

}, issn = {E-ISSN: 2397-1835}, url = {https://www.glossa-journal.org/articles/10.5334/gjgl.843/}, author = {Aoi Shiraishi and Anne Abeill{\'e} and Barbara Hemforth and Philip Miller} } @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 {6060, title = {Adaptation in Pronoun Resolution: Evidence from Brazilian and European Portuguese}, journal = {Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition}, year = {2018}, abstract = {

Previous research accounting for pronoun resolution as a problem of probabilistic inference has not explored the phenomenon of adaptation, whereby the processor constantly tracks and adapts, rationally, to changes in a statistical environment. We investigate whether Brazilian (BP) and European Portuguese (EP) speakers adapt to variations in the probability of occurrence of ambiguous overt and null pronouns, in two experiments assessing resolution towards subject and object referents. For each variety (BP, EP), participants were faced with either the same number of null and overt pronouns (equal distribution), or with an environment with fewer overt (than null) pronouns (unequal distribution). We find that the preference for interpreting overt pronouns as referring back to an object referent (object-biased interpretation) is higher when there are fewer overt pronouns (i.e., in the unequal, relative to the equal distribution condition). This is especially the case for BP, a variety with higher prior frequency and smaller object-biased interpretation of overt pronouns, suggesting that participants adapted incrementally and integrated prior statistical knowledge with the knowledge obtained in the experiment. We hypothesize that comprehenders adapted rationally, with the goal of maintaining, across variations in pronoun probability, the likelihood of subject and object referents. Our findings unify insights from research in pronoun resolution and in adaptation, and add to previous studies in both topics: They provide evidence for the influence of pronoun probability in pronoun resolution, and for an adaptation process whereby the language processor not only tracks statistical information, but uses it to make interpretational inferences.

}, doi = {http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037\%2Fxlm0000569}, author = {Eunice Fernandes and Paula Luegi and Eduardo Correa Soares and Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {6072, title = {Comparative alternation in Mauritian: Using experimental methods for understudied languages}, year = {2018}, month = {02/2018}, address = {Hyderabad, Inde}, author = {Shrita Hassamal and Barbara Hemforth} } @inproceedings {6159, title = {Contrainte du doublage clitique et d{\'e}tachement de l{\textquoteright}objet {\`a} gauche}, volume = {6}, year = {2018}, month = {07/2018}, publisher = {Institt de Linguistique Fran{\c c}aise}, address = {Mons}, author = {Etienne Riou and Barbara Hemforth} } @article {6363, title = {Cross-Domain Priming From Mathematics to Relative-Clause Attachment: A Visual-World Study in French}, journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, year = {2018}, month = {Nov. 2018}, abstract = {

Human language processing must rely on a certain degree of abstraction, as we can produce and understand sentences that we have never produced or heard before. One way to establish syntactic abstraction is by investigating structural priming. Structural priming has been shown to be effective within a cognitive domain, in the present case, the linguistic domain. But does priming also work across different domains? In line with previous experiments, we investigated cross-domain structural priming from mathematical expressions to linguistic structures with respect to relative clause attachment in French (e.g., la fille du professeur qui habitait \à Paris/the daughter of the teacher who lived in Paris). Testing priming in French is particularly interesting because it will extend earlier results established for English to a language where the baseline for relative clause attachment preferences is different form English: in English, relative clauses (RCs) tend to be attached to the local noun phrase (low attachment) while in French there is a preference for high attachment of relative clauses to the first noun phrase (NP). Moreover, in contrast to earlier studies, we applied an online-technique (visual world eye-tracking). Our results confirm cross-domain priming from mathematics to linguistic structures in French. Most interestingly, different from less mathematically adept participants, we found that in mathematically skilled participants, the effect emerged very early on (at the beginning of the relative clause in the speech stream) and is also present later (at the end of the relative clause). In line with previous findings, our experiment suggests that mathematics and language share aspects of syntactic structure at a very high-level of abstraction.

}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02056}, author = {Pozniak, Celine and Barbara Hemforth and Scheepers, Christoph} } @article {5851, title = {Effects of exposure and information structure in native and non-native pronoun resolution in French.}, journal = {Linguistic Vanguard}, year = {2018}, month = {2018-03-09}, abstract = {

The present study investigated pronoun resolution strategies in French native speakers and in German- speaking learners of French. French and German differ in antecedent preferences in ambiguous constructions such as The postman hit the pirate before he went home: while French shows a N2-preference, German shows a N1-preference. This difference is explained by effects of exposure to an unambiguous alternative construction referring to N1 that exists in French, but not in German (Hemforth et al. 2010, Language specific preferences in anaphor resolution: Exposure or gricean maxims? In Steallan Ohlsson and Richard Catarambone (eds.), 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 2218\–2223. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society). In question- naires, we tested French active and passive sentences to investigate (a) whether the L2-learners would apply the same strategy as natives in the active condition (i.e. N2-preference), and (b) whether the explicit topicalization of a referent as a consequence of passivization influences interpretation preferences in both groups (result- ing in more N1 choices). The results show that German learners prefer the N1 more often than the French natives in the active condition. Crucially, the number of N1 choices increased in both groups in the passive condition. These results suggest that L2-learners might have difficulties acquiring strategies based on the fre- quency and availability of alternative constructions in the L2, and provide further evidence for the importance of information-structure-based strategies in L1 and L2 pronoun resolution.

}, doi = { https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2016-0093}, author = {Colonna, Saveria and Schimke, Sarah and Israel de la Fuente and Sascha Kuck and Barbara Hemforth} } @article {6073, title = {First language influence on second language offline and online ambiguous pronoun resolution}, journal = {Language Learning}, year = {2018}, abstract = {

This study looks at L1 influence on L2 ambiguous pronoun resolution and investigates a) whether L1 influence takes place on the level of the pronominal form (form-dependent influence), and/or on the level of the construction in which the form appears \ (construction-dependent influence) and b) whether effects differ in online compared to offline data. In Experiment 1, we replicated previously observed construction-dependent cross-linguistic differences between French and German (Hemforth et al., 2010), and provided new data on Spanish. In Experiment 2, we assessed offline and online interpretation preferences of intermediate L1 French and L1 Spanish learners of German. Our results provide evidence of form-dependent L1 influence, in that learners transferred a generalized antecedent bias associated with overt pronouns. Moreover, our results extend previous findings (Roberts, Gullberg \& Indefrey, 2008) in showing that L1 influence on L2 pronoun resolution can occur during online processing.

}, doi = { http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/lang.12293}, author = {Schimke, Sarah and Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth and Colonna, Saveria} } @inbook {5850, title = {L1-Einfluss und generelle Lernereffekte bei der Aufl{\"o}sung ambiger Pronomen in einer L2.}, booktitle = {Sprachverarbeitung im Zweitspracherwerb.}, year = {2018}, pages = {221-246}, publisher = {de Gruyter}, organization = {de Gruyter}, edition = {Sarah Schimke, Holger Hopp}, address = {Berlin}, issn = {978-3-11-045635-6}, author = {Schimke, Sarah and Colonna, Saveria and Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {6080, title = {Linguistic evidence across languages}, year = {2018}, month = {02/2018}, author = {Barbara Hemforth} } @article {6150, title = {Processing of ellipsis with garden-path antecedents in French and German: Evidence from eye tracking}, journal = {PlosOne}, year = {2018}, month = {06/2018}, abstract = {

In a self-paced reading study on German sluicing, Paape (Paape, 2016) found that reading times were shorter at the ellipsis site when the antecedent was a temporarily ambiguous garden-path structure. As a post-hoc explanation of this finding, Paape assumed that the antecedent\’s memory representation was reactivated during syntactic reanalysis, making it easier to retrieve. In two eye tracking experiments, we subjected the reactivation hypothesis to further empirical scrutiny. Experiment 1, carried out in French, showed no evidence in favor in the reactivation hypothesis. Instead, results for one out of the three types of garden-path sentences that were tested suggest that subjects sometimes failed to resolve the temporary ambiguity in the antecedent clause, and subsequently failed to resolve the ellipsis. The results of Experiment 2, a conceptual replication of Paape\’s (Paape, 2016) original study carried out in German, are compatible with the reactivation hypothesis, but leave open the possibility that the observed speedup for ambiguous antecedents may be due to occasional retrievals of an incorrect structure.

}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0198620}, url = {http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0198620}, author = {Paape, Dario and Barbara Hemforth and Vasishth, Shravan} } @conference {6195, title = {Variation in French interrogatives, Social Meaning as a key factor to understand sociolinguistic norm violations}, year = {2018}, month = {09/2018}, address = {Berlin, Germany}, author = {Thiberge, Gabriel and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {6194, title = {Variation in French partial interrogatives: social meaning as a key factor to understand sociolinguistic norm violations}, year = {2018}, month = {09/2018}, address = {Berlin, Germany}, author = {Thiberge, Gabriel and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {5895, title = {A Bayesian Game-Theoretic Approach to Cross-Linguistic Variation. }, year = {2017}, month = {06/2017}, url = {http://xprag2017.uni-koeln.de/sites/xprag2017/user_upload/BurnettHemforth.pdf}, author = {Heather Burnett and Barbara Hemforth} } @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} } @conference {5846, title = {Implicit causality: When more than one explanation is missing}, year = {2017}, month = {03/2017}, abstract = {

It has been shown that focus particles like \“only\” and \“even\” give way to a pattern of pronoun production and resolution similar to what has been observed with implicit causality verbs like \“criticize\” or \“annoy\” in (1) where so-called N1-biased verbs like \“annoyed\” systematically provoke explanations related to the subject (Peter) and N2-biased verbs like \“criticized\” continuations related to the object (Mary).

  1. Peter annoyed/criticized Mary because ..

Continuation studies with sentences like (2), using unbiased verbs show that an antecedent in the scope of \“only\” similarly systematically attracts continuations while an antecedent in the scope of \“even\” is systematically dispreferred.

  1. Only/Even Peter called Mary because \…

Following Bott and Solstad (2014), we argue that focus particles as well as IC verbs, when combined with discourse connectives like because, create expectations for an explanation

about the ensuing discourse that needs to be filled to avoid the accommodation of missing information. These explanations, which reflect the relationship between the focus entity in the

scope of the particle and the set of alternatives related to it, introduce a bias for one of the two potential antecedents. \“Only\” triggers a missing explanation of exclusivity: why does only Peter call and nobody else. \“Even\”, on the other hand, triggers an explanation of the unlikeliness of Peter calling, what it is about Mary that makes even him call.

