L”gnition,
163-186
enc
KATHRYN BOCK
Michigan State University
Abstract
Rock,
K.,
1989.
Closed-class immanence in sentence production. Cognition, 31: 163486.
The closed-class hypothesis asserts that function words play a privileged role
in syntac:ic processes. In language production, the claim is that such words are
intrinsic to, identified with, or immanent in phrasal skeletons. Two experiments
tested this hypothesis with a syntactic priming procedure. In both, subjects
tended to produce utterances in the same syntactic forms as priming sentences,
with the structures of the self-generated sentences varying as a function of
differences in the structures of the primes. Changes i,n the closed-class elements
of the priming sentences had no effect on this tendency over and above the
impact of the structural changes. These results suggest thatfree-standing closedclass morphemes are not inherent components of the structural frames of English sentences.
The elements of the closed-class vocabulary seem to carry a disproportionate
share of the syntzctic information in English sentences. In traditiouai terms
it is their job to do so, since these elements include the function words that
serve to link the meaning-bearing content words. Their evident involvement
in the syntax of language has produced a set of hypotheses that elevate closedclass words from relatively superficial markers of syntactic relations to core
elements of syntactic processing. On these hypotheses, the closed class embodies the workings of the language user’s syntactic system.
Such hypotheses can be found in language comprehension (Kimball, 1973),
*This research was supported in part by NSF grant BNS 86- 17659. I thank ;Ielga Loebell. Douglas Files,
Stacey McMichael. Carol Miller, Randy MGrey, Matthew Rad,tke, and Keith Stre,fel for their assistance:in
carrying out the experiments. The manuscript was prepared while I held a visiting lectureship in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the bfassachusetts Institute of Technology and enjoyed the hospitality
of the members osf that department. A preliminary report was presented at the 1987 meeting of the
Psychonomic Society in Seattle. Requests for reprints and other correspondence should be sent to Kathryn
Bock, Department of Psychology, Psychology Research Building, Michigan State University. East Lansing,
MI 48824, U.S.A.
OOlO-0277/89/$7,70 0 1989, Elsevier
Science Publishers B,,V.
164
K. BocC:
language acquisition (Gleitman & Wanner, 1982), and language production
(Garrett, 1980) but much of their recent impetus comes from provocative
analyses of the language deficits that arise in Broca’s or agrammatic aphasia.
It is well known that patients suffering from this disorder tend to use few
function words and grammatical inflections. This deficit seems to be linked
to syntactic mechanisms rather than lexical or semantic ones (Caramazza &
Berndt, 1978) and may be more general across language processing systems
than traditional classifications imply, extending to comprehension as well as
production (Schwartz, 1987). Most interesting in the present context is the
notion that agrammatism may be caused by problems in the processing of the
closed-class vocabulary, rather than the other way around. Specifically, Bradley, Garrett, and Zurif (1980) proposed that the difficulties manifested by
agrammatic aphasics in the integration of sentence form are traceable to the
disruption of a special access route for closed-class words.
Some of the evidence for this disruption comes from lexical decision experiments which examined the performance of aphasic and normal speakers on
open- and closed-class words (Bradley, 1983). Using frequency sensitivity as
a diagnostic of lexical recognition performance, Bradley found, for normal
speakers. that such sensitivity was present for open-class words but absent
for closed-class words. In contrast, agrammatic aphasics showed frequency
sensitivity for both the open and the closed class, suggesting that these speakers’ recognition mechanisms for the closed class are uncharacteristic of normal language processing. On these grounds, Bradley et al. (1980) advanced
the hypothesis that the syntactic problems of agrammatics in both comprehenand production might be a symptom of the failure of a specialized closedclass retrieval system (also see Bradley CyrGarrett, 1983; Rosenberg, Zurif,
Brownell, Garrett, & Bradley, 1985).
