Guess Where and With What?: the Encoding of Implicit Instruments and Locative-goals

Abstract:

Recent evidence suggests that passive verbs introduce unexpressed agents into readers' representations of sentences ("The ship was sunk") and that they can serve as antecedents for both explicit and implicit anaphoric expressions (Mauner et. al., 1995; Mauner, 1996). We provide preliminary evidence that the representations of verbs like "pry" and "drive" include instrument and locative-goal information. In Experiments 1 (Instruments) and 2 (Locative-goals), we used sluices (Ross, 1969) (thematically dependent WH-expressions) to probe for instrument and locative-goal information in a phrase-by-phrase judgment task. Sluices were paired with clauses that introduced a thematically appropriate instrument or locative-goal either implicitly (1a, 2a) or explicitly. Additionally, explicit antecedents were either unspecific (1b, 2b) or specific (1c, 2c). The logic underlying our explicit controls depends on two felicity requirements for sluices: a sluice's antecedents must be (1) thematically appropriate and (2) unspecific. Sluices whose antecedents violate either condition (e.g. sentences 1c and 2c), will be infelicitous. If sentences like 1a and 2a provide implicit instruments and locative-goals, then sluices should be judged as felicitous and take no longer to judge than sentences that provide a thematically appropriate and unspecific explicit instrument or locative-goal , e.g., (1b) or (2b).

As predicted, sluices following anomalous controls were judged less acceptable than sluices following either experimental or felicitous control sentences. Experimental and felicitous control sentences elicited no differences in judgments in either instrument or locative-goal conditions, and no differences in judgment times for the locative-goal condition. While the judgment results in particular suggest that representations of verbs like "pry" and "drive" include instrument and locative-goal information, encoding could have been mediated by the sluice. Thus, in Experiments 3 (Instruments) and 4 (Locative-goals) we asked participants to provide continuations for instrument and locative-goal sentences, and control sentences. Crucially, several types of completion other than instruments and locative-goals were possible for both experimental and control sentences (e.g. temporal, rational, manner, etc.). Experimental sentences elicited significantly more instrument and locative-goal completions than other types of completions as compared to control sentences which elicited only chance levels of instruments and locative-goals. Thus, the encoding of instrument and locative-goal information was not due to interpretive demands. Together, these results suggest that the lexical representations of some verbs may include instrument and locative-goal information.

Mauner, G., Tanenhaus, M.K., and Carlson, G.N. (1995). "Implicit arguments in sentence processing." Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 357-382.

Mauner, G. (1996). The role of implicit arguments in sentence processing. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Rochester.

Ross, J.R., (1969). "Guess Who?" In R. Binnick et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 252-286.