Cognitive Science Program

Examining main clause similarity and frequency effects in the production of Tagalog relative clauses (2022)
Tanaka, N., Bondoc, I. P., & Deen, K.
Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, 15 70–86

Abstract

This study investigates two possible factors in the well-known subject preference in the acquisition and processing of relative clauses (RCs): (i) an effect of similarity between declarative and relative clauses and (ii) an effect of frequency of certain RC types. Two production experiments were conducted with adult and child speakers of Tagalog, a verb-initial language with a Philippine-type voice system. One experiment elicited declarative clauses and the other elicited relative clauses; both had two animacy conditions: animate-animate (animate agent and patient) and animate-inanimate (animate agent, inanimate patient). Experiment 1’s results show a preference for patient voice in the animate-animate condition only. Experiment 2’s results show a preference for the relativization of the agent in the animate-inanimate condition only. We suggest that the interplay of a patient voice preference in Tagalog with a general preference for the relativization of agents – the source of which remains undetermined – may explain these results.

Subject advantage in L1-English learners’ production of Chinese relative clauses (2023)
Nozomi Tanaka and Alessia Cherici
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 52 405-424

Abstract

This study investigated whether L1-English Chinese learners show a subject preference in their oral production of Chinese relative clauses (RCs) and whether they show animacy effects. We conducted a picture-based elicited production experiment that compared subject and object RCs, varying the object animacy between animate and inanimate. The results from thirty learners showed more targetlike performance in subject RCs than in object RCs, both at group and individual levels, regardless of object animacy. Error analyses revealed that more object RCs were converted into subject RCs than vice versa. These results point toward a clear subject preference despite conflicted findings in previous research on RCs in Chinese as a foreign language. Animacy influenced subject and object RCs alike: both types were easier to produce when featuring an inanimate object. We suggested similarity-based interference or distribution-based effects to account for this finding.

Estimating cue strengths in oral production in a Japanese learner corpus (2022)
Nozomi Tanaka
Frontiers in Communication, 7

Abstract

Word order, case marking, and animacy are cues used to convey and comprehend argument roles in transitive events. Japanese, however, is characterized by flexible word order, null arguments, and case-marker omission. This study analyzes corpus data of interviews between native Japanese speakers and L1-English and L1-Korean learners to examine these characteristics in both input to learners and learners' own production. The relative importance of the three cues is estimated based on their distributional properties using the competition model framework. The findings indicate that animacy was the strongest cue for the native speakers and, when at least one NP was elided, for the learners. However, when both subject and object were present, learners adhered to SOV word order. Case marking was reliable when present but was so frequently omitted that it was not a useful cue, contra previous reports. L1 and proficiency effects are also discussed.

An experimental reassessment of complex NP islands with NP-scrambling in Japanese (2022)
Shin Fukuda, Nozomi Tanaka, Hajime Ono, & Jon Sprouse
Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 7

Abstract

There is little consensus in the Japanese syntax literature on the question of whether complex NPs with a noun complement headed by toyuu ‘that.say’ are islands for NP-scrambling dependencies. To explore this question, we conducted two acceptability judgment experiments using the factorial definition of islands to test the status of noun complements, relative clauses (which are also complex NPs, and uniformly considered islands in the literature), and coordinated NP structures (which are also uniformly considered islands in the literature). Our first experiment yielded strong evidence that relative clauses and coordinated NPs are islands (as expected), and strong evidence that noun complements are not. Our second experiment also found strong evidence that relative clauses and coordinated NPs are islands, but yielded a small, non-significant, trend toward an effect with noun complements. Based on the sizes of our samples (89 and 90 participants, respectively), the sizes of the effects, and the details of the acceptability patterns, we conclude that noun complements in Japanese are not islands with respect to NP-scrambling. We also investigated between- and within-participant variability in our results. We observe no evidence of increased between-participant variability for noun complements relative to other islands, and no increase of within-participant variability for noun complements relative to scrambling out of (non-island) declarative CPs. Our results have consequences for a number of issues that have been encoded in current syntactic theories of island effects, including the correlation between syntactic constituent complexity and island status (e.g., number of bounding nodes or phase heads), and the correlation between complementizer deletion and island status (e.g., the complement/adjunct distinction).