An obvious and still open question is what happens when we combine biased verbs with focus particles thus provoking matching or mismatching expectations. We expected that matching biases (even N1 + N2-biased verb; only N1 + N1-biased verb) where the focus particle and the verb bias demand an explanation related to the same antecedent should provoke the strongest biases since a single explanation can easily be found to fill discourse needs (e.g. \“Only Peter fascinates Mary because he is just the best.\”, \“Even Peter criticized Mary because she really messed up this time.\”). In mismatching cases (even N1 + N1-biased verb; only N1 + N2-biased verb), only one of the missing explanations can easily be provided. In (3) we can either explain exclusivity (\… because he is never satisfied) or the N2-bias of the verb (\… because she had messed up.).

  1. Only Peter criticized Mary because \…

We ran a continuation study in French with 10 N1-biased verbs (4), 10 N2-biased verbs (5), and 10 verbs without bias (6), taken from a recently established corpus of implicit causality biases including 320 French verbs. We constructed preambles with two gender-different proper names with the subject in the scope of \“seul\” or \“m\ême\” (following a Latin Square Design). 84 native French speakers provided continuations to the preambles. All preambles ended with \“parce qu\’\”, strongly encouraging a pronoun continuation (only words with initial vowels can follow \“qu\’\”, \“il\”/he and \“elle\”/she thus become highly likely). In logistic regressions, both, focus particles as well as the IC-bias of the verb showed a significant effect (FP: z= 4.471, p\<.001; IC-bias: N1/N2: z= -8.932, p\<.001; N1/no-bias: z= -4.329, p\<.001). As expected, matching cases showed a very strong bias (Only+N1-bias = 79\% N1; Even+N2-bias: 81\% N2), while mismatching cases were more varied.

N1-bias

  1. Seul/M\ême Marie enchante Adrien parcqu\’ \…

\ \ \ \ \  Only/Even Mary enchants Adrian because \…

N2-bias

\ \ \ \ \  (5) Seul/M\ême Pierre f\élicite Auriane parce qu\’ \…

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \  Only/Even Peter congratulates Auriane because \…

No-bias

  1. Seul/M\ême\  Pierre interroge Marie parce qu\’ \…

\ \ \ \ \ \  Only/Even\  Peter visits Marie because \…

}, url = {https://osf.io/xgbv2/}, author = {Israel de la Fuente and Marie Benzerrak and Natalia Kalashnikova and Lala Naziyeva and Ching-chun Wang and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {6068, title = {It{\textquoteright}s all about the head: Implicit causality effects on subject and object RCs}, year = {2017}, month = {09/2017}, author = {Pozniak, Celine and Barbara Hemforth} } @inbook {6069, title = {Le subjonctif en contexte n{\'e}gatif en fran{\c c}ais: une approche exp{\'e}rimentale}, booktitle = {Omagiu profesorului Emil Ionescu la 60 de ani }, year = {2017}, pages = {27-39}, publisher = {Universtit{\'e} de Bukarest}, organization = {Universtit{\'e} de Bukarest}, edition = {V. Barbu Mititelu, M. Ionescu, G. Iordachioaia}, address = {Bukarest}, author = {Dani{\`e}le Godard and Barbara Hemforth and Jean-Marie Marandin} } @conference {6009, title = {Modelling crosslinguistic differences in pronoun resolution}, year = {2017}, month = {09/2017}, address = {Lancaster, Royaume-Uni}, author = {Heather Burnett and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {5625, title = {Relative clause processing, structural and linear distance matter - Evidence from Mandarin, Cantonese and English Visual World experiments}, year = {2017}, month = {04/2017}, address = {Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston }, author = {Pozniak, Celine and Jiaying Huang and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {5847, title = {Subject island? (Counter)evidence from French dont-relative clauses}, year = {2017}, month = {03/2017}, abstract = {

Whether island constraints (Ross 1967) are due to structural (Chomsky 2008, Sprouse et al. 2015, etc.) or cognitive constraints (Klunder 1992, Hofmeister et al. 2013, etc.) is still an open debate. Subject islands have been shown to vary across languages (Rizzi 1990) and across constructions (Sprouse et al. 2015). In French, dont relative clauses (DRC) (Godard 1992) exhibit \‘de\’ (\‘of which\’) complement extraction for verbal (1a), object noun (1b) or subject noun (1c) complements. Mainstream generative approaches predict (1a) to be easier than (1b), and (1b) than (1c). Processing approaches such as DLT (Gibson, 2000) predict the reverse: (1c) should be easier than (1a), and (1a) than (1b), in terms of linear distance between dont and the gap. Furthermore, DLT predicts (2a), with a 1st person subject \‘je\’, to be easier than (1a) and (2b) than (1b).

  1. a. from VP une ville dont mes amis [parlent souvent _ ] (a town of-which my friends often talk )\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ 

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \  b. from object NP une ville dont mes amis appr\écient [les commer\çants _ ] (a town of-which my friends like the \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \  merchants)

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \  c. from subject NP une ville dont [les commer\çants _ ] vendent de l\’huile (a town of-which the merchants sell oil)

  1. a. from VP une ville dont je [parle souvent _ ] (a town of-which I talk often)

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \  b. from object NP une ville dont j\’appr\écie [les commer\çants _ ].

Corpus studies Using the written corpus French Treebank (Abeill\é et al, 2003), we found an overwhelming frequency of extraction out of NP subject (56,5\%) over verb extraction (19\%) and extraction out of NP object (12,5\%) in dont relative clauses. The spoken corpus CFPP2000 (Branca-Rosoff et al. 2012) confirms a high frequency of subject extraction (17,8\% of all dont; 63\% of all extractions out of NP). These subjects are not internal objects: looking at verbs for DRC with extraction out of subject, 67\% of the verbs in the spoken corpus and 47\% in the written corpus are transitive (unergative). Furthermore, almost all extractions out of object NP involve a pronominal subject. Linear mixed models also show that dont significantly tends to correspond to a verb complement with a pronominal subject rather than with a nominal subject (z=7,7; p\<.001).

Experiment 1 In an acceptability judgement task with 57 participants, we tested extraction out of subject and object NPs with pronominal and nominal subjects for the latter (1b/2b), adding control sentences with coordination (3x2 conditions; 30 items). The participants were asked to rate the sentences on a scale from 1 (bad) to 10 (good).

Extraction out of the subject was judged significantly better than extraction out of the object with a nominal subject NP (1b vs. 1c; p\<.05). Extraction out of object NP yielded a significant preference for pronominal over nominal subjects (1b vs. 2b; p\<.05). This confirms the results of our corpus studies.

Experiment 2 We ran an Eye-Tracking experiment with the same materials and 31 native French speakers. Total reading times of the verb region confirmed our previous results (controlling for verb length and frequency).

Conclusion The results of the two corpus studies and two experiments show that there is no extra cost of extracting out of a subject NP in DRC. This contradicts structural approaches to subject islands and confirm DLT predictions. The extra cost of a lexical subject when extracting out of an object NP (new discourse referent between dont and the gap) is confirmed as well.

Table 1: Examples of the materials for Experiment 1 and 2

A /\  Extraction from subject NP

They work in a practice of-which the neatness intimidates my parents every time.

Elles travaillent dans un cabinet dont la propret\é intimide mes parents \à chaque fois.

B /\  Extraction from object NP with a pronominal subject

They work in a practice of-which we admire the neatness every time.

Elles travaillent dans un cabinet dont nous admirons la propret\é \à chaque fois.

C / Extraction from object NP with a nominal subject

They work in a practice of-which my parents admire the neatness every time.

Elles travaillent dans un cabinet dont mes parents admirent la propret\é \à chaque fois.

D /\  Control sentence for A

They work in a practice and its neatness intimidates my parents every time.

Elles travaillent dans un cabinet et sa propret\é intimide mes parents \à chaque fois.

E /\  Control sentence for B

They work in a practice and we admire its neatness every time.

Elles travaillent dans un cabinet et nous admirons sa propret\é \à chaque fois.

F / Control sentence for C

They work in a practice and my parents admire its neatness every time.

Elles travaillent dans un cabinet et mes parents admirent sa propret\é \à chaque fois.
}, author = {Winckel, Elodie and Barbara Hemforth and Anne Abeill{\'e}} } @article {4716, title = {Acquisition des pronoms objets en fran{\c c}ais langue seconde}, journal = {Discours}, year = {2016}, abstract = {

Abstract

Acquisition of object pronouns in L2 French is always a source of problems for every learners regardless of their L1. Based on a study from Gr\üter \& Crago (2012), we ran an elicited production experiment as well as a Reading Span task with two groups of learners whose L1 is German and Mandarin Chinese. A control of French native speakers was added as a control group. We looked at the acquisition of object pronouns in different contexts and depending on the verb type. Our results showed that the two groups of learners have a similar pattern of production. Moreover, reflexive pronouns seem to be the most difficult type of pronouns to master for both groups of Mandarin Chinese and German, which supposes that this form is especially different from other object pronouns and difficult. Our findings suggest that influence of the L1 and level in L2 French are not the major factors for explaining Second Language Acquisition of object pronouns, but that Working Memory does play a role as well.

Key words : acquisition, bilingualism, working memory, production, object pronoun, French.

R\ésum\é

L\&$\#$39;acquisition des pronoms objets en fran\çais L2 est une r\éelle difficult\é pour tous les apprenants de diff\érentes L1. En s\&$\#$39;inspirant de l\&$\#$39;\étude de Gr\üter \& Crago (2012), nous avons r\éalis\é une exp\érience de production ainsi qu\&$\#$39;un test de m\émoire de travail avec deux groupes d\&$\#$39;apprenants dont la L1 est respectivement l\&$\#$39;allemand et le chinois mandarin. Un groupe de fran\çais a \ét\é inclus \également en tant que groupe de contr\ôle. Notre exp\érience permet d\&$\#$39;approfondir la recherche sur les pronoms objets notamment en regardant leur ma\îtrise par les apprenants dans diff\érents contextes et selon diff\érents types de verbes. Les r\ésultats montrent le m\ême pattern pour les deux groupes d\&$\#$39;apprenants. Egalement, on constate que les pronoms objets semblent \être mieux ma\îtris\és dans les contextes appropri\és que les r\éfl\échis, que ce soit pour le groupe allemand ou le groupe chinois, ce qui indiquerait une difficult\é sp\écifique de cette forme. Nous envisagerons finalement le fait que le facteur d\éterminant ne serait pas uniquement la langue maternelle ou la comp\étence en L2 mais \également la m\émoire de travail.

