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Abstract
The current study examines whether young and older adults have similar preferences for animate-subject and active sentences, and for using the order of activation of a verb's arguments to determine sentence structure. Ninetysix participants produced sentences in response to three-word stimuli that included a verb and two nouns differing in animacy. Dependent variables included accuracy, sentence structure produced, and production times for active vs. passive sentences. Neither group shows a strict preference for active sentences, but the two groups are differentially sensitive to animacy and the order of noun activation. Results suggest that sentence structure choice is a probabilistic, constraint-satisfaction process during which these factors interact.
Notes
1A lemma is the level of word representation at which syntactic information is encoded.
2Participants also completed an off-line version of the task. However, accuracy and sentence structure choice not differ with mode of presentation, so only on-line results are presented here.
3Levin (1993) points out that TE verbs often form passives with prepositions other than “by” (e.g., impressed with, scared of, annoyed with). These alternative passives made up about 20% of responses to TE verbs. Analysis of the data without these alternative passives yield identical patterns of results to that reported here. We include them in these analyses because they meet the criteria for passives states above.
The pattern of effects in accuracy, structure choice, and overall response times were nearly identical whether considering all correct responses or just scoreable responses.
The pattern of effects in accuracy, structure choice, and overall response times were nearly identical whether considering all correct responses or just scoreable responses.
