Person feature mismatch and intervention in Italian clefts

Keywords: featural relativized minimality, person features, clefts, eye tracking, Italian.
1. The problem. Interpreting the head of an Object Cleft (OC, e.g. the banker in (1.a)) as
the correct argument of the lexical verb (e.g. avoided in (1.a)) is a critical step for
comprehending this construction in on-line processing. This dependency has been deeply
studied both from the theoretical/competence perspective (Friedmann et al 2009, Belletti &
Rizzi 2012 a.o.) and from the psycholinguistic/performance one (Gordon et al 2004 a.o.),
especially when an intervening similar DP (i.e. the subject of the cleft, e.g. the lawyer in
(1.a) vs. Dan or we in (1.b)) is processed between the head and the lexical verb (Warren
& Gibson 2005). The goal of this paper is twofold: on the one hand we want to add an extra
piece of information by testing more precisely (on-line and off-line) person features (third
(default) vs. second person as in (1.c)) when the lexical restriction (i.e. a full noun) is present,
on the other, we want to present a feature-based complexity metric that predicts the
revealed asymmetries in more precise and graded way compared to alternative approaches,
eventually reconciling a formal theory of competence and the psycholinguistic performance.
(1) a. it was [the banker]i that [the lawyer] avoided _i at the party
b. it was [the banker/Pat/you]i that [the lawyer/Dan/we] avoided _i at the party
c. it was [the/you banker]i that [the/you lawyer] avoided _i at the party
2. Background. Performance contrasts elicited by OC suggests that the nature of both DPs
involved plays a role (Gordon et al. 2001, 2004, Warren & Gibson 2005): a definite DP
(DPfull), a proper noun (Nproper), or a pronoun (pro) occupying the two relevant positions (full
paradigm summarized in (1.b)) produce different on-line effects (e.g. in self-paced reading
tasks), with the two referential DPs (DPfull matching condition, (1.a)) ranking higher in terms
of complexity (slowdown in reading the critical verbal segment, lower accuracy rate in
comprehension questions) and pronominal (with person mismatch) forms (i.e. it was you
that we ) ranking lower on a difficulty scale (e.g. faster reading time of the critical verbal
segment, higher accuracy rate in comprehension questions). None of the existing theories
fully explains the complete scale of phenomena: theories based on the referentiality hierarchy
(Ariel 1990, Gibson 1998, Warren & Gibson 2005 a.o.) fail to predict why also Nproper
matching condition induces a low performance comparable to the DPfull matching condition;
similarity based accounts (Gordon et al. 2004 a.o.) capture this fact, but fail in distinguishing
the differences caused by reversing the order of the DPs in mismatching conditions (e.g. DP-
pro vs pro-DPfull); featural relativized minimality accounts (e.g. Belletti & Rizzi 2012 a.o.)
predict harder time with both DPfull and Nproper matching condition, also expecting better
performances with the pro-intervening conditions (i.e. DPfull-pro, Nproper-pro, pro-pro), but fail
in predicting any granularity in other conditions (e.g. pro-DPfull or DPfull-Nproper, conditions).
3. Materials. We decided to collect new empirical evidence comparing determiners and
restricted pronouns (1.c) both on-line in an eye tracking study and off-line (grammaticality
judgment) using Italian. According to Belletti & Rizzi (2012) pronouns are to a lesser extent
interveners because of their lack of a lexical restriction. But pronouns, given an appropriate
context, can function as determiners, and, unlike determiners, bear person features other than
3rd person default one. All person features on the subject trigger verbal agreement in Italian.
Comparing (using a latin square design) lexically restricted DPs introduced by an article
(art condition; 3rd, default, person) or by a 2nd person pronoun (pro condition), while
keeping number (plural, in order to make all the oppositions sound) constant we tested the
exact contribution of person feature on object clefts as in (2). 33 subjects (age range = 19-35;
18 female; centre-north Italian native speakers) were enrolled in the first on-line eye-tracking
experiment (Eyelink 1000, desktop, dominant eye tracking). After the target sentence reading
was completed (user button pressure) a yes/no comprehension question was displayed.