Mots-cl\és : acquisition, bilinguisme, m\émoire de travail, production, clitique objet, fran\çais.

}, url = {https://discours.revues.org/9120}, author = {Pozniak, Celine and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4718, title = {Competition of linear and structural distance in relative clause processing - Evidence from Mandarin and Cantonese Visual World experiments}, year = {2016}, month = {09/2016}, abstract = {

RC processing confronts three major theories: linear distance theories versus frequency/structure based theories. Languages such as English don\&$\#$39;t allow to decide between them since all predict a Subject Relative preference, while linear distance predicts an Object Relative preference for Mandarin.\ 
In three VW-Eye-Tracking experiments we found a slight but not robust SR preference consistent with the proposition that RC processing involves a competition between linear distance and frequency/structure based factors. Cantonese has prenominal RCs as Mandarin but is different in that it has two major RC-types: one similar to Mandarin with a relativizer (ge3), and one without relativizer. It has been argued that linear distance doesn\&$\#$39;t play a role in structures without relativizer which may be analysed as adjoined. For Cantonese, RCs with relativizer show a slight (marginal) SR preference, however for RCs without relativizer, there is a strong (significant) advantage for SRs. Moreover, RCs without relativizer are generally easier to process than RCs with relativizer. Since for RCs without relativizer only frequency/structure based factors should be at work, the significant SR advantage is predicted, and so is the lack of difference between SRs and ORs in RCs with relativizer, in which the factors are in competition.

}, author = {Pozniak, Celine and Jiaying Huang and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4719, title = {Ellipsis with garden-path antecedents in French}, year = {2016}, month = {09/2016}, abstract = {

In a self-paced reading study on German sluicing, Paape (2015) found that antecedents that had been reanalyzed (i.e., garden-path antecedents) led to reduced reading times at the ellipsis site. Adopting the parsing framework of Lewis \& Vasishth (2005), Paape suggests that ellipsis antecedents are stored in working memory as chunks. Reanalysis increases a chunk\&$\#$39;s activation level, making it easier to retrieve.\ 
We attempted to replicate Paape\&$\#$39;s (2015) finding using eye-tracking. The experiment used French sentences in a 2\×2 design with the factors antecedent ambiguity (yes/no) and ellipsis (yes/no). If reactivation takes place, ellipsis should be less difficult to process in the ambiguous condition, where the antecedent has been reanalyzed.\ 
At the sluicing site, antecedent ambiguity led to higher total reading times and marginally higher regression path durations only for ellipsis sentences, contrary to what reactivation would predict. An analysis of fixations made after the ellipsis site had been fixated also revealed that subjects re-read the antecedent more often in the ambiguous conditions.\ 
We found no evidence of a reactivation advantage due to reanalysis. Instead, our results suggest that subjects did not always resolve the ambiguity in the initial clause - a type of good-enough processing (e.g. Ferreira \& Patson, 2007).

}, author = {Paape, Dario and Barbara Hemforth and Vasishth, Shravan} } @conference {4713, title = {Ellipsis with garden-path antecedents in French}, year = {2016}, month = {03/2016}, abstract = {

Ellipsis with garden-path antecedents in French

Dario Paape, Shravan Vasishth (Univ. of Potsdam) \& Barbara Hemforth (Univ. Paris Diderot)

paape@uni-potsdam.de

Ellipsis is typically anaphoric, and its interpretation requires access to a suitable antecedent. Adopting the framework of cue-based retrieval parsing (Lewis \& Vasishth, 2005), Paape (2015) suggests that the syntactic structures of ellipsis antecedents are stored in working memory as chunks whose activation levels fluctuate over time. Cue-based retrieval parsing predicts that manipulating memory chunks increases their activation, making them easier to retrieve.

It should be possible to boost the activation of a stored antecedent through syntactic reanalysis, which changes the structure of the chunk and thereby \&$\#$39;refreshes\&$\#$39; its memory trace. In a self-paced reading study on German sluicing, Paape (2015) found that antecedents that had been reanalyzed (i.e., garden-path antecedents) led to reduced reading times at the ellipsis site, indicating facilitated retrieval and thus supporting the reactivation hypothesis.

In the current study, we attempted to replicate Paape\&$\#$39;s (2015) finding using eye-tracking, which more closely resembles natural reading. We tested French sentences containing sluicing constructions with temporarily ambiguous antecedents, as shown below.

Our design used a sequence of three lexically ambiguous words. Here, the word sale is ambiguous between the third person singular form of saler, \&$\#$39;to salt\&$\#$39;, and the adjective \&$\#$39;filthy\&$\#$39;. The word les is either a plural-marked definite article or an object pronoun. Finally, tranche could be a singular noun (\&$\#$39;slice\&$\#$39;), but would need an -s suffix to be compatible with the would-be article les to yield the reading \&$\#$39;The butcher/s salt/s the slices\&$\#$39;. The word tranche is thus the point of disambiguation in the ambiguous conditions, where no other morphological markers signal the correct parse. In a pretest, acceptability ratings were lower for ambiguous antecedent clauses than for unambiguous ones, which we took to indicate a garden-path effect. The main experiment used a 2\×2 design with the factors ambiguity (yes/no) and ellipsis (yes/no). The two control conditions used non-ellipsis anaphors (en, \&$\#$39;of it\&$\#$39;, in the above example). According to the reactivation hypothesis, processing at the ellipsis site (quand, \&$\#$39;when\&$\#$39;) should be less difficult in the ambiguous condition, where the antecedent has to be reanalyzed at tranche, \&$\#$39;cut\&$\#$39;.

At the sluicing site, antecedent ambiguity led to higher total reading times (t = 3.2) and marginally higher regression path durations (t = 1.9) only for ellipsis sentences, contrary to what the reactivation hypothesis predicted. This pattern was not observed in the region right before the ellipsis, excluding differential processing spillover as an explanation. An analysis of fixations made after the ellipsis site had been fixated revealed an effect of ambiguity on re-reading times for the antecedent region (t = 2.2), as well as higher re-reading probabilities for the initial noun phrase (z = 2.6) and the adjective (z = 2.3) in the ambiguous/ellipsis condition only.

Our study yielded no evidence for a reactivation advantage due to reanalysis. The increased re-reading time on the antecedent suggests that subjects did not always resolve the ambiguity in the initial clause - a type of good-enough processing (e.g. Ferreira \& Patson, 2007). On such trials, no fully interpreted antecedent will be available upon encountering the ellipsis site, leading to processing difficulty and re-reading of the antecedent clause.\ 

}, author = {Paape, Dario and Vasishth, Shravan and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4720, title = {French object relatives: all is good when the context is right}, year = {2016}, month = {09/2016}, abstract = {

In experiments and corpus studies, we compared two types of French Object Relatives: with preverbal subject (le livre que Paul lit, \&$\#$39;the book that Paul reads\&$\#$39;) and with inverted subject (le livre que lit Paul). The linear distance hypothesis predicts the latter should be easier to process. However, in a Visual World experiment using reversible RCs with agentive verbs, we found the former to be easier.\ 
In a corpus study, we looked at general frequency of OR-types, verb semantics (+/- agentive), relative length of subject and verb in number of syllables, and the number of arguments in the OR. Logistic regressions show that the two ORs don\&$\#$39;t differ significantly in frequency, excluding a frequency-based explanation. Inverted ORs are actually preferred when the subject is longer, and the verb shorter with a non agentive meaning. Our findings showed that general frequency cannot be the factor explaining the use of the two ORs, but that verb semantics and length play a role. This means that the two ORs are not just alternatives but used in specific syntactic/semantic conditions. An acceptability judgement experiment confirmed that inverted ORs can be preferred over non-inverted ORs when the subject is longer and the verb non agentive.

}, author = {Pozniak, Celine and Barbara Hemforth and Anne Abeill{\'e}} } @conference {4710, title = {French object relatives: evidence against DLT but not entirely explained by frequency}, year = {2016}, month = {03/2016}, abstract = {

French object relatives: evidence against DLT but not entirely explained by frequency

C{\'e}line Pozniak, Barbara Hemforth \& Anne Abeill{\'e} (LLF, CNRS, Univ. Paris-Diderot, Labex EFL)

celine.pozniak@gmail.com

The literature in relative clause processing mainly presents differences between subject and object relative clauses (SRs and ORs). In our study, we will also compare two constructions for ORs: one with preverbal subject (ORsnoinv) and one with postverbal subject (ORsinv). Inversion is only possible with nominal subjects, not with pronominal subjects.

(1) OR with preverbal subject
Le m{\'e}decin que l\&$\#$39;avocat voit ___.

The doctor thatobj the lawyersubj sees.
Example (1) shows that the linear distance is shorter in ORsinv , so it should be easier to process than

ORsnoinv according to the Dependency Locality Theory, now DLT (Gibson, 2000).
Study 1 We designed an experiment to test linear distance-based theories in French in contexts with

high anticipation of restrictive relative clauses.
Experiment We ran a Visual World Eye-Tracking experiment (5 items per condition) with 32

native French speakers. We tested reversible SRs, ORsnoinv, ORsinv (1-3). The participants listened to a sentence while viewing 2 pictures with the same 3 characters each performing different actions. They had to find the correct picture according to the sentence. One picture was only compatible with an SR interpretation, the other one only with an OR interpretation.

Results Mixed linear models showed a significant SR advantage over the two ORs (ps\<.01). Participants looked at the right picture in later time windows for ORinv than for ORnoninv (ps\<.01), against linear distance accounts. These results seem, however, to go against the intuition that ORinv are relatively frequent in French, but possibly only under specific conditions.

Study 2 We therefore ran a corpus study using the French Treebank (Abeill{\'e} et al, 2003) to analyze factors for facilitating inverted and non-inverted RCs.

Corpus study We analyzed a corpus of the two ORs by looking at the semantics of the verb (+/- agentive), the length of the subject and the verb in number of syllables, and the number of arguments in the relative. We analyzed the role of these factors for the choice of the order in the relative using logistic regression models.

Results Logistic regressions show that the two ORs don\’t differ significantly in frequency, excluding a simple frequency-based explanation (94 ORsnoinv and 90 ORsinv). However, ORsinv are actually preferred over ORsnoinv when the subject is longer, and the verb is shorter and has a non agentive meaning (ps\< .01).

