A universal parser or language specific parsing strategies: A study on relative clause attachment preference in Turkish

Year 2019, RumeliDE 2019.Ö6 - Bandırma Onyedi Eylül Üniversitesi Uluslararası Filoloji Çalışmaları Konferansı, 1 - 21, 21.11.2019

Zeynep Başer

https://doi.org/10.29000/rumelide.648403

Cited By: 1

Abstract

This study investigated syntactic priming of
relative clause (RC) attachment preferences in monolingual Turkish speakers
through a series of experiments. Cross-linguistic variations in RC attachment
preferences have implied that parsing strategies may not be guided by universal
principles but language-specific parameters. Thus, several models put forth
their assumptions about the universality of the parser and the underlying
mechanisms working in the initial analysis, and the sources of information used
in sentence processing.  However, there
is not one single model, the predictions of which could account for all the
contradictory findings obtained in a myriad of studies using different
materials and tasks in different languages. In order to investigate RC
attachment preferences further in detail, we conducted two offline
(pen-and-paper) tasks and an online (self-paced reading) task. The results
showed that monolingual Turkish speakers had no clear attachment preferences on
condition that several confounding factors were controlled. More precisely, RC
attachment preferences varied depending on the semantic factors (e.g. semantic
associations of the host NP with the proximal and the distal predicate), task
requirements (e.g. implicit or directed), and techniques (e.g. offline or
online) employed in the studies. Nonetheless, the effect of syntactic priming
showed that monolingual Turkish speakers distinguished the tree hierarchical
configuration of the alternative attachment interpretations. Furthermore, the
results suggested that a tendency towards NP1 attachment preference might be
attributed to processing difficulty, as a strategy to minimize cognitive
demand, arising from conditions such as structural complexity (active vs.
passive), task requirements, and research design (offline vs. online, or
directed attention vs. implicit processing).

Keywords

Relative clause attachment, Turkish, sentence processing, syntactic priming

Evrensel bir çözümleyici ya da dile özgü çözümleme stratejileri: Türkçe’de ilgi tümcelerini isim tamlamalarında tamlayan ya da tamlanan ile bağlama tercihleri

Abstract

Bu çalışmada bir dizi deney ile tek dilli Türkçe
konuşanların ilgi tümcesi bağlama tercihlerinde sözdizimsel hazırlama etkisi
incelenmiştir. İlgi tümcesi bağlama tercihlerinin diller arasında farklılık
göstermesi, çözümleme stratejilerinin evrensel ilkelere değil dile özgü
değiştirgenlere bağlı olabileceği fikrini ortaya çıkarmıştır. Bu nedenle,
birçok model çözümleyicinin evrenselliği, ilk analizde işleyen altta yatan
mekanizma, ve cümle işlemlemede kullanılan bilgi kaynaklarıyla ilgili
varsayımlarını ileri sürmüştür. Ancak, farklı materyaller ve yöntemler
kullanılarak farklı dillerde yapılan bir çok çalışmada elde edilen bir biriyle
çelişen bulguları açıklayacak tek bir model henüz mevcut değil. İlgi tümcesi
bağlama tercihlerini detaylı bir şekilde incelemek için, bu çalışmada iki
çevrimdışı (kağıt-kalem) ve bir çevrimiçi (kendi hızında okuma) yöntemi
kullandık. Sonuçlar bir dizi etken kontrol edildiğinde tek dilli Türkçe konuşan
bireylerin belirli bir bağlama tercihi göstermediğini ortaya koymuştur. Başka
bir deyişle, ilgi tümcesi bağlama tercihlerinin anlamsal etkenlere     (örn. tamlayan ve tamlanan isimlerin yakın
ve uzak yüklem ile anlamsal ilişkisi), çalışma şartları (örn. örtülü işlemleme
veya yönlendirilmiş değerlendirme), ve kullanılan tekniklere (örn. çevrimdışı
veya çevrimiçi) bağlı olarak değişiklik göstermektedir. Yine de, sözdizimsel
hazırlama etkisi, tek dilli Türkçe konuşan bireylerin alternatif bağlama
yorumlarının ağaç yapısını (aşamalı oluşumunu) ayrıştırdığını göstermektedir.
Ayrıca, sonuçlar NP1 (tamlayan) ile bağlama tercihi eğilimi göstermenin yapısal
karmaşıklık (etken ve edilgen) ve çalışma deseni (çevrimiçi ve çevrimdışı, ya
da dikkatin yönlendirilmesi veya örtük işlemle) gibi koşullardan doğan bilişsel
talebi azaltma stratejisi olarak işlemleme zorluğu ile
ilişkilendirilebileceğini önermektedir. 

Keywords

İlgi tümcesi bağlama, Türkçe, cümle işlemleme, sözdizimsel hazırlama

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