The Effect of Plausibility in Sentence Processing

Sandberg, Chaleece W. and Kiran, Swathi and Gibson, Edward and Fedorenko, Evelina (2012) The Effect of Plausibility in Sentence Processing. [Clinical Aphasiology Paper]

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Abstract

The study of sentence processing in aphasia is important for the development of effective treatments for sentence processing deficits in aphasia. Recent research has shown that syntax and semantics can interact during sentence processing in a variety of ways. However, the way the interaction between syntax and semantics plays out in aphasia has not been satisfactorily explained. One unexplored area in this body of research is the effect of plausibility on syntactic priming of the dative alternation in persons with aphasia. To date, persons with aphasia have been shown to be sensitive to plausibility during sentence processing in general (Caramazza & Zurif, 1976) and the dative alternation has been shown to be primed in persons with aphasia (Hartsuiker & Kolk, 1998). Plausibility has been shown to affect syntactic priming in neurologically healthy adults, such that implausible active or passive sentences prime the opposite structure in production (Christiansen et al., 2010). Recently, the dative alternation has been shown to be particularly sensitive to semantic influences in neurologically healthy adults (Gibson & Bergen, 2011, manuscript in preparation). Therefore, exploring the effect of plausibility on priming the dative alternation in persons with aphasia is a novel and especially interesting way in which to examine the interaction of syntax and semantics that will inform aphasia treatment research.

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