Laura Staum Casasanto | Cornell University (original) (raw)
Papers by Laura Staum Casasanto
Since Saussure, the idea that the forms of words are arbitrarily related to their meanings has be... more Since Saussure, the idea that the forms of words are arbitrarily related to their meanings has been widely accepted. Yet, implicit metaphorical mappings may provide opportunities for iconicity throughout the lexicon. We hypothesized that vertical spatial metaphors for emotional valence are manifested in language through space in signed languages and through the spatialized dimension of pitch in spoken languages. In Experiment 1, we analyzed the directions of the hand motions constituting words in three signed languages, and related them to the valence of their English translation equivalents. The vertical direction of signs predicted their valences. On average, signs with upward movements were the most positive in valence, and signs with downward movements the most negative. Signs with non-vertical movements were intermediate in valence. Experiment 2 extended this type of analysis to a tonal language, Mandarin Chinese. The pitch contours of Chinese words predicted the valence of the...
We are concerned with the pattern exemplified in (1a)-(1e). We refer to these as double-is constr... more We are concerned with the pattern exemplified in (1a)-(1e). We refer to these as double-is constructions.1 (1) a. The thing is, is we’ve got to be strong. (Massam 1999) b. The point is is I’m not in business to be loved. (McConvell 1988) c. What’ll happen is is that somebody’ll get hurt. (Bolinger 1987) d. The problem is, is that we can’t find the evidence. (Massam 1999) e. The hitch is, is that it seems to be occurring in the opposite direction. (Massam 1999) For the sake of discussion, we will refer to the first is as be1, and the second is as be2. (2) The thing is, is that... be1 be2
Does knowledge of sociolinguistic variation influence how we perceive and understand speech comin... more Does knowledge of sociolinguistic variation influence how we perceive and understand speech coming from different kinds of people? A series of experiments investigates whether listeners have knowledge about t/d deletion, a sociolinguistic variable, and, if so, whether this knowledge influences their language comprehension. Experiment 1 investigates listeners’ knowledge of the social correlates of t/d deletion. Experiment 2 investigates whether social information listeners gather from the non-linguistic context is used in formulating expectations about sentence meanings. Results indicate that listeners have implicit knowledge about t/d deletion, and they use this information in resolving ambiguity, suggesting that social information is a part of language understanding, and should be included in models of language processing.
1. Introduction One of the most robust and exceptionless rules of English grammar is that there c... more 1. Introduction One of the most robust and exceptionless rules of English grammar is that there can only be one tensed verb per clause. When an English speaker utters two tensed verbs in succession, he or she is generally not speaking fluently; the second verb can be interpreted as a repair of the first, and the first can be interpreted as a false start. A possible exception to this rule concerns the present tense form is. It seems that when English speakers use is twice in a row in examples like the following, they are speaking perfectly fluently. (1) But the thing is is that I'm naturally thin... Although this conclusion is intuitively clear to native speakers who have encountered the phenomenon, it is challenging to rule out the possibility that these examples are mere repetition disfluencies. In this paper, our goal will be to empirically support the intuition that spoken examples of this putative exception, which we will refer to as " ISIS " , following Zwicky (20...
Labov observes in The Social Stratification of English in New York City that “in general, a varia... more Labov observes in The Social Stratification of English in New York City that “in general, a variant that is used by most New Yorkers in formal styles is also the variant that is used most often in all styles by speakers who are ranked higher on an objective socioeconomic scale” (1982, 279). This observation, that stylistic effects tend to mirror social effects, has been considered a guiding principle of variationist sociolinguistics for long enough that when a variable shows evidence of stylistic conditioning, we may expect or even assume that social conditioning is also present. Indeed, there are good theoretical reasons to believe that this relationship is anything but a coincidence; the exploration of this and related ideas has led to a much deeper understanding of the nature of social meaning, among other things. However, this relationship between stylistic and social conditioning is not a logical necessity, but depends crucially on the specific social meanings associated with t...
