Item – Theses Canada

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OCLC number
1007011990
Link(s) to full text
LAC copy
LAC copy
Author
Ferretti, Todd.
Title
Situation schemas, thematic roles and grammatical morphemes.
Degree
Ph. D. -- University of Western Ontario, 2001
Publisher
Ottawa : National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, [2001]
Description
2 microfiches
Notes
Includes bibliographical references.
Abstract
This research investigated how people combine morpho-syntactic information (e.g., aspect) with world knowledge of situations when they read verbs and noun phrases in isolation. In Experiment 1, subjects read verb phrases presented for a brief duration (250 ms), that were marked with either imperfect (' was verbing') or perfect aspect ('had verbed'). They then named visually presented targets that were either typical locations (' was skating-arena') or instruments ('was stabbing-dagger'). Typical locations of events were more highly activated when the verbs referenced the situations as ongoing (imperfective) versus completed (perfect). The instrument results were less clear, however. These results indicate that verb aspect can modulate the activation of world knowledge about typical locations of situations quickly when verbs are read in isolation. These results were extended in Experiments 2, 3, and 4 by examining how people integrate world knowledge of agents and patients in situations with the aspectual properties of present and past participles to constrain interpretation of isolated phrases such as 'arresting cop' and 'arrested crook'. An implemented competition model was used to generate predictions about how people interpret these types of phrases. The model correctly predicted that subjects combined typical patients more easily with past participles ('arrested crook') than with present participles (' arresting crook'). Interestingly, they often interpreted phrases like ' arresting crook' as verb phrases when the head noun was a great patient/terrible agent. Furthermore, subjects combined typical agents with present participles ('arresting cop') more easily than with past participles (' arrested cop'). Thus the activation of world knowledge of event participants is modulated by grammatical morphemes, and people equally weight these sources of information when combining them to constrain thematic role assignment during on-line interpretation of phrases.
ISBN
0612582108
9780612582101