• Search Research Projects
  • Search Researchers
  • How to Use
  1. Back to previous page

The effects of argument structure frequency on verb prediction

Research Project

Project/Area Number 16520229
Research Category

Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)

Allocation TypeSingle-year Grants
Section一般
Research Field Linguistics
Research InstitutionUniversity of Tsukuba

Principal Investigator

MIYAMOTO Edson T.  University of Tsukuba, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Lecturer, 大学院・人文社会科学研究科, 講師 (60335479)

Project Period (FY) 2004 – 2005
Project Status Completed (Fiscal Year 2005)
Budget Amount *help
¥2,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,700,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥1,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,700,000)
KeywordsSentence processing / Frequency / Word order
Research Abstract

This research investigates how frequency of occurrence affects the way how Japanese readers comprehend sentences. Results can be summarized as follows.
1.First the low frequency of scrambled transitive constructions was established by counting the number of sentence-initial accusative NPs and determining that in the majority of the cases (over 98% or 4,537 instances) the subject was missing rather than coming after the direct object. Similarly, 32 native Japanese speakers preferred to leave out the subject when asked to write sentences starting with an accusative marked NP (84.3% or 210 completions), and only included a subject in a scrambled configuration in the remaining 15.7% of the time (similar numbers were obtained for dative marked NPs). According to these results, a sentence-initial object NP should rarely be expected to be followed by an overt subject. Thus, when such a subject does appear, a slowdown in reading times should be expected. Future research should investigate to wh … More at extent frequency can account for the behavioral results reported in previous literature.
2.Based on the number of hits returned by the internet search engine Google, 24 transitive verbs were selected so that 12 had low-frequency (2,140 to 350,000 hits, M=129,998) and 12 had high-frequency (1.22 million to 13.3 million hits, M=3.185 million). A sentence was created for each verb and 32 native Japanese speakers' reading times were measured for the canonical and the scrambled order of each sentence. Furthermore, the frequency with which each verb was preceded by either order was determined in terms of the number of hits on Google and on newspaper corpora (from the Mainichi Shinbun and the Nihon Keizai Shinbun). The results from Google and the corpus were well correlated (R=0.63,P<0.0001) ; moreover, both sets of counts yielded negative correlations with the reading times of each verb (R=-0.4,P<0.001). Hence, the higher the cooccurrence of a verb with NPs in a given order, the faster its corresponding reading times when preceded by NPs in such an order. More studies are needed, but at this point the results suggest that readers keep track of how often a given verb has been seen with NPs in a certain order and are able to use such information in order to facilitate processing. Less

Report

(3 results)
  • 2005 Annual Research Report   Final Research Report Summary
  • 2004 Annual Research Report
  • Research Products

    (6 results)

All 2006 2005 Other

All Journal Article (5 results) Book (1 results)

  • [Journal Article] Understanding sentences in Japanese bit by bit2006

    • Author(s)
      Miyamoto, E.T.
    • Journal Title

      認知科学 13・3(予定)

    • NAID

      130004490787

    • Description
      「研究成果報告書概要(和文)」より
    • Related Report
      2005 Final Research Report Summary
  • [Journal Article] Unscrambling some misconceptions : a comment on Koizumi and Tamaoka (2004)2005

    • Author(s)
      Miyamoto, E.T., Nakamura, M.
    • Journal Title

      言語研究 128

      Pages: 113-129

    • Description
      「研究成果報告書概要(和文)」より
    • Related Report
      2005 Final Research Report Summary
  • [Journal Article] Unscrambling some misconceptions : a comment on Koizumi and Tamaoka (2004)2005

    • Author(s)
      Miyamoto, E.T., Nakamura, M.
    • Journal Title

      Gengo Kenkyu 128

      Pages: 113-129

    • Description
      「研究成果報告書概要(欧文)」より
    • Related Report
      2005 Final Research Report Summary
  • [Journal Article] Processamento da Linguagem2005

    • Author(s)
      Miyamoto, E.T.
    • Journal Title

      Oracoes relativas ambiguas e a homogeneidade do processamento de sentencas.

      Pages: 71-89

    • Description
      「研究成果報告書概要(欧文)」より
    • Related Report
      2005 Final Research Report Summary
  • [Journal Article] Understanding sentences in Japanese bit by bit

    • Author(s)
      Miyamoto, E.T.
    • Journal Title

      Cognitive Studies : Bulletin of the Japanese Cognitive Science Society 13(2)(in press)

    • NAID

      130004490787

    • Description
      「研究成果報告書概要(欧文)」より
    • Related Report
      2005 Final Research Report Summary
  • [Book] Processamento da Linguagem2005

    • Author(s)
      Miyamoto, E.T.
    • Publisher
      Oracoes relativas ambiguas e a homogeneidade do processamento de sentencas.
    • Description
      「研究成果報告書概要(和文)」より
    • Related Report
      2005 Final Research Report Summary

URL: 

Published: 2004-04-01   Modified: 2021-04-07  

Information User Guide FAQ News Terms of Use Attribution of KAKENHI

Powered by NII kakenhi