Cover not available
Article published In:
Applying Cognitive Linguistics: Figurative language in use, constructions and typology
Edited by Ana M. Piquer-Píriz and Rafael Alejo-González
[Review of Cognitive Linguistics 14:1] 2016
► pp. 105–135

On-line processing of verb-argument constructions

Visual recognition threshold and naming latency

Ellis, O’Donnell, and Römer (2014) used free-association tasks to investigate knowledge of Verb-Argument Constructions (VACs). They demonstrated that English speakers have independent implicit knowledge of (i) verb frequency in the VAC, (ii) VAC-verb contingency, and (iii) verb prototypicality in terms of centrality within the VAC semantic network. They concluded that VAC processing involves rich associations, tuned by verb type and token frequencies and their contingencies of usage, which interface syntax, lexis, and semantics. However, the tasks they used, where respondents had a minute to think of the verbs that fitted in VAC frames like ‘he __ across the….’, ‘it __ of the….’, etc., were quite conscious and explicit. The current experiments therefore investigate the effects of these factors in on-line processing for recognition and naming. Experiment 1 tested the recognition of VAC exemplars from very brief, masked, visual presentations. Recognition threshold was affected by overall verb frequency in the language, by the frequency with which verbs appear in the VAC, and by VAC-verb contingency (ΔPcw). Experiment 2 had participants successively name VAC arguments as quickly as possible: first the VAC and then the preposition. Preposition naming latency was a function of verb frequency in the VAC. We consider the implications for the representation and processing of VACs.
Keywords: Construction Grammar, usage-based acquisition and processing, recognition threshold, naming latency, contingency, on-line processing
Published online: 7 July 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.14.1.05ell
References (72)
Allan, L.G. (1980). A note on measurement of contingency between two binary variables in judgment tasks. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 151, 147–149. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Allport, D., & Funnell, E. (1981). Components of the mental lexicon. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B, Biological Sciences, 295(1077), 397–410. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anderson, J.R. (1983). A spreading activation theory of memory. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 22(3), 261–295. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2009). Cognitive psychology and its implications (7th edition). New York: Worth Publishers.Google Scholar
Arnon, I., & Snider, N. (2010). More than words: Frequency effects for multi-word phrases. Journal of Memory and Language, 621, 67–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Audacity Team. (2014). Audacity (Version 2.0.2): [URL].
Baayen, R.H., Feldman, L.B., & Schreuder, R. (2006). Morphological influences on the recognition of monosyllabic monomorphemic words. Journal of Memory and Language, 55(2), 290–313. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Balota, D., Cortese, M., Sergent-Marshall, S.D., Spieler, D., & Yap, M. (2004). Visual word recognition of single-syllable words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133(2), 283–316. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Balota, D., Ferraro, F., & Connor, L. (1991). On the early influence of meaning in word recognition: A review of the literature. In P.J. Schwanenflugel (Ed.), The psychology of word meanings (pp. 187–222). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Barsalou, L.W. (2010). Ad hoc categories. In P.C. Hogan (Ed.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of the language sciences (pp. 87–88). New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), 1–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bencini, G.M.L., & Goldberg, A. (2000). The contribution of argument structure constructions to sentence meaning. Journal of Memory and Language, 431, 640–651. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
BNC. (2007). BNC XML Edition [URL].
Bod, R. (2001). Sentence memory: Storage vs. computation of frequent sentences. Paper presented at the CUNY-2001, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Brown, S. (2014). xACT 2.22.Google Scholar
Catlin, J. (1973). In defense of sophisticated-guessing theory. Psychological Review, 801, 412–416. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cattell, J.M. (1886). The time it takes to see and name objects. Mind, 111, 63–65. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davies, M. (2004–). BYU-BNC: The British National Corpus available online at [URL].
. (2008–). The corpus of contemporary American English: 450 million words, 1990–present. Available online at [URL].Google Scholar
de Nooy, W., Mrvar, A., & Batagelj, V. (2010). Exploratory social network analysis with Pajek. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dehaene, S., & Changeux, J.P. (2011). Experimental and theoretical approaches to conscious processing. Neuron Review, 701, 200–227. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Durrant, P., & Doherty, A. (2010). Are high-frequency collocations psychologically real? Investigating the thesis of collocational priming. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 61, 125–155. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ebbinghaus, H. (1885). Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology (trans. by H.A. Ruger & C.E. Bussenius [1913]). New York: Teachers College, Columbia.Google Scholar
Ellis, N.C. (Ed.). (1994). Implicit and explicit learning of languages. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
(1996). Sequencing in SLA: Phonological memory, chunking, and points of order. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18(1), 91–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2001). Memory for language. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction (pp. 33–68). New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2002). Frequency effects in language processing: A review with implications for theories of implicit and explicit language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24(2), 143–188. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006a). Language acquisition as rational contingency learning. Applied Linguistics, 27(1), 1–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006b). Selective attention and transfer phenomena in SLA: Contingency, cue competition, salience, interference, overshadowing, blocking, and perceptual learning. Applied Linguistics, 27(2), 1–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2008). Usage-based and form-focused language acquisition: The associative learning of constructions, learned-attention, and the limited L2 endstate. In P. Robinson & N.C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition (pp. 372–405). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
(2012). Formulaic language and second language acquisition: Zipf and the phrasal teddy bear. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 321, 17–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(in press). On-line processing of verb-argument constructions: Lexical decision and semantic processing. Language and Cognition.