bcs.rochester.edu, 2005
Using gradient acceptability judgments to investigate a syntactic construction Laura Staum (lstau... more Using gradient acceptability judgments to investigate a syntactic construction Laura Staum (lstaum@stanford.edu) & T. Florian Jaeger (tiflo@stanford.edu) Stanford University Interfaces session, 79th LSA '05, Oakland, California, January 6-9, 2005 ... (1) a. The problem is, is ...
lingo.stanford.edu
Linguists build theories of grammar based largely on acceptability contrasts. But these contrasts... more Linguists build theories of grammar based largely on acceptability contrasts. But these contrasts can reflect grammatical constraints and/or constraints on language processing. How can theorists determine the extent to which the acceptability of an utterance depends on functional constraints? In a series of acceptability experiments, we consider two factors that might indicate processing contributions to acceptability contrasts: (1) the way constraints combine (i.e., additively or super-additively), and (2) the way a comprehender's working memory resources influence acceptability judgments. Results suggest that multiple sources of processing difficulty combine to produce super-additive effects, but multiple grammatical violations do not. Furthermore, when acceptability judgments improve with higher working memory scores, this appears to be due to functional constraints. We conclude that tests of (super)-additivity and of differences in working memory can help to identify the effects of processing difficulty (due to functional constraints).
csjarchive.cogsci.rpi.edu
Does knowledge of sociolinguistic variation influence how we perceive and understand speech comin... more Does knowledge of sociolinguistic variation influence how we perceive and understand speech coming from different kinds of people? A series of experiments investigated whether listeners have knowledge about t/d deletion, a sociolinguistic variable, and, if so, whether this knowledge influences their language comprehension. Experiment 1 investigated listeners' knowledge of the social correlates of t/d deletion. Experiment 2 investigated whether social information listeners gather from the non-linguistic context is used in formulating expectations about sentence meanings. Results indicate that listeners have implicit knowledge about t/d deletion, and they use this information in resolving ambiguity, suggesting that social information is a part of language understanding, and should be included in models of language processing.
University of Pennsylvania Working …, Jan 1, 2010
casasanto.com
Introduction Since its inception, the study of sociolinguistic variation has been primarily the s... more Introduction Since its inception, the study of sociolinguistic variation has been primarily the study of sociolinguistically conditioned variable production . The variationist project has been documenting and describing the way different groups of people produce language, studying the factors that condition variation at all levels of linguistic description, from phonetics to discourse patterns. More recently, sociolinguists have begun to analyze the social hierarchies and relationships that underpin this variable production . However, very little is known about the comprehension of this variable linguistic behavior -what do listeners do with all this structure observed in socially conditioned variable production? If this information is somehow monitored, do listeners use the knowledge they accumulate?
casasanto.com
Why do people accommodate to each other's linguistic behavior? Studies of natural interactions su... more Why do people accommodate to each other's linguistic behavior? Studies of natural interactions suggest that speakers accommodate to achieve interactional goals, influencing what their interlocutor thinks or feels about them. But is this the only reason speakers accommodate? In real-world conversations, interactional motivations are ubiquitous, making it difficult to assess the extent to which they drive accommodation. Do speakers still accommodate even when interactional goals cannot be achieved, for instance, when their interlocutor cannot interpret their accommodation behavior? To find out, we asked participants to enter an immersive virtual reality (VR) environment and to converse with a virtual interlocutor. Participants accommodated to the speech rate of their virtual interlocutor even though he could not interpret their linguistic behavior, and thus accommodation could not possibly help them to achieve interactional goals. Results show that accommodation does not require explicit interactional goals, and suggest other social motivations for accommodation.