Conclusion In our Eye-Tracking experiment, ORsinv were harder to process than ORsnoinv, contradicting the DLT. However, the corpus study showed that general frequency cannot be the factor explaining this contrast. The verb semantics and the length of the subject and verb play a role in the choice of relative. This means that ORsnoinv and ORsinv are not just alternatives but used in specific contexts. The context in the experiment disfavored the use of ORsinv because of the use of agentive verbs. In the right context, ORsinv should even be preferred and acceptability judgment studies on this matter are currently on the way. Our results are highly compatible with semantic/pragmatic accounts in relative clause processing (Mak et al, 2006; Traxler et al, 2002).\ 

}, author = {Pozniak, Celine and Barbara Hemforth and Anne Abeill{\'e}} } @conference {4721, title = {How to investigate stigmatized constructions in French?}, year = {2016}, month = {09/2016}, abstract = {

It is widely known that some constructions like left-dislocation (Les gateaux, je les ai mang\és / The biscuits, I ate them.), though widespread in spoken corpora are marked in standard written French. Acceptability judgment experiments in written context show stigmatization compared to other pragmatically marked constructions (e.g. clefts), even in felicitous contexts. We replicated those experiments using spoken sentences, and a written speeded grammaticality judgment paradigm.\ 
In spoken French we did not find any differences to the previous experiments. Even with the right prosody, left-dislocations are judged significantly less acceptable than clefts in their respective felicitous contexts. The task demands seem to encourage metalinguistic judgments based on sociolinguistic parameters.\ 
Speeded grammaticality judgments (SGJ), however, show equally high acceptability rates for left-dislocations and clefts. Ungrammatical clefts with clitics, on the other hand, are judged strongly unacceptable while pragmatically odd left-dislocations without clitics are judged moderately acceptable. This is coherent with gradient acceptability accounts where clefts with clitics are ungrammatical syntax wise (hard constraint) and left-dislocations without clitics are possible grammatically, but need a salient alternative to be felicitous (soft constraint).\ 
This series of experiments shows that challenging tasks like SGJ provide results closer to the actual usage of stigmatized constructions.

}, author = {Etienne Riou and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4722, title = {How to turn Brazilians into Europeans: Global and local exposure effects on co-reference in European (EP) and Brazilian (BP) Portuguese}, year = {2016}, month = {09/2016}, abstract = {

Co-reference is affected by the availability of pronominal forms in the language, but the interaction of language-based (global) exposure and (local) exposure, e.g., during experiments, is still unclear. We addressed this issue in questionnaires with Overt and Null pronouns in Portuguese sentences like The photographer greeted the journalist when he/\Ø finished?, where he/\Ø referred to either ?photographer? (Subject) or ?journalist? (Object).\ 
While EP keeps a symmetrical distribution of Null and Overt forms, BP seems to be losing the Null forms. This would explain why EP shows the traditional ?division of labour? (Null retrieving Subject/ Overt retrieving Object) whereas BP shows no preference for Overt forms. If the processor is sensitive to pronouns? availability, skewing local exposure towards Null forms should elicit in BP the EP pattern. We created two Exposure conditions (50\%/50\%, 75\%/25\%) varying the relative amount of Null and Overt Pronouns. A significant interaction Pronoun:Exposure for BP confirmed our prediction: while Subject and Object were equally selected as the antecedent of the Overt pronoun in the 50/50 condition, choices for Subject and Object in the 75/25 condition were 30\% and 70\%, approaching the EP pattern. Our results indicate adaptation to the local statistical environment.

}, author = {Eunice Fernandes and Paula Luegi and Eduardo Correa Soares and Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth} } @inproceedings {4715, title = {Influence du contexte exp{\'e}rimental sur l{\textquoteright}interpr{\'e}tation des anaphores pronominales en fran{\c c}ais}, volume = {27}, year = {2016}, month = {07/2016}, edition = {SHS Web of Conferences}, abstract = {

R\ésum\é

Cette \étude pr\ésente les r\ésultats de trois questionnaires r\éalis\és en fran\çais afin d\’observer les pr\éf\érences d\’interpr\étation de formes pronominales ambigu\ës. Plus pr\écis\ément, nous nous sommes int\éress\és \à l\’influence du contexte exp\érimental sur l\’interpr\étation de pronoms anaphoriques plus ou moins r\éduits. Dans un premier questionnaire, seules des constructions avec le pronom faible \« il \» \étaient pr\ésent\ées. Un deuxi\ème questionnaire comportait seulement la forme forte \« lui, il \». Enfin, dans un troisi\ème questionnaire les deux formes \étaient m\élang\ées afin d\’observer si la pr\ésence, dans un m\ême questionnaire, des deux formes (\« il \» et \« lui, il \») pouvait influencer leur interpr\étation. C\’est seulement lorsque les deux formes sont pr\ésent\ées dans un m\ême questionnaire que nous observons une division fonctionnelle entre la forme pronominale r\éduite \« il \» et la forme accentu\ée \« lui, il \». La pr\ésence de \« lui, il \» dans le m\ême questionnaire que le pronom \« il \», augmente les interpr\étations du pronom \« il \» en faveur du r\éf\érent saillant (premier mentionn\é, sujet et topique) et les interpr\étations de \« lui, il \» en faveur de l\’ant\éc\édent moins saillant. Ces r\ésultats r\év\èlent \à quel point les locuteurs sont rapidement capables d\’adapter leur pr\éf\érence d\’interpr\étation \à la pr\ésence de formes alternatives dans le contexte.

Abstract

This paper presents the results of three questionnaires in which we investigated interpretational preferences for ambiguous pronominal forms in French. In particular, we examined the influence of the experimental context on the interpretation of more or less reduced anaphoric pronominal forms. In the first questionnaire, only constructions with the clitic pronoun \“il\” were tested. In the second questionnaire, only constructions with the strong form \“lui, il\” were tested. Finally, in the third questionnaire, both forms were mixed in order to test whether the presence of the two forms (\“il\” and \“lui, il\”) in a single questionnaire influences their interpretation. A division of labour in the processing of the reduced form \“il\” and of the strong one \“lui, il\” was observed only in the third questionnaire, i.e. when both forms were presented together. The presence of the form \“lui, il\” in the same questionnaire as the pronoun \“il\” increased the interpretations of the pronoun \“il\” in favour of the more salient referent (i.e., first mentioned, subject and topic) and the interpretations of \“lui, il\” in favour of the less salient antecedent. These results reveal that comprehenders can and do adapt their interpretational preferences to the presence of alternative forms in the context.

}, doi = { http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/20162710004}, author = {Colonna, Saveria and Schimke, Sarah and Coralie Vincent and Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth} } @inproceedings {4717, title = {Intonation in the processing of contrast meaning in French: An eye-tracking study}, year = {2016}, month = {07/2016}, abstract = {

Listeners rapidly process tonal composition and pitch accent placement within an utterance to create expectations about its pragmatic meaning and information structure. It is still unknown whether the nuclear pitch accent alone or a combination of pitch accent and the following edge tone are needed in order to process intonational meaning in French. This study investigates the online comprehension of the French (L)H*L\% rise-fall \“implication\” contour, which evokes a contrast meaning. Twenty-nine speakers participated in an eye-tracking experiment. The critical stimuli were sentences whose interpretation could be anticipated by successfully processing the implied meaning evoked by the (L)H*L\% rise-fall contour on the critical word (hereafter CW). The results showed that participants are able to associate the implication contour with a contrast meaning, and that they start doing this only after the H* peak of the rise-fall intonation movement has been processed, hence when part of the L\% falling movement has been perceived.

}, url = {https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5tX0NnTCf-ISDZVUDZUUWpReWs/view}, author = {Esteve-Gibert, Nuria and Cristel Portes and Shafer, Amy and Barbara Hemforth and D{\textquoteright}Imperio, Mariapaola} } @conference {5857, title = {Learning left-dislocation in French : between pragmatics and sociolinguistics}, year = {2016}, author = {Etienne Riou and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {5878, title = {Learning left-dislocation in French: between pragmatics and sociolinguistics}, year = {2016}, month = {08/2016}, address = {Jyv{\"a}skyl{\"a}}, author = {Etienne Riou and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4711, title = {Length effects in an OV language with Differential Object Marking and mixed head direction}, year = {2016}, month = {03/2016}, abstract = {

Length effects in an OV language with Differential Object Marking and mixed head direction
Pegah Faghiri (Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3), Barbara Hemforth (CNRS/Paris-Diderot) \& Pollet Samvelian (Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3)

pegah.faghiri@univ-paris3.fr
The \“long-before-short\” (LbS) preference observed in SOV languages, e.g. Japanese, Persian

and Basque, challenges the universality of availability-based theories of word order preferences supported by incremental models of speech production, put forward to account for the \“end-weight\” preference observed namely in German and English. Based on data from Japanese, Yamashita \& Chang (2001) propose a unified but language-specific accessibility-based account for both preferences. Their rationale is that 1) longer constituents are lexically richer and hence more salient than shorter ones, while being more costly to process and plan; 2) language-specific properties may modulate the sensitivity of a production system to conceptual vs. formal factors. With respect to word order, Japanese speakers focus more on conveying meaning than on sequencing forms, contrary to e.g. English speakers, given that Japanese has fewer syntactic constrains (e.g. flexible word order \& null pronouns) and that the shift does not occur in the postverbal domain where the verb is shown to exert strong influence.

Recent studies Japanese (Tanaka et al. 2011) and Basque (Ros et al. 2015) reject a conceptual account of LbS in favor of Hawkins\’ dependency-based distance-minimizing model (1994, 2004), which predicts mirror-image preferences in (strictly) VO and OV languages. Contributing to this discussion, we provide data on Persian, another SOV language with flexible word order and null pronouns, but head-initial in NP, PP and CP. Persian has verbal agreement with subject and Differential Object Marking (realized by =r ) triggered by definiteness.

Previous corpus and experimental studies on the relative order between the DO and the IO in the preverbal domain (Faghiri \& Samvelian 2014, Faghiri et al. 2014) have found a clear LbS preference, not predicted by Hawkins\’ model (due to Persian\’s mixed head direction). Moreover, they show that the effect of length depends on the degree of determination (or definiteness) of the DO: r - marked (definite) DOs prefer OD-OI-V regardless of length, (existential) indefinite DOs prefer OD-OI- V even more with OD\≥IO, and bare DOs show a less strong preference for OI-OD-V with OD\≥IO. It is argued that these preferences conform to the conceptual account, given that the fact that the effect of length and definiteness converge.