Ellis, N.C., & Ferreira-Junior, F. (2009). Constructions and their acquisition: Islands and the distinctiveness of their occupancy. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 71, 111–139. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ellis, N.C., Frey, E., & Jalkanen, I. (2009). The psycholinguistic reality of collocation and semantic prosody (1): Lexical access. In U. Römer & R. Schulze (Eds.), Exploring the lexis-grammar interface (pp. 89–114). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ellis, R., Loewen, S., Erlam, R., Philp, J., & Reinders, H. (2009). Implicit and explicit knowledge in second language learning, testing and teaching. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Ellis, N.C., & O’Donnell, M.B. (2011). Robust language acquisition: An emergent consequence of language as a complex adaptive system. In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 3512–3517). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
(2012). Statistical construction learning: Does a Zipfian problem space ensure robust language learning? In J. Rebuschat & J. Williams (Eds.), Statistical learning and language acquisition (pp. 265–304). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ellis, N.C., O’Donnell, M.B., & Römer, U. (2012). Usage-based language: Investigating the latent structures that underpin acquisition. Currents in Language Learning, 11, 25–51.Google Scholar
. (2014). The processing of Verb-Argument Constructions is sensitive to form, function, frequency, contingency, and prototypicality. Cognitive Linguistics, 251, 55–98. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ellis, N.C., & Ogden, D.C. (2015). Language cognition. Journal of Child Language, 421, 182–186. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Forster, K.I., & Chambers, S. (1973). Lexical access and naming time. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 121, 627–635. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fox, J. (2003). Effect displays in R for generalised linear models. Journal of Statistical Software, 8(15), 1–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Francis, G., Hunston, S., & Manning, E. (Eds.). (1996). Grammar patterns 1: Verbs. The COBUILD series. London: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Goldberg, A.E. (1995). Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, A.E., & Bencini, G.M.L. (2005). Support from processing for a constructional approach to grammar. In A.E. Tyler, M. Takada, Y. Kim, & D. Marinova (Eds.), Language in use: Cognitive and discourse perspectives on language and language learning (pp. 3–18). Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Gries, S.T., & Ellis, N.C. (2015). Statistical measures for usage-based linguistics. Currents in Language Learning, 21, 228–255. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gries, S.T., & Wulff, S. (2005). Do foreign language learners also have constructions?: Evidence from priming, sorting, and corpora. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 31, 182–200. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harnad, S. (Ed.). (1987). Categorical perception: The groundwork of cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Howes, D.H., & Solomon, R.L. (1951). Visual duration threshold as a function of word-probability. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 41(6), 401–410. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (1987). The competition model. In B. MacWhinney (Ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition (pp. 249–308). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Marcel, A.J. (1983). Conscious and unconscious perception: Experiments on visual masking and word recognition. Cognitive Psychology, 15(2), 197–237. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McDonough, K., & De Vleeschauwer, J. (2012). Prompt type frequency, auditory pattern discrimination, and EFL learners’ production of wh-questions. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 34(3), 355–377. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meyer, D.E., & Schvaneveldt, R.W. (1971). Facilitation in recognizing pairs of words: Evidence of a dependence between retrieval operations. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 901, 227–234. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miller, G.A. (2009). WordNet: About us. Retrieved March 1, 2010, from Princeton University [URL]
Miller, G.A., & Selfridge, J.A. (1950). Verbal context and the recall of meaningful material. The American Journal of Psychology, 631, 176–185. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morton, J. (1969). Interaction of information in word recognition. Psychological Review, 76(2), 165–178. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Peirce, J.W. (2007). PsychoPy: Psychophysics software in Python. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 162(1), 8–13. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
R Development Core Team. (2012). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.Google Scholar
Rescorla, R.A. (1968). Probability of shock in the presence and absence of CS in fear conditioning. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 661, 1–5. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Robinson, P., & Ellis, N.C. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Römer, U., O’Donnell, M.B., & Ellis, N.C. (2015). Using COBUILD grammar patterns for a large-scale analysis of verb-argument constructions: Exploring corpus data and speaker knowledge. In M. Charles, N. Groom, & S. John (Eds.), Corpora, grammar, text and discourse: In honour of Susan Hunston (pp. 43–72). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rosch, E., & Mervis, C.B. (1975). Cognitive representations of semantic categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1041, 192–233. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rosch, E., Mervis, C.B., Gray, W.D., Johnson, D.M., & Boyes-Braem, P. (1976). Basic objects in natural categories. Cognitive Psychology, 81, 382–439. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Segalowitz, N. (2010). The cognitive bases of second language fluency. New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Seidenberg, M.S., & McClelland, J.L. (1989a). A distributed, developmental model of word acquisition. Psychological Review, 941, 523–568. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1989b). A distributed, developmental model of word recognition and naming. Psychological Review, 96(4), 523–568. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shanks, D.R. (1995). The psychology of associative learning. New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thorndike, E.L., & Lorge, I. (1944). The teacher’s book of 30,000 words. New York: Teacher’s College.Google Scholar
Tremblay, A., Derwing, B., Libben, G., & Westbury, C. (2011). Processing advantages of lexical bundles: Evidence from self-paced reading and sentence recall casks. Language Learning, 61(2), 569–613. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trousdale, G., & Hoffmann, T. (Eds.). (2013). Oxford handbook of construction grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zipf, G.K. (1935). The psycho-biology of language: An introduction to dynamic philology. Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Ellis, Nick C. & Dave C. Ogden
2017. Thinking About Multiword Constructions: Usage‐Based Approaches to Acquisition and Processing. Topics in Cognitive Science 9:3 ► pp. 604 ff. DOI logo
ELLIS, NICK C.
2016. Online processing of Verb–Argument Constructions: lexical decision and meaningfulness. Language and Cognition 8:3 ► pp. 391 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 26 december 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.