Manuscript, Stanford University, Jan 1, 2005
Proceedings of the 30th Annual Meeting of the …, Jan 1, 2008
Sentences with multiple complementizers like I told him that for sure that I would come often occ... more Sentences with multiple complementizers like I told him that for sure that I would come often occur in speech and even in writing, although they would not normally be generated by a competence grammar. Here we conducted an acceptability study and a self-paced reading experiment to test whether these 'Multiple That' constructions are acceptable, and whether they are motivated by processing difficulty. Results showed that the presence of an extra complementizer always reduced the acceptability of sentences relative to singlecomplementizer versions, suggesting that this construction is not licensed by the grammar. However, the penalty incurred by the extra complementizer was smaller when more material intervened between the verb and the embedded clause, making integration costs high. In addition, reading times were faster on the embedded subject in Multiple That sentences compared to sentences with only one that in these more difficult sentences, suggesting that the extra that actually helps readers understand hard-to-process complement clauses. Multiple That need not be generated by the grammar under a theory of performance that allows processing pressures to add structures to the set of possible sentences.
… .(available from http://www. stanford. edu/~ …, Jan 1, 2004
Poster presented at CUNY, Jan 1, 2008
New York, NY: Paper presented at NWAV, Jan 1, 2005
The observation that stylistic effects tend to mirror social effects (Labov, 1982; Bell, 1984) is... more The observation that stylistic effects tend to mirror social effects (Labov, 1982; Bell, 1984) is a core principle of variationist sociolinguistics: when a variable shows evidence of stylistic conditioning, we expect social conditioning to be present also. However, while there is ...
Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the …, Jan 1, 2008
Does knowledge of sociolinguistic variation influence how we perceive and understand speech comin... more Does knowledge of sociolinguistic variation influence how we perceive and understand speech coming from different kinds of people? A series of experiments investigated whether listeners have knowledge about t/d deletion, a sociolinguistic variable, and, if so, whether this knowledge influences their language comprehension. Experiment 1 investigated listeners' knowledge of the social correlates of t/d deletion. Experiment 2 investigated whether social information listeners gather from the non-linguistic context is used in formulating expectations about sentence meanings. Results indicate that listeners have implicit knowledge about t/d deletion, and they use this information in resolving ambiguity, suggesting that social information is a part of language understanding, and should be included in models of language processing.
Since Saussure, the idea that the forms of words are arbitrarily related to their meanings has be... more Since Saussure, the idea that the forms of words are arbitrarily related to their meanings has been widely accepted. Yet, implicit metaphorical mappings may provide opportunities for iconicity throughout the lexicon. We hypothesized that vertical spatial metaphors for emotional valence are manifested in language through space in signed languages and through the spatialized dimension of pitch in spoken languages. In Experiment 1, we analyzed the directions of the hand motions constituting words in three signed languages, and related them to the valence of their English translation equivalents. The vertical direction of signs predicted their valences. On average, signs with upward movements were the most positive in valence, and signs with downward movements the most negative. Signs with non-vertical movements were intermediate in valence. Experiment 2 extended this type of analysis to a tonal language, Mandarin Chinese. The pitch contours of Chinese words predicted the valence of the...
We are concerned with the pattern exemplified in (1a)-(1e). We refer to these as double-is constr... more We are concerned with the pattern exemplified in (1a)-(1e). We refer to these as double-is constructions.1 (1) a. The thing is, is we’ve got to be strong. (Massam 1999) b. The point is is I’m not in business to be loved. (McConvell 1988) c. What’ll happen is is that somebody’ll get hurt. (Bolinger 1987) d. The problem is, is that we can’t find the evidence. (Massam 1999) e. The hitch is, is that it seems to be occurring in the opposite direction. (Massam 1999) For the sake of discussion, we will refer to the first is as be1, and the second is as be2. (2) The thing is, is that... be1 be2
Does knowledge of sociolinguistic variation influence how we perceive and understand speech comin... more Does knowledge of sociolinguistic variation influence how we perceive and understand speech coming from different kinds of people? A series of experiments investigates whether listeners have knowledge about t/d deletion, a sociolinguistic variable, and, if so, whether this knowledge influences their language comprehension. Experiment 1 investigates listeners’ knowledge of the social correlates of t/d deletion. Experiment 2 investigates whether social information listeners gather from the non-linguistic context is used in formulating expectations about sentence meanings. Results indicate that listeners have implicit knowledge about t/d deletion, and they use this information in resolving ambiguity, suggesting that social information is a part of language understanding, and should be included in models of language processing.
