@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} } @conference {5626, title = { Cross-domain priming from mathematics to relative-clause attachment: A visual-world study in French}, year = {2017}, month = {04/2017}, address = {Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston}, author = {Pozniak, Celine and Scheepers, Christoph} } @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} }