In this proposal there are two distinct claims that I will call special access
and syntactic immanence. Both of them have ramifications for theories of
normal language performance. Special access suggests that the closed class is
retrieved from the mental lexicon by means that differ from those used for
open-class words. Dell (1985) has clarified how this hypothesis might be
instantiated. Specifically, the phonological constituents of a directly retrieved
word need not be linked to lexical representations in terms of the categories
stated in phonological rules (e.g., to resolve their order). Instead, all of the
information required to encode or identify such words is inherent in their
representations. Indirect retrieval requires the mediation of rules; direct retrieval does not.
The second claim, syntactic immanence, relates the closed class to syntactic
processing. Garrett (1982) made this argument with particular respect to
production processes, setting out the assumption that closed-class elements
Closed-c&assimmanence
165
are represented within the syntactic frames of sentences. The idea is that
syntactic processes exploit the closed class in building the structural skeletons
that guide the placement of the phonological forms of content words. SO,
according to Garrett, the “open and closed classes are recruited at quite
different points in the sentence construction process” (1982, p. 52), and play
very different roles with respect to it. While open-class words are somewhat
independent of their specific phrasal contexts, closed-class elements “are
identified with their phrasal configurations . . . [their identity] is fixed by the
(unknown) processes which select phrasal frames” (1982, p. 61). Analogous
arguments can be made for comprehension: Because of their inherent link to
phrasal frames, the elements of the closed class might be used in a privileged
way to identify syntactic constituents (Kimball, 1973; Thorne, Bratley, &
Dewar, 1968).
These two parts of the closed-class hypothesis, special access and syntactic
immanence, have different implications and empirical warrants. The special
access claim has received considerable attention in experiments on word recognition, focusing on differential frequency sensitivity as the critical index.
The results are mixed, with interpretations that depend heavily on assumptions about the appropriate frequency ranges within which to compare the
open and closed class. In general, it appears that to the extent that they can
be equated for frequency of occurrence, open- and closed-class words behave
similarly in identification (Besner, 1988) and lexical decision tasks (Gordon
& Caramazza, 1982, 1983, 1985; Segui, Mehler, Frauenfelder, & Morton,
1982). The problem is that it is all but impossible to construct this equation.
Some of the obstacles are as follows. First, there are vanishingly few open-
class words in the high frequency ranges in which the commonest closed-class
words appear. Second, the closed-class words that fall into lower frequency
ranges in counts of printed words are undoubtedly less familiar than openclass words with the same frequencies of occurrence (compare thereupon ami
whereas with humane and vice), because such members of the closed class
are virtually never used in ordinary speech (for some of the implications of
this difference in familiarity see Gernsbacher, 1984). Third, many of the
closed-class words in the lower frequency ranges are compounds with syntactic and semantic functions that differ substantially from those of commoner
closed-class words. Finally, Gordon and Caramazza (1983, 1985) have identified what they call a frequency-saturated region into which the common
closed-class words fall, and within this region there is in fact little variation
in recognition performance as a function of frequency. 01; its face this finding
is consistent with the special access argument, though Go&n and Caramazza
(1985) attributed it to other factors. Specifically, both the open- and the
closed-class words in the so-called frequency-saturated
region appeared to
166
K. Bock
have been influenced by uncontrolled but reliable word-specific determinants
of recognition performance that may have obscured any frequency effects.
Taken together, such problems render moot the special access hypothesis
as it applies to word recognition, at least with respect to the diagnostic of
frequency sensitivity, However, Dell, Segal, and Bergman (1985) have taken
a different and less problematic empirical tack. The springboard for this
approach is a salient fact about closed-class words: They rarely participate in
sound errors in spontaneous speech. This is consistent with their having a
special status in language performance, one that permits them to be accessed
without the mediat-ion of rules that govern the assembly of their phonological
constituents. To examine this experimentally, Dell et al. used an error-elicitation paradigm (Baars, 1980) in which they controlled for phonological differences between open- and closed-class words. They did this by comparing
the susceptibility to error of nonhomographic homophones from the open
and closed classes (e.g., buy, by; wee, we; hymn, him). In one experiment
they found that the incidence of sound slips was exactly the same regardless
of syntactic class. In a second experiment designed to emphasize syntactic
processing of phrases containing the words, there was only one less error. for
closed- than for open-class words. Their third expsriment revealed that
variations in the frequencies of words produced a far stronger effect, with
higher frequency forms yielding fewer errors. Dell et al. concluded that the
frequency of the phonological form shared by two hamsphones may be related to its vulnerability to error. Again, as in studies of word recognition,
there is little support here for special access.
