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Document Type
Working Paper
Abstract
Based on the results of a sorting task involving verbs and grammatical patterns, Bencini & Goldberg (2000) argue that “argument structure constructions are directly associated with sentence meaning.” We explore this hypothesis by attempting to replicate their results using a nonhuman categorizer: a cognitive model based on ACT-R (Anderson & Lebiere 1998). The model replicated the sentence-sorting behaviors of Bencini & Goldberg’s subjects, but did so using formal cues alone. This outcome suggests that the subjects in the Bencini & Goldberg study were not necessarily attending to constructional meaning, and lends support to Bock’s (1986) conclusions regarding syntactic priming: subjects’ similarity judgments are as likely to be based on syntactic form alone as they are to involve syntax-semantic mapping.
Recommended Citation
Fowles-Winkler, Anna M. and Michaelis, Laura
(2005)
"An ACT-R Model of Sentence Sorting with Argument Structure Constructions,"
Colorado Research in Linguistics: Vol. 18.
Available at:
https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol18/iss1/1