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Udden, J., Hulten, A., Schoffelen, J.-M., Lam, N. H. L., Harbusch, K., Van den Bosch, A., Kempen, G., Petersson, K. M., & Hagoort, P. (2022). Supramodal sentence processing in the human brain: fMRI evidence for the influence of syntactic complexity in more than 200 participants. Neurobiology of Language, 3(4), 575-598. doi:10.1162/nol_a_00076.
Abstract
This study investigated two questions. One is: To what degree is sentence processing beyond single words independent of the input modality (speech vs. reading)? The second question is: Which parts of the network recruited by both modalities is sensitive to syntactic complexity? These questions were investigated by having more than 200 participants read or listen to well-formed sentences or series of unconnected words. A largely left-hemisphere frontotemporoparietal network was found to be supramodal in nature, i.e., independent of input modality. In addition, the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and the left posterior middle temporal gyrus (LpMTG) were most clearly associated with left-branching complexity. The left anterior temporal lobe (LaTL) showed the greatest sensitivity to sentences that differed in right-branching complexity. Moreover, activity in LIFG and LpMTG increased from sentence onset to end, in parallel with an increase of the left-branching complexity. While LIFG, bilateral anterior temporal lobe, posterior MTG, and left inferior parietal lobe (LIPL) all contribute to the supramodal unification processes, the results suggest that these regions differ in their respective contributions to syntactic complexity related processing. The consequences of these findings for neurobiological models of language processing are discussed.Additional information
supporting information -
Van de Velde, M., Kempen, G., & Harbusch, K. (2015). Dative alternation and planning scope in spoken language: A corpus study on effects of verb bias in VO and OV clauses of Dutch. Lingua, 165, 92-108. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2015.07.006.
Abstract
The syntactic structure of main and subordinate clauses is determined to a considerable extent by verb biases. For example, some English and Dutch ditransitive verbs have a preference for the prepositional object dative, whereas others are typically used with the double object dative. In this study, we compare the effect of these biases on structure selection in (S)VO and (S)OV dative clauses in the Corpus of Spoken Dutch (CGN). This comparison allowed us to make inferences about the size of the advance planning scope during spontaneous speaking: If the verb is an obligatory component of clause-level advance planning scope, as is claimed by the hypothesis of hierarchical incrementality, then biases should exert their influence on structure choices, regardless of early (VO) or late (OV) position of the verb in the clause. Conversely, if planning proceeds in a piecemeal fashion, strictly guided by lexical availability, as claimed by linear incrementality, then the verb and its associated biases can only influence structure choices in VO sentences. We tested these predictions by analyzing structure choices in the CGN, using mixed logit models. Our results support a combination of linear and hierarchical incrementality, showing a significant influence of verb bias on structure choices in VO, and a weaker (but still significant) effect in OV clauses -
Kempen, G., & Vosse, T. (1992). A language-sensitive text editor for Dutch. In P. O’Brian Holt, & N. Williams (
Eds. ), Computers and writing: State of the art (pp. 68-77). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Abstract
Modern word processors begin to offer a range of facilities for spelling, grammar and style checking in English. For the Dutch language hardly anything is available as yet. Many commercial word processing packages do include a hyphenation routine and a lexicon-based spelling checker but the practical usefulness of these tools is limited due to certain properties of Dutch orthography, as we will explain below. In this chapter we describe a text editor which incorporates a great deal of lexical, morphological and syntactic knowledge of Dutch and monitors the orthographical quality of Dutch texts. Section 1 deals with those aspects of Dutch orthography which pose problems to human authors as well as to computational language sensitive text editing tools. In section 2 we describe the design and the implementation of the text editor we have built. Section 3 is mainly devoted to a provisional evaluation of the system. -
Kempen, G. (1992). Generation. In W. Bright (
Ed. ), International encyclopedia of linguistics (pp. 59-61). New York: Oxford University Press. -
Kempen, G. (1992). Language technology and language instruction: Computational diagnosis of word level errors. In M. Swartz, & M. Yazdani (
Eds. ), Intelligent tutoring systems for foreign language learning: The bridge to international communication (pp. 191-198). Berlin: Springer. -
Kempen, G. (1992). Grammar based text processing. Document Management: Nieuwsbrief voor Documentaire Informatiekunde, 1(2), 8-10.
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Kempen, G. (1992). Second language acquisition as a hybrid learning process. In F. Engel, D. Bouwhuis, T. Bösser, & G. d'Ydewalle (
Eds. ), Cognitive modelling and interactive environments in language learning (pp. 139-144). Berlin: Springer.
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