Our data on the relative order between the subject and the DO support these results. Firstly, our corpus data reveal that the degree of definiteness of the DO remains highly relevant: only r - marked DOs occur in OSV order (at the overall rate of 4.6\%). Secondly, we manipulated the relative length and animacy (of the subject) following a 2x2 design in a controlled experiment with r -marked animate DOs (20 items, ex.1), using a web-based sentence completion questionnaire (56 participants). We found (cf. Fig.1) a highly significant effect of animacy (p\<.001), OSV order was more frequent (12\% vs. 4.4\%) for inanimate subjects (1b) than for animate ones (1a), but no effect of length contrary to dependency-based length-minimizing accounts predictions (e.g. Gibson 2000, Hawkins 2004). Meanwhile, the conceptual hypothesis can provide a satisfactory account of these preferences: 1) animacy is a known conceptual factor to influence ordering preferences (e.g. Branigan \& Feleki 1999, Kempen \& Harbusch 2004, Branigan et al. 2008); 2) it is highly likely that the joint effect of definiteness and animacy undermines the
contribution of length to the conceptual
accessibility of the DO.

}, author = {Pegah Faghiri and Barbara Hemforth and Samvelian, Pollet} } @inproceedings {4714, title = {Les relatives en dont du fran{\c c}ais : {\'e}tudes empiriques}, volume = {27}, year = {2016}, abstract = {

R\ésum\é

Les relatives en\ dont\ ont fait l\’objet de plusieurs \études th\éoriques (Godard 1988) mais ont moins \ét\é \étudi\ées d\’un point de vue empirique (Gapany 2004). C. Blanche-Benveniste (1995) notait leur raret\é dans des corpus oraux, o\ù ils sont principalement compl\éments de certains verbes. Notre objectif est d\’observer le comportement des relatives en\ dont\ en fran\çais d\’un point de vue empirique. Pour ce faire, nous avons en premier lieu \étudi\é les relatives dans deux corpus, le French Treebank (corpus \écrit) et le Corpus de Fran\çais Parl\é Parisien des ann\ées 2000 (corpus oral). Ces \études nous ont permis de confirmer en partie les travaux de C. Blanche-Benveniste (1995) : l\’usage de\ dont\ en fran\çais \écrit diff\ère effectivement de son usage en fran\çais oral, mais\ dont\ est loin d\’\être r\éserv\é \à l\’oral \à quelques expressions fig\ées. Nous avons pu aussi confirmer l\’\étude de Godard (1980) : les dont compl\ément de nom (extractions hors de SN) ne sont pas marginaux, et les plus frequents sont ceux o\ù le nom est sujet, ce qui consid\ér\é comme agrammatical par certaines th\éories linguistiques comme agrammaticales. De ce point de vue, les corpus nous ont permis de v\érifier que les extractions hors du SN sujet ne posent pas de probl\èmes en fran\çais. Leur usage est m\ême plut\ôt r\épandu, et inclut les extractions hors de \« vrais sujets \» de verbes transitifs, contrairement aux pr\édictions des hypoth\èses de la grammaire g\én\érative. En grammaire g\én\érative en effet, les relatives comme les autres structures \à extraction sont soumises \à des contraintes d\’\îles (Ross 1957). Selon la contrainte de l\’\îlot nominal, il est plus difficile d\’extraire un compl\ément de nom qu\’un compl\ément de verbe. La contrainte de l\’\îlot sujet exclut quant \à elle l\’extraction du compl\ément du sujet, qui n\’est possible que lorsque le sujet est deriv\é (passif, moyen\…) ou argument interne (Chomsky 2008). Or, nous constatons que les extractions hors de SN sujet sont plus fr\équentes dans les corpus que les extractions hors de SN objet (en ce qui concerne les relatives en\ dont). Ce m\ême fait est un argument en faveur de la th\éorie de la localit\é de Gibson, qui pr\évoit que l\’extraction hors de SN sujet est non seulement bien form\ée mais moins co\ûteuse que celle hors de SN objet. D\’autres observations sur les relatives en\ dont\ des deux corpus semblent corroborer cette th\éorie, comme par exemple la plus grande fr\équence des sujets pronominaux ou invers\és dans les relatives en\ dont\ dans lesquelles\ dont\ correspond \à un compl\ément du verbe. Dans un deuxi\ème temps, nous avons men\é une \étude exp\érimentale de jugement d\’acceptabilit\é afin de comparer les jugements de locuteurs natifs face \à des relatives en\ dont\ correspondant \à une extraction hors du SN sujet d\’une part et \à une extraction hors de SN objet d\’autre part (la forme du sujet dans ces derni\ères, qui joue un r\ôle dans la th\éorie de la localit\é de Gibson, a \ét\é test\ée \également). Les r\ésultats de cette exp\érience sont eux aussi en accord avec les pr\évisions de la th\éorie de la localit\é de Gibson, les jugements \étant significativement sup\érieurs pour les extractions hors de SN sujet par rapport aux extractions hors de SN objet.

Abstract

French relative clauses introduced by\ dont\ (from now on:\ dont-RC) have been well investigated on the theoretical level (Godard 1988) but have not lead to many empirical studies (Gapany 2004). Blanche-Benveniste (1995) observed that\ dont-RC are not very common in spoken French and restricted to the extraction of a few verb complements. The aim of this article is to describe\ dont-RC on the basis of three empirical studies: two corpus studies and one online experimental study. The corpus studies have been conducted on a written corpus (French Treebank) and on a spoken corpus (Corpus de Fran\çais Parl\é Parisien des ann\ées 2000). The results confirm partly Blanche-Benveniste\’s claim: the written usage of\ dont-RC differs from its spoken use, but it is not restricted in the later to specific idioms. Both corpora corroborate the work of Godard (1980) : dont is widely used as a complement on noun, extractions out of NP are not marginal, not even out of subject NP which are considered non-grammatical by some linguistic theories. The corpus studies show that this kind of extraction is widely-used in French and even concern \“real subjects\” of transitive verbs, which goes against the prediction made by many generative theories. In generative grammar, relative clauses (as well as any extraction) are subject to island constraints (Ross 1957). The nominal island constraint predicts that the extraction of a noun complement should be harder than the extraction of a verb complement. The subject island constraint rules out extractions out of subject NPs, which is claimed to be only acceptable when the subject NP is an underlying object (Chomsky 2008). However, in our corpora,\ dont-RC extractions out of NP subject are more frequent than extractions out of NP object. This observation confirms Gibson\’s Dependency Locality Theory (DLT), which predicts that the extraction from subject NP should have less cognitive costs than the extraction from object NP. Other observations corroborate this theory as well: for example, that dont-RC corresponding to the extraction of the complement of a verb favor pronominal or inverted subjects. Our experimental study is an online acceptability task. Its aim is to compare the judgments from native speakers related to dont-RC implying an extraction out of subject NP and object NP (the kind of subject involved in the later case has an impact of the DLT\’s predictions and have been tested as well). The results confirm again the predictions from the DLT: the judgments for the extraction out of subject NPs are significantly higher than for the extraction out of object NPs.

}, doi = { http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/20162714011}, author = {Anne Abeill{\'e} and Barbara Hemforth and Winckel, Elodie} } @conference {4712, title = {Mandarin relative clause processing or the joy of replication.}, year = {2016}, month = {03/2016}, abstract = {

Mandarin relative clause processing or the joy of replication.

C{\'e}line Pozniak, Barbara Hemforth (LLF, CNRS, Univ. Paris-Diderot, Labex EFL)

Celine.pozniak@gmail.com

Subject relative clauses (SRs) are considered as being easier to process than object relative clauses (ORs) cross-linguistically. However, Mandarin has been claimed to behave differently, since Hsiao \& Gibson (2003) found an OR advantage compatible with linear distance effects as predicted by the Dependency Locality Theory (DLT) (Gibson, 2000). Chen et al. (2011), however, found that SRs are easier to process in Mandarin, in line with frequency/structure based predictions. To explain these diverging results, Vasishth et al. (2013) suggested in a meta-analysis that there may actually be no significant difference at all or just a slight SR advantage possibly because the two effects (frequency/structure and linear distance effects) cancel each other out. Still, this meta-analysis included experiments with known methodological problems (such as contexts allowing for non-RC analysis). Thus, we ran a series of replication of experiments with different groups of participants to test the robustness of the preferences.

Our study We designed an experiment to test frequency/structure based versus linear distance based theories presenting RCs in contexts with very high anticipation of restrictive RCs. Experiments We ran a Visual World Eye-Tracking experiment (5 items per condition) with 41 native Mandarin Chinese speakers for Exp1, 23 native Mandarin Chinese speakers for Exp2 (both groups living in Paris) and 34 native Mandarin Chinese speakers in China (Nanjing) (Exp3). Exp1 and Exp2 were identical except for the speed of presentation of the auditory material. Presentation was slowed down in Exp1 in order to clearly capture fixation patterns. We sped up the presentation in Exp2 to enhance cognitive load. Exp2 and Exp3 were identical. We tested reversible SRs and ORs (1-2). Participants listened to a sentence while viewing a pair of pictures with the same three characters each performing different actions. The task was to find the correct picture corresponding to the sentence. One of the pictures was only compatible with an SR interpretation, the other one only with an OR interpretation.

Results Linear mixed models showed no significant difference between SRs and ORs in Exp1 (Figure 1), probably because of the reduced speed of the presentation. Increasing the speed in Exp2 (Figure 2) resulted in a significant SR advantage in Mandarin (ps\<.05) but not in Exp3 (Figure 3) where numeric but no significant difference could be established. Conclusion In a study with constraining context replicated three times, we find only a slight SR advantage when combining the results from the three experiments (Figure 4). We follow Vasishth et al. \‘s proposition that RCs processing involves a competition between frequency/structure and linear distance effects, which may cancel each other out. Our results do not show any evidence for an OR preference, disconfirming DLT. The lack of stability of preferences in Mandarin relative clause processing pertains even when using the same paradigm. This shows why it is so important in psycholinguistics to replicate experiments in order to test the robustness of the factors playing a role in sentence processing.