Much less has been said and done about the syntactic immanence
hypothesis. Garrett’s arguments for it (1982) are chiefly based on characteristic differences in the involvement of open- and closed-class elements in mistakes in spontaneous speech, as these errors have been recorded in several
large corpora. In addition to the rarity of sound errors involving closed-class
words, Garrett points to the pecul.a,
; t de
of the closed class in what he calls
stranding exchanges. Such errors are exemplified in She’s already trunked two
packs (when packed two trunks *was intended; GarreTt, 1975). In the majority
of these mistakes, the stems of the inflected WC:rd; exchange, leaving the
inflections in place. So in Stemberger’s (1985) corpus, there were 135 stemmorpheme exchanges compared to just one case in which inflectional affixes
exchanged. Moreover, strand;ng occurred for 89% of the errors in which it
was possible D
From such patterns Garrett argrres that the development of a sentence
“involves the assignment of segmentally specified major category items to
sites in a surface phrasal planning frame which bears inflectional elements
and minor category free form? (1982, p. 50). Thus, the closed-class elemea. ts
Closed-class immanence
167
are already in place when the phonological forms of open-class words arc
integrated into the developing utterance, with the hypothesis being that their
places and identities are determined by the same processes that select phrasal
frames. In the present terminology, they are immanent in the frame.
Dell et al.‘s (1985) studies are relevant to this hypothesis, since the extension of their first experiment failed to find closed- and open-class differences
even when the subjects were encouraged to engage in sentence construction
activities. However, as they emphasize, only 11 relevant errors actually occurred in this extension, with a small difference in the direction predicted by
syntactic immanence. Since it is conceivable that their subjects did not always
construct representations of their utterances at the levels involved in generating closed-class frames, the possibility remains that a production task that
engages and more closely mimics normal sentence construction processes
would find the sort of closed-class involvement predicted by the claim of
syntactic immanence.
In the two experiments reported below, the claim was evaluated in the
context of a production paradigm that induces syntactic persistence, or the
repetition of sentence structures somewhat independently of message content. Using this paradigm, Bock (1986) found that speakers who produced a
prepositional dative sentence were subsequently more likely to dr;“scribean
event by using another prepositional dative. So, after saying A rock star sold
some cocaine to an undercover agent the subjects were more likely to describe
a picture of a man reading to a child by saying The man is reading a story to
the child than by saying The man is reading the child a story. These likelihoods
reversed when the initial (priming) sentence had the double object form, as
in A rock star sold an undercover agent some cocaine. Bock and Loebell
(1988) provide evidence that this persistence involves the repetition of phrasestructure patterns, not just metrical or semantic ones Since a simiiar
phenomenon appears in more conventional conversational exchanges (Estival, 1985; Levelt & Kelter, 1982; Schenkein, 1980; Weiner & Labov, 1983)
there is evidently a robust natural tendency for the syntactic structure of one
sentence to be repeated in others.
If closed-class elements are an integral part of sentence structure, differences in these elements should tend to disrupt or diminish the tendency
toward structural repetition. Bock (1986) did not observe such a reduction in
a post hoc comparison of to- and for-dative pruning sentences (in which the
prepositions that marked the indirect object changed). However, the number
of items involved was small and they varied in ways other than the to versus
for contrast, A more stringent test of the hypothesis can be carried out by
matching
the open-class content and phrase structures of the priming sentences while varying the closed-class elements that demarcate the con-
168
K.
Bock
stituents. The matched priming sentences used in the present experiments
(e.g.,
The secretary is taking a cake to her boss versus The secretary is baking
a cake _for her boss) had the same constituent structures, as shown in the
phrase
markers in Figure 1, and the same three noun phrases, but different
prepositions.
