Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T06:22:04.591Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Being up front: narrative context and aspectual choice*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2014

JOSHUA C. FEDDER  and
LAURA WAGNER
JOSHUA C. FEDDER*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
LAURA WAGNER*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
*
†Address for correspondence: Joshua C. Fedder, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, 1835 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210. tel: 925-321-0156; e-mail: [email protected]. Laura Wagner, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, 1835 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210. tel: 614-688-3260; e-mail: [email protected]
†Address for correspondence: Joshua C. Fedder, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, 1835 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210. tel: 925-321-0156; e-mail: [email protected]. Laura Wagner, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, 1835 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210. tel: 614-688-3260; e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Readers actively construct representational models of meaning when reading text, and they do so by drawing on a range of kinds of information, from the specific linguistic forms of the sentences to knowledge about how the world works (Ferretti, Kutas, & McRae, 2007; Madden & Zwaan, 2003). The present set of studies focused on how grammatical aspect is integrated into a situation model and how it is connected to other dimensions of model construction. In three experiments, participants were asked to complete sentences with a choice of grammatical aspect form (perfective or imperfective). The test sentences systematically varied four dimensions of the sentence that were linked to grammatical aspect in different ways: telicity and transitivity (both linked through their semantic representations), subject animacy (linked through an inference over semantic representations), and related location information (linked through an inference grounded in world knowledge). In addition, to examine the influence of discourse function (backgrounding vs. foregrounding) on aspectual choice different construction types were varied across experiments – specifically a fronted locative construction and the presence of a generic narrative opener (Once upon a time). The results found that aspectual choice depends on information linked to the semantic representation of grammatical aspect; however, in contrast to previous work (e.g., Ferreti et al., 2007) information grounded in world knowledge (location information) did not influence aspectual choice except when it was integrated in a specialized discourse construction.

Keywords

grammatical aspectdiscoursesituation modeltelicitytransitivity
Type
Research Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. 239 - 264
Copyright
Copyright © UK Cognitive Linguistics Association 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Special thanks to Shari Speer, Simon Dennis, the Psycholinguistics Discussion Group, and the Developmental Language and Cognition Lab.