1. Introduction One of the most robust and exceptionless rules of English grammar is that there c... more 1. Introduction One of the most robust and exceptionless rules of English grammar is that there can only be one tensed verb per clause. When an English speaker utters two tensed verbs in succession, he or she is generally not speaking fluently; the second verb can be interpreted as a repair of the first, and the first can be interpreted as a false start. A possible exception to this rule concerns the present tense form is. It seems that when English speakers use is twice in a row in examples like the following, they are speaking perfectly fluently. (1) But the thing is is that I'm naturally thin... Although this conclusion is intuitively clear to native speakers who have encountered the phenomenon, it is challenging to rule out the possibility that these examples are mere repetition disfluencies. In this paper, our goal will be to empirically support the intuition that spoken examples of this putative exception, which we will refer to as " ISIS " , following Zwicky (20...
Labov observes in The Social Stratification of English in New York City that “in general, a varia... more Labov observes in The Social Stratification of English in New York City that “in general, a variant that is used by most New Yorkers in formal styles is also the variant that is used most often in all styles by speakers who are ranked higher on an objective socioeconomic scale” (1982, 279). This observation, that stylistic effects tend to mirror social effects, has been considered a guiding principle of variationist sociolinguistics for long enough that when a variable shows evidence of stylistic conditioning, we may expect or even assume that social conditioning is also present. Indeed, there are good theoretical reasons to believe that this relationship is anything but a coincidence; the exploration of this and related ideas has led to a much deeper understanding of the nature of social meaning, among other things. However, this relationship between stylistic and social conditioning is not a logical necessity, but depends crucially on the specific social meanings associated with t...
bcs.rochester.edu, 2005
Using gradient acceptability judgments to investigate a syntactic construction Laura Staum (lstau... more Using gradient acceptability judgments to investigate a syntactic construction Laura Staum (lstaum@stanford.edu) & T. Florian Jaeger (tiflo@stanford.edu) Stanford University Interfaces session, 79th LSA '05, Oakland, California, January 6-9, 2005 ... (1) a. The problem is, is ...
lingo.stanford.edu
Linguists build theories of grammar based largely on acceptability contrasts. But these contrasts... more Linguists build theories of grammar based largely on acceptability contrasts. But these contrasts can reflect grammatical constraints and/or constraints on language processing. How can theorists determine the extent to which the acceptability of an utterance depends on functional constraints? In a series of acceptability experiments, we consider two factors that might indicate processing contributions to acceptability contrasts: (1) the way constraints combine (i.e., additively or super-additively), and (2) the way a comprehender's working memory resources influence acceptability judgments. Results suggest that multiple sources of processing difficulty combine to produce super-additive effects, but multiple grammatical violations do not. Furthermore, when acceptability judgments improve with higher working memory scores, this appears to be due to functional constraints. We conclude that tests of (super)-additivity and of differences in working memory can help to identify the effects of processing difficulty (due to functional constraints).
csjarchive.cogsci.rpi.edu
Does knowledge of sociolinguistic variation influence how we perceive and understand speech comin... more Does knowledge of sociolinguistic variation influence how we perceive and understand speech coming from different kinds of people? A series of experiments investigated whether listeners have knowledge about t/d deletion, a sociolinguistic variable, and, if so, whether this knowledge influences their language comprehension. Experiment 1 investigated listeners' knowledge of the social correlates of t/d deletion. Experiment 2 investigated whether social information listeners gather from the non-linguistic context is used in formulating expectations about sentence meanings. Results indicate that listeners have implicit knowledge about t/d deletion, and they use this information in resolving ambiguity, suggesting that social information is a part of language understanding, and should be included in models of language processing.