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}, author = {Pozniak, Celine and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4723, title = {Relative Clause-attachment in European (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP): Effects of verb type, tense and variety}, year = {2016}, month = {09/2016}, abstract = {

Pseudo-relative (PR) clauses have been argued to underlie high attachment (HA) preferences in RC-attachment ambiguities. PRs are possible with perception verbs which create the anticipation of a perceivable event. They demand the relative clause and the matrix clause being in the same time frame. Availability of PRs varies across languages but also across speakers of a language or language varieties. For BP as well as for EP evidence for basic attachment preferences is mixed as is evidence for the availability of PRs. Our questionnaire studies in BP and EP asked for attachment preferences in sentences like ?Maria saw/sees the daughter of the teacher who ran the marathon.?\ 

We varied verb-type (perception vs. stative verbs like lived-with) and tense-match between the RC-verb and the matrix verb. If the PR-reading is driving high attachment preferences, only perception verb sentences with matching tenses should boost HA. We found significant effects of variety (more HA for EP), verb-type (more HA for perception verbs across tense-match conditions), and a marginal (.08) interaction verb-type*tense. Across varieties, most HA were found for perception verbs with matching tense compatible with the PR-hypothesis. However, even for mismatching tense, perception verbs attracted more HA, suggesting a semantic effect beyond PR-availability.

}, author = {Eunice Fernandes and Paula Luegi and Eduardo Correa Soares and Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4727, title = {The role of individual empathic skills on the online processing of intonational meaning}, year = {2016}, month = {09/2016}, abstract = {

The pragmatic meaning evoked by intonation is known to be processed online by listeners, but less is understood about which part of the contour triggers the meaning interpretation and how individual pragmatic abilities impact intonational processing. Here we investigate the role of empathy skills on the stability and timing of the intonation-meaning association, focusing on a French tune signaling contrast between the interlocutors? beliefs. Twenty-nine French speakers participated in a visual-world eye-tracking task in which a temporary lexical ambiguity could be resolved through intonation. Results showed, first, that low-empathy participants selected one (ultimately incorrect) interpretation during the pre-nuclear region of the contour (?=1.013, p\<.05), but participants with higher empathy did not (instead being less stable and considering both possible intonation-meaning associations) (?=-0.413, p=.42). Even when participants perceived clear disambiguating lexical cues, highly-empathic participants showed less strong intonation-meaning associations than less-empathic ones (?=-1.141, p\<.05 vs. ?=-1.441, p\<.001, respectively). Second, both groups used the nuclear pitch accent to start assigning the contrast meaning to the intonation contour, although they waited for the complete unfolding of the tune to interpret the contrast intonation. We propose that individual pragmatic variability needs to be taken into account when studying the processing of intonational meaning.

}, author = {Esteve-Gibert, Nuria and Cristel Portes and Shafer, Amy and Barbara Hemforth and D{\textquoteright}Imperio, Mariapaola} } @inbook {4700, title = {The role of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics in pronoun resolution: A cross-linguistic overview}, booktitle = {Empirical perspectives on anaphor resolution}, number = {Linguistische Arbeiten 563}, year = {2016}, pages = {11-32}, publisher = {De Gruyter}, organization = {De Gruyter}, edition = {Anke Holler, Katja Suckow}, address = {Berlin/Boston}, abstract = {

Most psycholinguistic and computational linguistic work done in the field of ref- erence interpretation agrees today that the process of resolving a referring expression consists of several different stages (Kehler 2008 summarizes them with the SMASH algorithm: Search, Match, And Select using Heuristics). Different resoution strategies are assumed to hold for each of the stages. First, comprehenders collect all possible referents available within a given contextual frame. No selection or ranking of referents happens at this stage. Second, these candidates are filtered out through a series of \“hard\” morphosyntactic constraints, such as number, gender, person, binding constraints, etc. Finally, if more than one candidate remains possible as the antecedent of the referential expression after applying these hard constraints, the appropriate referent is selected based on some combination of \“soft\” constraints or heuristics (e.g. syntactic function, parallelism, thematic role, etc.). It is important to note, however, that while most psycholinguistic approaches to pronoun resolution have been primarily concerned with identifying these hard and soft constraints, little attention has been paid to providing a detailed and integrated explanation for the observed patterns, and for why different preferences seem to weigh differently in different contexts. Kehler (2008) is an exception to this rule. He explains the different weights of constraints by a combination of strategies based on preferences regarding the production of referential expressions and strategies based on discourse expectations.

The goals of this article are twofold: we will give an overview of some cross- linguistic work on pronoun resolution, summarizing results from a variety of off-line and on-line studies. Moreover, based on the observed results, we will suggest that pronoun resolution preferences in a particular language need to be explained by a combination of syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors which, crucially, do not play out in the same manner within and across sentences (or better Dis- course Units [DU], as we will argue). We will focus on two factors: the effect of the availability of alternative constructions for a particular interpretation in a lan- guage and the question of whether the pronoun and its antecedent are in the same or in a separate DU. We will relate our results to a de notion of DU by Miltsakaki (2002) and show where this definition falls short of explaining the empirical results. Against these previous definitions of DU that equate this notion to either the sentence or the clause, in the last section of this article, we will provide evidence in favor of a more dynamic multifactorial definition of DU that systematizes and accounts for the preference patterns. We will argue that all the factors to be considered are valid across languages. However, their manifestation depends on the grammar of any particular language.\ 

}, issn = {978-3-11-045968-5}, doi = {10.1515/9783110464108-003}, url = {https://www.degruyter.com/view/books/9783110464108/9783110464108-003/9783110464108-003.xml}, author = {Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth and Colonna, Saveria and Schimke, Sarah} } @conference {4724, title = {Salience-based vs. exposure-based strategies in L2 pronoun resolution in French}, year = {2016}, month = {09/2016}, abstract = {

We investigated pronoun resolution strategies in French native speakers and in German L2-learners of French. French and German differ in antecedent preferences in ambiguous constructions such as ?The postman hit the pirate before he went home?: while French shows a N2-preference, which is explained by the availability of a construction that unambiguously refers to N1, German, which does not have this alternative, shows a N1-preference.\ 
In questionnaires, we tested French active and passive sentences to investigate (a) whether the L2-learners would apply the same strategy as natives in the active condition (i.e. N2-preference), and (b) whether the explicit topicalization of a referent as a consequence of passivization influences interpretation preferences in both groups (resulting in more N1 choices).\ 
The results show that German learners continue to apply the L1 strategy in the L2, preferring the N1 significantly more often than the French natives in the active condition (57\% vs. 23\%). Crucially, the number of N1 choices increased significantly in both groups in the passive condition (74\% vs. 62\%). These results support salience-based strategies in L1 and L2 pronoun resolution and suggest that L2-learners might have difficulty acquiring strategies based on the frequency and availability of alternative constructions in the L2.

}, author = {Israel de la Fuente and Schimke, Sarah and Sascha Kuck and Barbara Hemforth and Colonna, Saveria} } @conference {5548, title = {The semantics of Implicit Causality: Missing explanations and more.}, year = {2016}, month = {10/2016}, url = {http://hpsl-linguistics.org/1203}, author = {Barbara Hemforth and Israel de la Fuente} } @conference {5856, title = {Sensibilisation aux constructions non-canoniques}, year = {2016}, author = {Etienne Riou and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4725, title = {Topicality-based vs. exposure-based preferences in pronoun resolution in French: Evidence from questionnaires and eye-movements}, year = {2016}, month = {09/2016}, abstract = {

It has been observed that in French sentences such as \&$\#$39;The facteur a appel\é le pirate avant qu\&$\#$39;il rentre \à la maison\&$\#$39; (\&$\#$39;The postman called the pirate before he went home\&$\#$39;), the N2 (the pirate) is strongly preferred as the antecedent of the ambiguous pronoun. This N2-preference in French has been explained by the fact that speakers take into account an alternative non-finite construction that is available in the language (\&$\#$39;avant de rentrer \à la maison\&$\#$39;, \&$\#$39;before going home\&$\#$39;) and that unambiguously refers to the N1.\ 
In a questionnaire and a Visual World eye-tracking experiment, we tested whether the explicit topicalization of the object by means of a passive construction (\&$\#$39;Le pirate a \ét\é appel\é par le facteur...\&$\#$39;) can change the N2-preference in favor of an N1-preference. Despite the fact that the non-finite construction is an unambiguous alternative for the active as well as the passive sentences, we observed a significant increase of N1-preferences in passive compared to active constructions in both the questionnaire (p\<.0001) and the Visual World experiment (p\<.01). These results suggest that pronoun interpretation preferences based on the frequency and availability of alternative constructions can be overridden when a referent is explicitly marked as the topic.

}, author = {Israel de la Fuente and Schimke, Sarah and Coralie Vincent and Barbara Hemforth and Colonna, Saveria} } @conference {4726, title = {Voice mismatch in Right Node Raising: Evidence from acceptability judgments and an eyetracking reading experiment}, year = {2016}, month = {09/2016}, abstract = {

Voice mismatches may arise in VP ellipsis and Pseudogapping between source and target. No such mismatch has been reported for Right Node Raising (RNR).
However, French corpora provide many examples, where the shared participle must be interpreted as active (reflexive) and passive. Since RNR requires semantic contrast between the conjuncts, we conducted two experiments to test semantic (agent) contrast and syntactic (voice) match:\ 
+contrast/-match: Ce pharmacien doit des explications \à ceux qui se sont *ou qui ont \ét\é* mobilis\és pour lui. / This pharmacist owes explanations to those who themselves have or who have been mobilized for him.\ 
-contrast/-match: qu\&$\#$39;on a *ou qui ont \ét\é* / who one has or who have been\ 
+contrast/+match: qui se sont *ou qu\&$\#$39;on a* / who themselves have or who one has\ 
-contrast/+match: qui \étaient *ou qui ont \ét\é* / who were or who have been\ 
Acceptability judgements only showed a significant effect of contrast (p\<.01), not of match. In an eyetracking reading experiment, Gaze and Regression Path Durations show significant effects of semantic contrast in both voice match and mismatch sentences (critical zone between *) and no effect of match. Hence, given the appropriate semantics, voice mismatch is acceptable in RNR.

}, author = {Aoi Shiraishi and Barbara Hemforth and Anne Abeill{\'e}} } @inproceedings {5225, title = {Why are distributive readings dispreferred}, volume = {Going Romance 2015}, year = {2016}, author = {Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin and Emilia Ellsiepen and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4546, title = {Contrast markers in English and French}, year = {2015}, month = {09/2015}, address = {Malta}, author = {Lyn Frazier and Barbara Hemforth} } @article {4542, title = {Different effects of focus in intra- and intersentential pronoun resolution in German.}, journal = {Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience}, year = {2015}, month = {08/2015}, abstract = {

It is widely assumed that focused entities are more salient than non-focused ones and consequently, that an antecedent should be particularly available for a pronoun when it is foregrounded in a cleft construction. Contrary to this assumption, however, some studies observed that an antecedent focused by a cleft was less accessible than a non-focused one. We claim that the influence of clefting depends on the position of the ambiguous pronoun: clefted antecedents are only preferred as antecedents of a pronoun when the pronoun and its antecedent are in different discourse units. In order to test this hypothesis, we conducted a questionnaire and a visual world experiment in German in which we manipulated inter- vs. intra-sentential pronoun resolution. Results showed that clefting had different effects depending on the position of the pronoun. We will discuss why these results are consistent with the claim that pronouns preferentially co-refer with the sentence topic.

