J. Kathryn Bock’s research while affiliated with Michigan State University and other places

In this chapter we explore a controversial hypothesis about the nature of the syntactic processing system. The hypothesis, roughly stated, is that some of the procedures that create grammatical patterns in sentences are in an important sense indifferent to the content of the symbols they manipulate, in somewhat the same way that the procedures for long multiplication are indifferent to the numbers involved in the computation. The purpose of this exploration is to uncover the linguistic or cognitive bases of a phenomenon noted by many, including Edward Sapir, who described it in this way: All languages evince a curious instinct for the development of one or more particular grammatical processes at the expense of others, tending always to lose sight of any explicit functional value that the process may have had in the first instance, delighting, it would seem, in the sheer play of its means of expression .... This feeling for form as such, freely expanding along predetermined lines and greatly inhibited in certain directions by the lack of controlling types of patterning, should be more clearly understood than it seems to be... these submerged and powerfully controlling impulses to definite form operate as such, regardless of the need for expressing particular concepts or of giving consistent external shape to particular groups of concepts (1921, pp. 60–61).

The goals of this research were to determine whether speakers adjust the stress patterns of words within sentences to create an alternation between strong and weak beats and to explore whether this rhythmic alternation contributes to the characteristics stress differences between two major lexical categories of English. Two experiments suggested that speakers do alter lexical stress in accordance with rhythmic biases. When speakers produced disyllabic pseudowords in sentence contexts, they were more likely to place stress on the first syllable when the pseudoword was preceded by a weak stress and followed by a strong one than when the strong stress preceded and the weak followed. This occurred both when the pseudowords served as nouns and when they served as verbs. Text analyses further revealed that weakly stressed elements precede nouns more often than verbs, whereas such elements follow verbs more often than nouns. Thus, disyllabic nouns are more likely than disyllabic verbs to occupy contexts biased toward trochaic rhythm, a finding consistent with leftward dominant stress in disyllabic English nouns. The history of stress changes in English nouns and verbs also conforms with the view that rhythmic context may have contributed to the evolution of stress differences. Together, the findings suggest that the citation stress patterns of words may to some degree reflect adaptations of lexical knowledge to conditions of language performance.

The goals of this research were to determine whether speakers adjust the stress patterns of words within sentences to create an alternation between strong and weak beats and to explore whether this rhythmic alternation contributes to the characteristic stress differences between two major lexical categories of English. Two experiments suggested that speakers do alter lexical stress in accordance with rhythmic biases. When speakers produced disyllabic pseudowords in sentence contexts, they were more likely to place stress on the first syllable when the pseudoword was preceded by a weak stress and followed by a strong one than when the strong stress preceded and the weak followed. This occurred both when the pseudowords served as nouns and when they served as verbs. Text analyses further revealed that weakly stressed elements precede nouns more often than verbs, whereas such elements follow verbs more often than nouns. Thus, disyllabic nouns are more likely than disyllabic verbs to occupy contexts biased toward trochaic rhythm, a finding consistent with leftward dominant stress in disyllabic English nouns. The history of stress changes in English nouns and verbs also conforms with the view that rhythmic context may have contributed to the evolution of stress differences. Together, the findings suggest that the citation stress patterns of words may to some degree reflect adaptations of lexical knowledge to conditions of language performance.