University of Pennsylvania Working …, Jan 1, 2010
casasanto.com
Introduction Since its inception, the study of sociolinguistic variation has been primarily the s... more Introduction Since its inception, the study of sociolinguistic variation has been primarily the study of sociolinguistically conditioned variable production . The variationist project has been documenting and describing the way different groups of people produce language, studying the factors that condition variation at all levels of linguistic description, from phonetics to discourse patterns. More recently, sociolinguists have begun to analyze the social hierarchies and relationships that underpin this variable production . However, very little is known about the comprehension of this variable linguistic behavior -what do listeners do with all this structure observed in socially conditioned variable production? If this information is somehow monitored, do listeners use the knowledge they accumulate?
casasanto.com
Why do people accommodate to each other's linguistic behavior? Studies of natural interactions su... more Why do people accommodate to each other's linguistic behavior? Studies of natural interactions suggest that speakers accommodate to achieve interactional goals, influencing what their interlocutor thinks or feels about them. But is this the only reason speakers accommodate? In real-world conversations, interactional motivations are ubiquitous, making it difficult to assess the extent to which they drive accommodation. Do speakers still accommodate even when interactional goals cannot be achieved, for instance, when their interlocutor cannot interpret their accommodation behavior? To find out, we asked participants to enter an immersive virtual reality (VR) environment and to converse with a virtual interlocutor. Participants accommodated to the speech rate of their virtual interlocutor even though he could not interpret their linguistic behavior, and thus accommodation could not possibly help them to achieve interactional goals. Results show that accommodation does not require explicit interactional goals, and suggest other social motivations for accommodation.
Manuscript, Stanford University, Jan 1, 2005
Proceedings of the 30th Annual Meeting of the …, Jan 1, 2008
Sentences with multiple complementizers like I told him that for sure that I would come often occ... more Sentences with multiple complementizers like I told him that for sure that I would come often occur in speech and even in writing, although they would not normally be generated by a competence grammar. Here we conducted an acceptability study and a self-paced reading experiment to test whether these 'Multiple That' constructions are acceptable, and whether they are motivated by processing difficulty. Results showed that the presence of an extra complementizer always reduced the acceptability of sentences relative to singlecomplementizer versions, suggesting that this construction is not licensed by the grammar. However, the penalty incurred by the extra complementizer was smaller when more material intervened between the verb and the embedded clause, making integration costs high. In addition, reading times were faster on the embedded subject in Multiple That sentences compared to sentences with only one that in these more difficult sentences, suggesting that the extra that actually helps readers understand hard-to-process complement clauses. Multiple That need not be generated by the grammar under a theory of performance that allows processing pressures to add structures to the set of possible sentences.
… .(available from http://www. stanford. edu/~ …, Jan 1, 2004
Poster presented at CUNY, Jan 1, 2008
New York, NY: Paper presented at NWAV, Jan 1, 2005
The observation that stylistic effects tend to mirror social effects (Labov, 1982; Bell, 1984) is... more The observation that stylistic effects tend to mirror social effects (Labov, 1982; Bell, 1984) is a core principle of variationist sociolinguistics: when a variable shows evidence of stylistic conditioning, we expect social conditioning to be present also. However, while there is ...
Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the …, Jan 1, 2008
Does knowledge of sociolinguistic variation influence how we perceive and understand speech comin... more Does knowledge of sociolinguistic variation influence how we perceive and understand speech coming from different kinds of people? A series of experiments investigated whether listeners have knowledge about t/d deletion, a sociolinguistic variable, and, if so, whether this knowledge influences their language comprehension. Experiment 1 investigated listeners' knowledge of the social correlates of t/d deletion. Experiment 2 investigated whether social information listeners gather from the non-linguistic context is used in formulating expectations about sentence meanings. Results indicate that listeners have implicit knowledge about t/d deletion, and they use this information in resolving ambiguity, suggesting that social information is a part of language understanding, and should be included in models of language processing.