}, keywords = {eye-tracking, focus, information structure, language comprehension, pronoun resolution, visual world paradigm}, doi = {10.1080/23273798.2015.1066510}, author = {Colonna, Saveria and Schimke, Sarah and Barbara Hemforth} } @article {4541, title = {Dislocation clitique de l{\textquoteright}objet {\`a} gauche en fran{\c c}ais {\'e}crit}, journal = {Discours}, volume = {16}, year = {2015}, month = {09/2015}, abstract = {

Cet article porte sur l\’acceptabilit\é des constructions syntaxiques \à la lumi\ère de la distinction entre fran\çais oral et fran\çais \écrit. Nous pr\ésentons cette distinction comme un facteur appartenant \à une approche multifactorielle. Ladite approche inclut les contraintes pragmatiques, stylistiques, et syntaxiques qui influencent l\’acceptabilit\é d\’un \énonc\é. Nous argumentons qu\’il est possible d\’am\éliorer l\’acceptabilit\é d\’une construction associ\ée au fran\çais oral, la dislocation clitique de l\’objet \à gauche, dans un contexte \écrit en modifiant la structure informationnelle du discours. Nous pr\ésentons une s\érie d\’exp\ériences testant l\’acceptabilit\é de la construction \à l\’\écrit sous diverses contraintes informationnelles. Nous proposerons un mod\èle incluant les m\êmes contraintes pour le fran\çais parl\é et \écrit en int\égrant la modalit\é comme pr\édicteur.

}, keywords = {dislocation clitique {\`a} gauche, fran{\c c}ais {\'e}crit, jugement d{\textquoteright}acceptabilit{\'e}, linguistique exp{\'e}rimentale, structure informationnelle}, doi = {DOI : 10.4000/discours.9037}, author = {Etienne Riou and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4548, title = {L2 ambiguous pronoun resolution: the impact of L1-based preferences, L2-proficiency and working memory capacity}, year = {2015}, month = {05/2015}, address = {Rutgers}, author = {Schimke, Sarah and Colonna, Saveria and Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth} } @article {4543, title = {Neurodynamics of executive control processes in bilinguals: Evidence from ERP and source reconstruction analyses}, journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, volume = {6}, year = {2015}, month = {06/2015}, abstract = {

The present study was designed to examine the impact of bilingualism on the neuronal activity in different executive control processes namely conflict monitoring, control implementation (i.e., interference suppression and conflict resolution) and overcoming of inhibition. Twenty-two highly proficient but non-balanced successive French\–German bilingual adults and 22 monolingual adults performed a combined Stroop/Negative priming task while event-related potential (ERP) were recorded online. The data revealed that the ERP effects were reduced in bilinguals in comparison to monolinguals but only in the Stroop task and limited to the N400 and the sustained fronto-central negative-going potential time windows. This result suggests that bilingualism may impact the process of control implementation rather than the process of conflict monitoring (N200). Critically, our study revealed a differential time course of the involvement of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in conflict processing. While the ACC showed major activation in the early time windows (N200 and N400) but not in the latest time window (late sustained negative-going potential), the PFC became unilaterally active in the left hemisphere in the N400 and the late sustained negative-going potential time windows. Taken together, the present electroencephalography data lend support to a cascading neurophysiological model of executive control processes, in which ACC and PFC may play a determining role.

}, doi = {DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00821}, author = {Heidlmayr, Karin and Barbara Hemforth and Moutier, Sylvain and Isel, Fr{\'e}d{\'e}ric} } @conference {4547, title = {Processing Mandarin relative clauses}, year = {2015}, month = {09/2015}, address = {Malta}, author = {Pozniak, Celine and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4462, title = {Processing subject and object relative clauses in French and Mandarin Chinese}, year = {2015}, month = {03/2015}, address = {Los Angeles}, doi = {10.13140/RG.2.1.1456.8481}, author = {Pozniak, Celine and Barbara Hemforth} } @inbook {4544, title = {Prosodic realizations of information focus in French}, booktitle = {Explicit and implicit prosody in sentence processing: Studies in Honor of Janet Dean Fodor}, volume = {Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics}, number = {46}, year = {2015}, pages = {39-62}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, edition = {Lyn Frazier \& Edward Gibson}, address = {Cham}, issn = {ISBN 978-3-319-12961-7}, url = {http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319129600}, author = {Claire Beyssade and Barbara Hemforth and Jean-Marie Marandin and Cristel Portes} } @conference {4464, title = {Pseudo relatives are easier than relative clauses: evidence from Tense}, year = {2015}, month = {03/2015}, address = {Los Angeles}, url = {http://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/836/docs/CUNY_program_web_reduced_edits_sponsors.pdf}, author = {Nino Grillo and Barbara Hemforth and Pozniak, Celine and Andrea Santi} } @conference {4545, title = {Pseudo Relatives are easier than Relative Clauses: eyetracking evidence from tense}, year = {2015}, month = {09/2015}, address = {Malta}, author = {Nino Grillo and Barbara Hemforth and Pozniak, Celine and Andrea Santi} } @conference {5855, title = {Rapport entre didactique des langues et linguistique : le cas de la dislocation {\`a} gauche}, year = {2015}, author = {Etienne Riou and Barbara Hemforth} } @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} } @conference {4463, title = {Sentence structure matters: A new account of intra-sentential pronoun resolution}, year = {2015}, month = {03/2015}, address = {Los Angeles}, doi = { 10.13140/RG.2.1.2505.4245}, author = {Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth} } @inproceedings {4440, title = {Accessibility and Word Order: The Case of Ditransitive Constructions in Persian}, year = {2014}, address = {Buffalo, EU}, author = {Pegah Faghiri and Samvelian, Pollet and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {5853, title = {Apprentissage de la dislocation clitique {\`a} gauche en FLE}, year = {2014}, author = {Etienne Riou and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {5135, title = {Coercion types in French : an experimental study}, year = {2014}, month = {06/2014}, address = {Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore}, author = {Patrick Caudal and Barbara Hemforth} } @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} } @inproceedings {4809, title = {The Disfluency, Exclamation and Laughter in Dialogue (DUEL) Project}, year = {2014}, pages = {176{\textendash}178}, author = {Jonathan Ginzburg and Ye Tian and Pascal Amsili and Claire Beyssade and Barbara Hemforth and Yvette Yannick Mathieu and Saillard, Claire and Julian Hough and Kousidis, Spyridon and David Schlangen} } @inproceedings {4438, title = {Distributive and collective readings of plural DPs}, year = {2014}, address = {Edinburgh, Ecosse}, doi = {10.13140/2.1.4623.2965}, author = {Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin and Emilia Ellsiepen and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4442, title = { Effects of context on the processing of adversative and comparative constructions}, year = {2014}, address = {Columbus, Ohio, EU}, doi = {10.13140/RG.2.1.1099.1520}, author = {Gr{\'e}goire Winterstein and Emilia Ellsiepen and Jacques Jayez and Barbara Hemforth} } @inbook {4431, title = {Information Structure and Pronoun Resolution in German and French: Evidence from the Visual-World Paradigm}, booktitle = {Psycholinguistic Approaches to Meaning and Understanding across Languages}, series = {Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics}, number = {44}, year = {2014}, pages = {175-196}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, address = {Dordrecht}, issn = {978-3-319-05674-6}, author = {Colonna, Saveria and Schimke, Sarah and Barbara Hemforth} } @article {4371, title = {Information structure cues for 4-year-olds and adults: Tracking eye movements to visually presented anaphoric referents}, journal = {Language, Cognition, and Neurosciences}, volume = {29}, year = {2014}, pages = {877-892}, author = {J{\"a}rvikivi, Juhani and Pyykk{\"o}nen-Klauck, Pirita and Schimke, Sarah and Colonna, Saveria and Barbara Hemforth} } @inbook {4428, title = {Introduction: Meaning across languages}, booktitle = {Psycholinguistic Approaches to Meaning and Understanding across Languages}, number = {Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics}, year = {2014}, pages = {1-21}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, address = {Dordrecht}, issn = {978-3-319-05674-6}, author = {Barbara Hemforth and Barbara Mertins and Fabricius-Hansen, Cathrine} } @conference {5852, title = {La dislocation clitique {\`a} gauche : une faute de fran{\c c}ais ?}, year = {2014}, author = {Etienne Riou and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {5854, title = {Partially ordered set relations \& left-dislocation in French}, year = {2014}, author = {Etienne Riou and Barbara Hemforth} } @book {3970, title = {Psycholinguistic Approaches to Meaning and Understanding across Languages}, series = {Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics}, number = {44}, year = {2014}, pages = {251}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, address = {Dordrecht}, isbn = {978-3-319-05674-6}, author = {Barbara Hemforth and Barbara Mertins and Fabricius-Hansen, Cathrine} } @conference {4441, title = {Reference as a side effect of discourse expectations: The case of focus-sensitive particles}, year = {2014}, address = {Columbus, Ohio, EU}, author = {Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth} } @inbook {4436, title = {Referring Expressions in Speech Reports}, booktitle = {Psycholinguistic Approaches to Meaning and Understanding across Languages}, series = {Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics}, number = {44}, year = {2014}, pages = {111-142}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, address = {Dordrecht}, issn = {978-3-319-05674-6}, author = {Borthen, Kaja and Barbara Hemforth and Barbara Mertins and Behrens, Bergljot and Fabricius-Hansen, Cathrine} } @article {4368, title = {Successive bilingualism and executive functions: The effect of second language use on inhibitory control in a behavioural Stroop Colour Word task}, journal = {Bilingualism: Language and Cognition}, volume = {17}, year = {2014}, pages = {630{\textendash}645}, abstract = {

Here we examined the role of bilingualism on cognitive inhibition using the Stroop Colour Word task. Our hypothesis was that the frequency of use of a second language (L2) in the daily life of successive bilingual individuals impacts the efficiency of their inhibitory control mechanism. Thirty-three highly proficient successive French\–German bilinguals, living either in a French or in a German linguistic environment, performed a Stroop task on both French and German words. Moreover, 31 French monolingual individuals were also tested with French words. We showed that the bilingual advantage was (i) reinforced by the use of a third language, and (ii) modulated by the duration of immersion in a second language environment. This suggests that top\–down inhibitory control is most involved at the beginning of immersion. Taken together, the present findings lend support to the psycholinguistic models of bilingual language processing that postulate that top\–down active inhibition is involved in language control.

