Séminaire de Recherche en Linguistique

Maria-Lucia Cali: Understanding Interference

Abstract:

Many studies showed that the processing of some agreement dependencies (as in (1)) might be difficult or degraded even when an element (to the students) does not linearly intervene between the subject (the speaker) and its verb (make sleep):

(1)*Jules smiles to the students that the speaker make sleep (structural interference).

Two theories were developed to account for constraints on dependencies. The first one, Relativized Minimality theory (RM) accounts for the structural conditions that constrain syntactic dependencies (e.g., Rizzi, 1990; 2004). The second theory is grounded in Memory Models (MM) developed in cognitive psychology, and explains constraints on dependencies in terms of retrieval mechanisms (e.g., McElree, 2000; Lewis, Vasishth & Van Dyke, 2006). The two theories address different sets of dependencies: whereas RM deals with long-distance dependencies that are banned by or hinge on the boundaries of grammar, MM deals with dependencies that are grammatical but difficult to parse (as (1)). During my talk I would like to illustrate some problematic cases of agreement that can be elucidate by these two theories.

Farhad Sadri: The effect of syntactic complexity on fluency in speaking performance of first and second language

Abstract:

In my master thesis, I investigated how syntactic complexity affects speaking performance in first (Dutch) and second language (English) in terms of three measures of fluency: (1) breakdown fluency; (2) speed fluency; and (3) repair fluency. Participants (30 Dutch native speakers with an advanced level of English) performed two speaking experiments in which syntactic complexity was operationalized in four conditions, active vs. passive/nested vs. juxtaposed. I found that syntactic complexity affects the three types of fluency in different ways, and differently for first and second language.