Is Syntax Semantically Constrained? Evidence From a Grammaticality Judgment Study of Indonesian

Aryawibawa, I Nyoman and Ambridge, Ben ORCID: 0000-0003-2389-8477 (2018) Is Syntax Semantically Constrained? Evidence From a Grammaticality Judgment Study of Indonesian. COGNITIVE SCIENCE, 42 (8). pp. 3135-3148.

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Abstract

A central debate in the cognitive sciences surrounds the nature of adult speakers' linguistic representations: Are they purely syntactic (a traditional and widely held view; e.g., Branigan & Pickering, ), or are they semantically structured? A recent study (Ambridge, Bidgood, Pine, Rowland, & Freudenthal, ) found support for the latter view, showing that adults' acceptability judgments of passive sentences were significantly predicted by independent semantic "affectedness" ratings designed to capture the putative semantics of the construction (e.g., Bob was pushed by Wendy is rated as more acceptable than Bob was liked by Wendy, as Bob is more affected in the former). However, because English lacks a separate topicalization construction which provides an alternative means of highlighting the patient (e.g., BOB, Wendy kicked), these findings have a possible alternative explanation: that highly affected entities are more likely to be topicalized, rather than passivized per se. Here we show that, in fact, Ambridge et al.'s () finding replicates in Indonesian, a language with a topicalization construction. The present study therefore provides particularly compelling evidence that grammatical representations have semantic structure.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Indonesian, Linguistic representations, Abstract syntax, Passive, Verb, Semantics, Autonomy of syntax
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	07 Nov 2018 11:11
Last Modified:	19 Jan 2023 01:13
DOI:	10.1111/cogs.12697
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3028537