Theories of sentence production based on speech errors divide lexical-syntactic integration processes into 2 components. The first involves formulating an abstract structural representation that includes semantically specified lexical items. The second involves placing phonologically specified content words into a syntactic frame whose configuration is determined by the initial structural representation. Syntactic form thus may be influenced directly by variations in the semantic processing of words, but not by variations in phonological processing. This hypothesis was tested and supported in 2 experiments with a total of 160 undergraduates who produced extemporaneous picture descriptions. Production of each description was preceded by the presentation of a priming word that was semantically or phonologically related to a target word likely to occur in the description. Semantically primed targets tended to appear as the Ss of active and passive sentences, whereas the same targets when they were not primed were more likely to appear as the objects. Phonological priming, although equal to semantic priming in ability to elicit the target words, was not reliably related to syntactic form. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Activation processes appear to have an important impact on the mechanisms of language use, including those responsible for syntactic structure in speech. Some implications of this claim for theories of language performance were examined with a syntactic priming procedure. On each priming trial, subjects produced a priming sentence in one of several syntactic forms. They then viewed an unrelated event in a picture and described it in one sentence. The probability of a particular syntactic form being used in the description increased when that form had occurred in the prime, under presentation conditions that minimized subjects' attention to their speech, to the syntactic features of the priming sentences, and to connections between the priming sentences and the subsequent pictures. This syntactic repetition effect suggests that sentence formulation processes are somewhat inertial and subject to such probabilistic factors as the frequency or recency of use of particular structural forms. Two further experiments showed that this effect was not appreciably modified by variations in certain conceptual characteristics of sentences, and all three experiments found evidence that the effects of priming were specific to features of sentence form, independent of sentence content. The empirical isolability of structural features from conceptual characteristics of successive utterances is consistent with the assumption that some syntactic processes are organized into a functionally independent subsystem.

Three studies explored relationships between prototypicality and the structure of sentences in recall, preference ratings, and natural dictionary definitions. The first experiment showed that sentences were systematically changed in recall to allow prototypical instances of categories to be mentioned before nonprototypical instances. In the second experiment, sentences in which the prototype preceded the nonprototype were judged more natural than sentences with the opposite order. Finally, an examination of dictionary definitions of categories found that prototypes tended to occur before nonprototypes. These results can be explained in terms of the sensitivity of sentence production processes to the lexical or conceptual accessibility of prototypes. Such processes appear to adjust serial positions and, to a lesser extent, grammatical roles in order to allow lexical items to be produced soon after they are retrieved.

The grammatical relations of noun phrases in sentences are ordered in a hierarchy that is reflected in a wide array of linguistic phenomena. The hypothesis explored in this paper is that this hierarchy is related to the conceptual accessibility of the intended referents of noun phrases that commonly occur in particular relational roles, with relations higher in the hierarchy typically occupied by noun phrases representing more accessible concepts. An experiment on the formulation of sentences examined the relationship betweeen conceptual accessibility and grammatical relations for three levels in the hierarchy, the subject, direct object, and indirect object. There was a strong and systematic influence of conceptual accessibility on the surface syntactic structure of sentences. The attribution of this effect to grammatical role assignments, rather than to serial ordering mechanisms, was supported by the absence of an effect of conceptual accessibility on the order of nouns in conjunctive noun phrases. This pattern of results can be explained within current theories of sentence production.

What children know about discourse and its conventions before they start to read may influence their acquisition of reading skill.

The role of intonation in conveying discourse relationships in auditory sentence comprehension was investigated in two experiments. Using the simple comprehension time paradigm, Experiment 1 found that sentences with accented new information were understood faster than sentences with a neutral intonation contour and that the presence of accent in context sentences facilitated comprehension of subsequent targets. Both experiments showed faster comprehension times in conditions in which accent placement was appropriate for the information structure of the sentence. In Experiment I, comprehension times were faster when the accent fell on the information focus than when it fell elsewhere in the sentence. In Experiment 2, faster times resulted when new information was accented and given information was not, compared to conditions in which this accent pattern was reversed. This effect held for both active and passive sentences, and whether the new information occurred in the subject or object position.

Four experiments examined effects of cues for given and new information on word processing in reading. Article definiteness (the versus a) was varied preceding target nouns which were either new or repeated from referring expressions in prior sentences. Lexical decisions on the targets were faster for repeated than for new words, but this effect was enhanced by the: in all four experiments, repetition facilitation was greater for definite than for indefinite determination. This effect held whether the article was presented before the target word or simultaneously with it, and was more consistent when targets appeared in surface subject rather than object position. These results suggest that appropriate cues for given information facilitate the processing of words conveying that information.