Animacy and recursion in brazilian portuguese: an ERP study
Cristiane Ramos de Souza - UFRJ
Aleria Lage - UFRJ
1. Introduction
The theoretical framework of this study is the Generative Grammar (Chomsky, 1957-2006)
that understands recursion as a mechanism that makes it possible to embed different
propositions as long as sentences – embedded clauses (CP), or as smaller ones, like Prepositional Phrases (PP).
Specially after Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch (2002), that advance the reach of recursive operations in different cognitive computations, in humans and nonhumans, new research
avenues have been established including the relationship between semantic features with
the recursive mechanism.
This is a relative clause experiment that aimed at assessing the impact that the animacy
feature of the antecedent poses onto the relative pronoun at the recursive site. Our general hypothesis was that for Brazilian Portuguese, an SVO language, Recursion would become an easier cognitive task, when the subject of the main clause, that is, the antecedent
of the relative pronoun, had the formal feature [+animate], since this situation corresponds
with the speaker’s default expectation (Lage, 2011). We also held as a second hypothesis
that syntax would be sensitive to the ontological categories posed by the animacy hierarchy: man > animal > plant > object (Silverstein, 1976, Dixon, 1979, Aissen, 2003, apud
Paczynski, Kuperberg, 2011).
2. Materials and methods
In order to investigate such hypotheses, we conducted an event-related brain potential
experiment, in Brazilian Portuguese with 25 undergraduate students as volunteers. We
tested six conditions with 20 experimental sentences each, exemplified in Table 1.
#
condition
1
[+animado] grammatical
[+humano]
[+animado] ungrammatical
[+humano]
2
grammaticality
3
[+animado] grammatical
[-humano]
4
[+animado] ungrammatical
[-humano]
5
[-animado]
grammatical
6
[-animado]
ungrammatical
Sentence
Ontem o menino que comprou o livro viajou cedo
Yesterday the boy that bought the book travelled early
Ontem o menino que comprei o livro viajou cedo
Yesterday the boy that buyPRES,1st PER,SING the book
travelled early
Mais tarde o cachorro que comeu a ração tomou
banho
Later the dog that ate the dog food took a shower
Mais tarde o cachorro que comi a ração tomou banho
Later the dog that eatPRES,1st PER,SING the dog food took
a shower
Certamente a caneta que riscou o caderno caiu no chão
Certainly the pen that squabble the notebook fell
on the floor
Certamente a caneta que risquei o caderno caiu no chão
Certainly the pen that squabblePRES,1st PER,SING the
notebook fell on the floor
We also used 120 distractor sentences. All 240 sentences were randomly displayed to the
subjects in a monitor in seven sequential chunks as displayed in Table 2.
ontem
yesterday
o menino
the boy
que
that
comprou
bought
o livro
the book
viajou
travelled
cedo
early
The chronology of the display was initiated by a fixation cross that stayed for 1500ms.
Then the seven chunks were displayed one by one for 300ms, with an interval of 200ms
after each. The volunteers’ task was a grammaticality judgment that should be performed
within 3000ms.
The prediction is that DPs with [+human] feature were easier to compute than DPs with
[-human] and [+animate] features, which on their turn should be easier to compute than
the DPs with [-animate] feature. The same hierarchy was expected to be inherited by the
respective relative pronouns (C), in the embedded clause (CP).
3. Results and conclusion
According to predictions, the hierarchy of anymacy was marked by the amplitude of the
N400 relative to the subject, when the trigger was placed right at the onset of the display
of the subject. A P600 was found related to the trigger placed at the onset of the display
of the embedded clause verbs: an ERP that occurs in relation to ungrammatical verb morphology. The modulated ERPs relative to the pronouns (N400) and to the verb inflections
(P600) are strong clues that the animacy feature affects the recursive computation in a
principled way.
References:
AISSEN J. Differential object marking: iconicity vs. economy. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, v. 21, p. 435-483, 2003.
CHOMSKY, N. Biolinguistics and the human capacity. In: ______. Language and mind.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. p. 173-185. (Lecture at MTA, Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Science, Budapest, May 17, 2004.)
______. Beyond explanatory adequacy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Working Papers
in Linguistics, 2001. 28 p. (MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 20)
______. Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton, 1957. 117 p.
DIXON, R. M. W. Ergativity. Language, v. 55, n. 1, p. 59-138, 1979.
HAUSER, M. D.; CHOMSKY, N.; FITCH, W. T. The faculty of language: What is it, who has
it, and how did it evolve? Science, v. 298, p. 1569-1579, November 22, 2002.
LAGE, A. C. O traço de animacidade. Confluência, Rio de Janeiro, v. 37, p. 215-226, 2011.
PACZYNSKI, M.; KUPERBERG, G. R. Electrophysiological evidence for use of the animacy
hierarchy, but not thematic role assignment, during verb argument processing. Language
and Cognitive Processes, Oxford, v. 26, n. 9, p. 1402-1456, 2011.
SILVERSTEIN, M. Hierarchy of features and ergativity. In: DIXON, R. M. W. (Ed.) Grammatical categories in Australian languages. New Jersey: Humanities Press, p. 112-171, 1976.