}, author = {Heidlmayr, Karin and Moutier, Sylvain and Barbara Hemforth and Courtin, Cyril and Tanzmeister, Robert and Isel, Fr{\'e}d{\'e}ric} } @inproceedings {4439, title = {The time course of semantic constraints in pronoun resolution}, year = {2014}, address = {Edinburgh, Ecosse}, author = {Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth} } @inbook {4429, title = {Understanding Coordinate Clauses: A Cross-Linguistic Experimental Approach}, booktitle = {Psycholinguistic Approaches to Meaning and Understanding across Languages}, series = {Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics}, number = {44}, year = {2014}, pages = {23-51}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, address = {Dordrecht}, issn = {978-3-319-05674-6}, author = {Behrens, Bergljot and Barbara Mertins and Barbara Hemforth and Fabricius-Hansen, Cathrine} } @conference {4437, title = {VP Ellipsis beyond syntactic identity: the case of nominal antecedents}, year = {2014}, address = {T{\"u}bingen}, doi = {10.13140/2.1.4713.2488}, author = {Philip Miller and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4465, title = {Why are distributive readings dispreferred?}, year = {2014}, month = {10/2014}, address = {Lisbonne}, abstract = {

}, url = {http://www.fcsh.unl.pt/linguistica/goingromance2014/GR_Prog.pdf}, author = {Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin and Emilia Ellsiepen and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4456, title = {Anti-focus effects in pronoun resolution?}, year = {2013}, month = {9/2013}, address = {Marseille}, doi = {10.13140/RG.2.1.4154.1282}, author = {Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4453, title = {Clause structure matters: The role of left-dislocation \& clefts in pronoun resolution}, year = {2013}, month = {03/2013}, address = {University of South Carolina}, doi = {10.13140/RG.2.1.1245.9682}, author = {Barbara Hemforth and Israel de la Fuente and Colonna, Saveria and Schimke, Sarah} } @inproceedings {4452, title = { Effects of clefting and left-dislocation on Subject and Object Pronoun Resolution in Spanish}, year = {2013}, month = {10/2013}, publisher = {Cascadilla Proceedings Project}, address = {Florida}, abstract = {

The present study investigates the role of two syntactic constructions affecting the discourse status of antecedents (left-dislocation and clefting) in the intra-sentential resolution of ambiguous null subject and object clitic pronouns in Spanish. The results of two offline questionnaires show that pronoun interpretation changes significantly from a canonical construction as a result of the experimental manipulations of the discourse status of the antecedents. Crucially, however, the two syntactic constructions investigated do not have the same effect on participants\&$\#$39; preferences: while there was a general preference for left-dislocated antecedents, participants dispreferred clefted antecedents at least intra-sententially, a pattern that has also been attested for subject pronoun resolution in French and German (Colonna et al., 2012). The differences between left-dislocation and clefting have been argued to be a consequence of a preference for topic continuity. It is suggested that the semantic and syntactic structure of clefts may provide a better explanation for our observations. A third questionnaire investigated experimental context effects on the resolution of null and overt subject pronouns.

}, url = {http://www.lingref.com/cpp/hls/16/paper2923.pdf}, author = {Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4457, title = {Expectations matter when resolving pronouns in explanations and temporal clauses: The differences between even and only}, year = {2013}, month = {09/2013}, address = {Marseille}, doi = {10.13140/RG.2.1.1794.8323}, author = {Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth} } @inbook {4461, title = {Experimental Linguistics}, booktitle = {Oxford Online Bibliographies}, year = {2013}, publisher = {Oxford University Press}, organization = {Oxford University Press}, edition = {Mark Aronoff}, address = {New York}, doi = {10.1093/OBO/9780199772810-0112}, author = {Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4459, title = {Heaviness in a Verb-final Language: Evidence from Persian}, year = {2013}, month = {09/2013}, address = {Marseille}, doi = {10.13140/RG.2.1.2450.1924}, author = {Pegah Faghiri and Samvelian, Pollet and Barbara Hemforth} } @article {4369, title = {Length Matters: Informational Load in Ambiguity Resolution}, journal = {Discours}, volume = {12}, year = {2013}, abstract = {

Dans cet article, nous comparons une approche prosodique avec une approche pragmatique pour rendre compte des effets de la longueur des constituants dans les ambig\üit\és d\’attachement. Augmenter la longueur d\’un constituant a des cons\équences sur l\’information qu\’il v\éhicule\ : plus un constituant est long et moins il est pr\édictible (Levy et Florian, 2007) et plus son co\ût de traitement augmente (Almor, 1999). Suivant les principes n\éo-gric\éens (Levinson, 1987 et\ 1991), augmenter le poids informationnel doit \être justifi\é. Cette justification est plus facilement satisfaite lorsqu\’un constituant long v\éhicule une information nouvelle et/ou qui se rapporte aux \él\éments centraux de l\’\énonc\é. Le co\ût informationnel ne se r\ésume cependant pas \à une simple question de longueur en termes de nombre de caract\ères ou de syllabes mais plus probablement \à la quantit\é d\’information v\éhicul\ée. Dans trois questionnaires, nous comparons l\’effet de l\’augmentation de la longueur d\’un syntagme pr\épositionnel ambigu comme dans [1a/b/c], soit en allongeant le nom de la ville, soit en ajoutant de l\’information au sujet de la ville. Nous observons que seul l\’ajout d\’information augmente la proportion d\’attachement du syntagme pr\épositionnel au constituant central de l\’\énonc\é. Ces r\ésultats sont discut\és \à la lumi\ère des facteurs prosodiques et pragmatiques qui peuvent rendre compte des effets de longueur observ\és sur les pr\éf\érences d\’attachement.
[1] Pierre a rencontr\é le docteur de l\’avocat a.\ d\’Apt. /\ b.\ d\’Aix-en-Provence /\ c.\ de la magnifique ville d\’Apt.

}, issn = {ISSN {\'e}lectronique 1963-1723}, doi = {DOI : 10.4000/discours.8780}, author = {Barbara Hemforth and Colonna, Saveria and Petrone, Caterina and D{\textquoteright}Imperio, Mariapaola} } @inproceedings {4454, title = {Negation and mood alternation in French A preliminary experimental investigation of polarity mood}, year = {2013}, doi = {10.13140/RG.2.1.4653.8407}, url = {http://web.stanford.edu/dept/linguistics/structures_evidence/website/docs/papers/godard_et_al_2013.pdf}, author = {Dani{\`e}le Godard and Barbara Hemforth and Jean-Marie Marandin} } @conference {4455, title = {Only and Even: Focusing effects on pronoun resolution in temporal clauses and explanations}, year = {2013}, month = {06/2013}, doi = {10.13140/2.1.1433.1843}, url = {https://detec2013.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/delafuente_hemforth.pdf}, author = {Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4460, title = { Pronoun resolution is fast and automatic: Evidence from a German visual world experiment}, year = {2013}, month = {09/2013}, address = {Marseille}, doi = {10.13140/RG.2.1.2974.4803}, author = {Schimke, Sarah and Colonna, Saveria and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4458, title = {The role of focus in within- and between-sentence pronoun resolution}, year = {2013}, month = {09/2013}, address = {Marseille}, doi = {10.13140/RG.2.1.1663.7608}, author = {Colonna, Saveria and Schimke, Sarah 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 {1087, title = {Different effects of focus in intra- and inter-sentential pronoun resolution in German and French}, volume = {25}, year = {2012}, month = {03/2012}, pages = {113}, address = {NewYork}, url = {http://cuny2012.commons.gc.cuny.edu/files/2012/03/cuny2012_113.pdf}, author = {Colonna, Saveria and Schimke, Sarah and Medam, Tiphaine 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} } @article {4370, title = {Information structure effects on anaphora resolution in German and French: A cross-linguistic study of pronoun resolution}, journal = {Linguistics}, volume = {55}, year = {2012}, pages = {991-1013}, author = {Colonna, Saveria and Schimke, Sarah and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {1090, title = {Referring expressions in direct and indirect speech in Czech, English, German and Norwegian}, year = {2012}, month = {04/2012}, address = {Freiburg, Germany}, url = {http://icngl11.uni-freiburg.de/theme.html}, author = {Barbara Hemforth and Borthen, Kaja and Schmiedtova, Barbara and Behrens, Bergljot and Fabricius-Hansen, Cathrine} } @conference {1091, title = {Understanding coordinate clauses in Czech, English, German and Norwegian}, year = {2012}, month = {04/2012}, address = {Freiburg, Germany}, keywords = {C-COM}, url = {http://icngl11.uni-freiburg.de/theme.html}, author = {Behrens, Bergljot and Schmiedtova, Barbara and Fabricius-Hansen, Cathrine and Barbara Hemforth} } @inproceedings {1067, title = {Do animate arguments come first ? the case of French ditransitive verbs}, year = {2011}, address = {Paris}, author = {Juliette Thuilier and Anne Abeill{\'e} and Beno{\^\i}t Crabb{\'e}}, editor = {Barbara Hemforth} } @inproceedings {459, title = {Information Focus in French}, year = {2010}, month = {mai 2010}, author = {Claire Beyssade and Jean-Marie Marandin and Barbara Hemforth and Cristel Portes} } @inproceedings {424, title = {Prosodic Marking of Information Focus in French}, year = {2009}, month = {2010}, pages = {109-122}, address = {Paris}, author = {Claire Beyssade and Barbara Hemforth and Jean-Marie Marandin and Cristel Portes}, editor = {Hiyon Yoo and {\'E}lisabeth Delais-Roussarie} } @inproceedings {458, title = {Prosodic Marking of Information Focus in French}, year = {2009}, month = {sept. 2009}, address = {Paris}, author = {Claire Beyssade and Barbara Hemforth and Jean-Marie Marandin and Cristel Portes} } @inproceedings {455, title = {The prosody of restrictive {\textquoteright}seulement{\textquoteright} in French}, year = {2008}, month = {sept. 2008}, address = {Lisbonne}, author = {Claire Beyssade and Barbara Hemforth and Jean-Marie Marandin and Cristel Portes} }