Speaker: Hal Tily
Title: Linguistic representations are probabilistic: evidence from production
choices, articulation, visual attention and reading times
Time: Tues 11/2, 12pm
Location: 46-3189
Comprehenders are sensitive to the probability of linguistic material:
they read more predictable words faster, resolve ambiguities to a more
likely outcome, and complete sentences in ways similar to actual
speakers’ productions. However, this does not necessarily mean that our
knowledge of language includes knowledge about the probability of
linguistic material, since we could simply be sensitive to the
probability of events in the world (plausibility), which is typically
confounded with the probability of the words used to describe them.
Luckily, languages sometimes give multiple ways of expressing a single
event which may differ in their probability, such as the English
ditransitive: “give the princess the necklace” means the same thing as
“give the necklace to the princess”. I present work showing that these
constructions are indeed used by speakers with different probabilities
depending on the linguistic environment. Those probabilities even
influence the realization of the utterance in speech: using the more
probable construction in a given situation leads to shorter word
durations and improved fluency. Using eyetracking, we next show that
comprehenders are sensitive to linguistic probabilities and use them to
anticipate the order that referents will be mentioned. Finally, in
online self paced reading, I show that low probability construction
choices lead to difficulty in comprehension. These results suggest that
linguistic forms which do not differ in meaning nevertheless have
associated probabilistic usage patterns which are fundamental to both
production and comprehension.