References

references

Andersen, R. W., & Shirai, Y. (1996). The primacy of aspect in first and second language acquisition: the pidgin−creole connection. In Ritchie, W. C., & Bhatia, T. K. (Eds.), Handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 527–570). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bloom, L., Lifter, K., & Hafitz, J. (1980). Semantics of verbs and the development of verb inflection in child language. Language, 56 (2), 386−412.Google Scholar
Bohnemeyer, J., & Swift, M. (2004). Event realization and default aspect. Linguistics and Philosophy, 27, 263−296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carreiras, M., Carriedo, N., Alonso, M. A., & Fernandez, A. (1997). The role of verb tense and verb aspect in the foregrounding of information during reading. Memory & Cognition, 25, 438–446.Google Scholar
Carruthers, J. (2012). Discourse and text. In Binnick, R. (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of tense and aspect (pp. 306–334). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Comrie, B. (1976). Aspect: an introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Davies, M. (2008). The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 450 million words, 1990−present. Online:<http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/>..>Google Scholar
De Swart, H. (1998). Aspect shift and coercion. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 16, 347–385.Google Scholar
Dowty, D. (1979). Word meaning and Montague Grammar. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Dowty, D. (1991). Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language, 67, 547–619.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elman, J. L. (2009). On the meaning of words and dinosaur bones: lexical knowledge without a lexicon. Cognitive Science, 33, 547–582.Google Scholar
Emmott, C. (1997). Narrative comprehension: a discourse perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fausey, C., & Matlock, T. (2010). Can grammar win elections? Political Psychology, 32, 563−574.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferretti, T., Kutas, M., & McRae, T. (2007). Verb aspect and the activation of event knowledge. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33, 182−196.Google Scholar
Fillmore, C. J. (1967). The case for case. In Bach, E. & Harms, R. T. (Eds.), Universals of linguistic theory (pp. 1−90). New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston.Google Scholar
Gernsbacher, M. A. (1990). Language comprehension as structure building. Hillsdale, NJ: LEA Press.Google Scholar
Gernsbacher, M. A. (1997). Two decades of structure building. Discourse Processes, 23, 265−304.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hart, W., & Albarracin, D. (2009). What I was doing versus what I did: verb aspect influences memory and future actions. Psychological Science, 20, 238−244.Google Scholar
Hasan, R. (1984). The nursery tale as genre. Nottingham Linguistic Circular, 13, 71–102.Google Scholar
Hopper, P. J. (1979). Aspect and foregrounding in discourse. In Givon, T. (Ed.), Syntax and semantics, volume 12: discourse and syntax (pp. 213–241). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hopper, P. J., & Thompson, S. A. (1980). Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language, 56, 251−299.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. (1990). Semantic structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kako, E. (2006). Thematic role properties of subjects and objects. Cognition, 101, 1−42.Google Scholar
Kim, S., Lee, J., & Gernsbacher, M. A. (2004). The advantage of first mention in Korean: the temporal contributions of syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 33, 475–491.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Klein, W. (1994). Time in language, 1st ed. (pp. 99−110). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kutas, M., & Hillyard, S. A. (1980). Reading between the lines: event-related brain potentials during natural sentence processing. Brain and Language, 11, 354−373.Google Scholar
Kutas, M., & Iragui, V. (1998). The N400 in a semantic categorization task across 6 decades. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 108, 456−471.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, P., & Shirai, Y. (2000). The acquisition of lexical and grammatical aspect. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Madden, C. J., & Therriault, D. J. (2009). Verb aspect and perceptual simulations. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62, 1294–1303.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Madden, C. J., & Zwaan, R. A. (2003). How does verb aspect constrain event representations? Memory & Cognition, 31, 663–672.Google Scholar
Magliano, J. P., & Schleich, M. C. (2000). Verb aspect and situation models. Discourse Processes, 29, 83−112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matlock, T., Sparks, D., Matthews, J. L., Hunter, J., & Huette, S. (2012). Smashing new results on aspectual framing: how people talk about car accidents. Studies in Language, 36, 699–720.Google Scholar
Michaelis, L. A. (1994). The ambiguity of the English present perfect. Journal of Linguistics, 30, 111–157.Google Scholar
Moens, M., & Steedman, M. (1988). Temporal ontology and temporal reference. Computational Linguistics, 14, 15–28.Google Scholar
Morrow, D. G. (1990). Spatial models, prepositions, and verb-aspect markers. Discourse Processes, 13, 441–469.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, C. (1991). The parameter of aspect, 1st ed. (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, 43). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers Group.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tenny, C. (1994). Aspectual roles and the syntax−semantics interface. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ter Meulen, A. G. B. (1995). Representing time in natural language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
van Hout, A. (2000). Event semantics in the lexicon−syntax interface. In Tenny, C. & Pustejovsky, J. (Eds.), Events as grammatical objects (pp. 239–282). Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Vendler, Z. (1967). Linguistics in philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Wagner, L. (2002). Children’s comprehension of completion entailments in the absence of agency cues. Journal of Child Language, 29, 109−125.Google Scholar
Wagner, L. (2006). Aspectual bootstrapping in language acquisition: telicity and transitivity. Language Learning and Development, 2, 51−76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, L. (2009). I’ll never grow up: continuity in aspect representations. Linguistics, 47, 1051−1074.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, L. (2010). Inferring meaning from syntactic structures in acquisition: the case of transitivity and telicity. Language and Cognitive Processes, 25, 1354−1379.Google Scholar
Wagner, L. (2012). Primary language acquisition. In Binnick, R. (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of tense and aspect (pp. 458−480). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weist, R, Wysocka, H., and Lyytinen, P. (1991). A cross-linguistic perspective on the development of temporal systems. Journal of Child Language, 18, 67−92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yap, F. H., Chu, P., Yiu, E., Wong, F., & Kwan, S. (2009). Aspectual asymmetries in the mental representation of events: role of lexical and grammatical aspect. Memory & Cognition, 37, 587−595.Google Scholar
Zwaan, R. A. (2008). Time in language, situation models, and mental simulations. Language Learning, 58, 13−26.Google Scholar
Zwaan, R. A., & Radvansky, G. A. (1998). Situation models in language comprehension and memory. Psychological Bulletin, 123, 162−185.Google Scholar