The subject advantage in relative clauses: A review (2021)
Elaine Lau and Nozomi Tanaka
6 34

Abstract

The question of whether there exists a universal subject preference in relativization has stimulated research in a wide range of languages and across different domains, yielding an extensive body of literature in relative clause acquisition and processing. In this article, we aim at consolidating the efforts of existing research in order to inform further exploration of the universality of the subject preference with a comprehensive analysis of relevant work (including journal articles on empirical studies, dissertations, and conference proceedings). We present an overview of the proposals regarding the source(s) of the subject-object asymmetry from a cross-linguistic perspective and discuss commonly used methodologies in this research area, and we survey the research on relative clause processing and acquisition of different linguistic communities, including native speakers, second language learners, clinical populations, and heritage speakers.

An asymmetry in the acquisition of relative clauses: Evidence from Tagalog (2019)
Nozomi Tanaka, William O’Grady, Kamil Deen and Ivan Paul Bondoc
First Language, 1.42724E+14

Abstract

This article reports on the acquisition of relative clauses in Tagalog, the most widely spoken language in the Philippines. A distinctive feature of Tagalog is a unique system of voice that creates competing patterns, each with different possibilities for relativization. This study of children’s performance on agent and patient relative clauses in a comprehension task revealed an agent relative clause advantage. These findings cannot be explained by the voice preference in declarative clauses, but are compatible with an explanation based upon input frequency factors.

Integration of structural probabilities in speech production: Evidence from Japanese relative clauses (2019)
Amber Camp and Nozomi Tanaka
Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 2019, 3295–3298

Abstract

The predictability of words (e.g., word frequency, subcategorization bias) is previously known to influence acoustic output, in which more predictable words are produced with a shorter duration. This study explores whether structural probability is also reflected in incremental speech production, replicating a previous study by Kurumada (2011). We used Japanese relative clauses to address this question, as these relative clauses are prenominal, and the embedded subject can be marked with the nominative marker -ga or the genitive marker -no; the nominative marker is also used in the independent clause, but the genitive marker is not, increasing the probability of an upcoming head noun. Results from nine native speakers of Japanese did not show any significant difference between the duration of head nouns between when they were produced following the genitive marker and when they were produced following the nominative marker.

Agrammatism in Tagalog: voice and relativisation (2018)
Ivan Paul Bondoc, William O’Grady, Kamil Deen and Nozomi Tanaka
Aphasiology, 32 (5), 598-617

Abstract

Background: Virtually nothing is known about the ability of Tagalog speakers with agrammatic aphasia to cope with basic grammatical features of their language. Tagalog is unusual in exhibiting competing transitive patterns thanks to a system of voice that can make either of the verb’s arguments syntactically prominent – a prerequisite for undergoing syntactic operations such as relativisation.Aims: Our objective is to investigate the nature of the syntactic impairment associated with agrammatic aphasia in Tagalog, with special attention to voice patterns and relative clauses (RCs).Methods and Procedures: Five native Tagalog-speaking patients diagnosed with agrammatism took part in (1) elicited-production and (2) comprehension tasks to assess their ability with respect to voice patterns and (3) elicited-production, (4) imitation, and (5) comprehension tasks to assess their performance on RCs.Outcomes and Results …

Investigating relative clause island effects in native and nonnative adult speakers of Japanese (2018)
Nozomi Tanaka and Bonnie Schwartz
BUCLD 42: Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 2 750–763

L1 acquisition of Japanese transitive verbs: How do children acquire grammar in the absence of clear evidence? (2014)
Nozomi Tanaka and Yasuhiro Shirai
CSLI. 21 281-295

Abstract

The acquisition of verbs involves the discovery of agent-patient relations. The major determiners of agent-patient relations are word order (Dryer 2005), inflectional morphology including case marking (Comrie 2005), and various forms of verb agreement (Siewierska 2005). Animacy is also considered to be helpful information, and many researchers claim that very young children favor animate agents and inanimate patients (Bowerman 1973; Brown 1970; Brown, Cazden and Bellugi 1968; Chapman and Miller 1975; de Villiers and de Villiers 1974; Kail 1989; Slobin 1968). Japanese speech often lacks information that tells the listeners about grammatical relations. First, although the basic word order of Japanese is SOV, it