(2) Sono/siete [DP1 gli/voi architetti ] che [DP2 gli/voi ingegneri ]
are3P_PL/are2P_PL/ the/you architects that the/you engineers
[verb region hanno/avete consultato _ ] [spill-over prima di iniziare i lavori].
have3P_PL/have2P_PL/ consulted before beginning the work
Verbal Working Memory Capacity (VWM) assessment after eye-tracking experiment
(sentence span, Lewandowsky et al. 2010) has been administered to all participants. We use
mixed-effects regression models (Baayen, Davidson & Bates, 2008; lme4 R package, Bates,
2011). Reading times data were analyzed by fitting general linear mixed models (lmer
function, e.g., Baayen et al., 2008), whereas (categorical) regression data were analyzed by
fitting mixed-effects logistic regressions (glmer, e.g., Jaeger, 2008). Reading times were log-
transformed to respect the normality assumption of mixed-effects regression models.
Other 48 subjects (age range: 20-64; 25 females; centre-north Italian native speakers) were
enrolled on a second off-line experiment based on grammaticality judgments (web-based
questionnaire to evaluate sentences on a 7-points Likert-scale) on the very same materials.
4. Results. Accuracy in comprehension questions in the on-line experiment shows a
significant and coherent pattern with respect to off-line grammaticality judgments:
(more accurate, 81%) art pro > art art pro art > pro pro (less accurate, 70%) (on-line task);
(more acceptable, 5.1) art pro > art art > pro art > pro pro (less acceptable, 2.4) (off-line task).
As for main on-line measures: First Fixation of the verb region revealed a main effect of DP2
(-0.095, t=-4.37) (art is read faster than pro); even though the interaction between DP1 and
DP2 is not very robust (comparison between the relevant models has chisq=2.16, p=0.14), this
indicates an interesting trend: pro pro > art pro > art art pro art. Finally, Second Pass (verb
region) shows a main effect of DP1 (art speeds up re-reading verb compared to pro), while
DP2 x VWM interaction and a three ways interaction suggests a strong effect of VWM only
when DP1 is pro and DP2 is art (in pro-art, low VWM participants spend more time re-
reading the verb).
5. Discussion. For interpreting on-line data, we adopted a left-right derivational minimalist
model (Chesi 2015) where non-local dependency is computed, in line with featural relativized
minimality (Friedmann et al 2009), using a Feature Retrieval Cost (FRC) function (Chesi
2015b). As in cue-based memory retrieval (Van Dyke and McElree, 2006) we predicted
effects exactly on the verbal region segment (this is not evident using a standard minimalist
derivation!) and we confirmed the idea that unambiguous cues on the verb (i.e. features
overtly realized on verb agreement morphology) facilitate the correct argument assignment
(higher accuracy in comprehension questions); in case of mismatch, the processing cost was
(correctly) predicted to be lower. Unlike 3rd person, 2nd person requires an anchoring to the
left peripheral field (where the relevant features of the speech event are encoded, i.e. the
logophoric patient feature, Sigursson 2004). This explain both why pro-pro (2nd person
matching condition) pays the highest cost (two distinct logophoric patients groups should
be instantiated) while art-pro (vs. pro-art) condition is easier to be interpreted (the salience of
the 2nd person on the cleft subject triggering verb agreement is rewarded) though it require
longer time to encode person feature (longer First Fixation time on the verb segment).
Selected references
Belletti & Rizzi (2012) in Berwick & Piattelli Palmarini OUP. Chesi (2015). J. of Psych. Res. 44(1), 65-89.
Friedmann et al (2009). Lingua. 119:6788. Gibson (1998). Cognition 68, 1-76. Gordon et al (2004). J. of Mem.
and Lang. 51:97-114. Sigursson (2004). Italian J. of Ling. 16.1. Van Dyke & McElree (2006). J. of Mem. and
Lang, 55(2), 157-166. Warren & Gibson (2005). Lang. and Cog. Proc. 20: 751-767