Structural repetition was assessed by comparing the number of prepositional to-daiives that occurred after sentences such as these with the number
that occurred after the double-object forms of the same sentences (The secretary was taking her boss a cake and The secretary was baking her boss a cake).
Since the double-object forms had no differences beyond the verb contrast
that arises in the corresponding prepositional forms, assessment of structural
repetition effects relative to the baselines established by the double-object
forms incorporates a control for the effect of the verb.
If closed-class words are intrinsic to sentence frames, then different frames
must be constructed during the utterance of prepositional to and for priming
sentences. The corresponding differences in generation processes should affect the creation of an utterance to describe an event such as the one depicted
in Figure 2. This picture, like the others used in the experiments, can be
naturally described with a verb that takes a to phrase as a complement,
yielding a prepositional to-dative. When, after producing a prepositional sentence as a prime, subjects proceed to describe such a picture, the strength of
the structural repetition effect should be greater for the to-dative than for the
matched for-dative prime. Specifically, subjects should be more likely to say
The girl is handing a paintbrush to the boy after the prepositional :c-dative
than after the prepositional for-dative prime.
The alternative trj the syntactic immanence view is tlrat the frame is a more
abstract structural representation that is compatible v4th a range of closedclass instantiations (Lapointe, 1985). On this hypothesis, the similar hierarchical structures of the two types of prepositional datives should produce
similar structural repetition effects. Specifically, more prepositional da-iives
should be produced after other prepositional datives than after double-object
datives, but the magnitude of the increase should be the same for the to and
for forms.
The first experiment tested the predictions of the closed-class immanence and
abstract phrase structure hypotheses in the syntactic priming paradigm
sketched above. The central components of this paradigm, in terms of the
purposes of the experiment, were the subjects’ productions of priming sentences in different syntactic forms, followed by their descriptions of pictured
events. However, another important component of the paradigm, in terms
of subjects’ goals in the experiment, was a memory test that served as the
Closed-class immanence
Figure 1.
Phrase structure tree diagrams representing the two types of prepositionaldative priming sentences and the double-object dative forms of each.
PREPOSITIONAL TO-DATIVE
PREPOSITIONAL FOR-DATIVE
S
S
\
DET
I
169
I
The secretary is
v
I
v
PFJ
NP
I
NP
NP
DET
\
taking a
caketo
PBSS
N
I
her
I
boss
I
PQSS
\
I.1
ia
_I
boss
cake for her
DOUBLE-OBJECT FOR-DATIVE
DOUBLE-OBJECT TO-DATIVE
S
S
v
v
NP
NP
\
I
I I
baking a
NP
NP
DET
Di3
taking her
N DET
boss a
N
cake
I
NP
DE3
baking her
NP
NDET
boss a
N
cake
170
K. Bock
Figure 2.
of
Sequence of events on each priming trial, with examples
a priming sentence, a to-be-described picture, and a subject’s description of the pictured
event.
1.
2.
Subject hears and repeats priming sentence: “The secretary is taking a cake
to her boss.”
Picture presentation:
Subject describes depic teeI event: “The girl is I;an&ng i>e pantbrush
man on the ladder.”
to the
primary task. A memory study-and-test list incorporated the pairs of sentences and pictures that constituted the priming trials, and from the perspective of the subjects these sentences and pictures were not distinguished from
the others that surrounded them. As part of their memory task, the subjects
were asked to repeat all of the sentences and describe the events in ali of the
pictures aloud, ostensibly as a memory aid. They received no specific instructions about the structural forms of the descriptions. This permitted the assessment of structural repetition effects in a relatively unconstrained and unselfconscious speaking situation. As in most circumstances in which people talk,
the talk itself was subsidiary to the achievement of another goal.
Subjects
The subjects were 06 Michigan State University undergraduates. They participated in exchange few
p
. *r-edits
in introductory psychology classes.
Closed-classimmanence
Table 1.
171
Examples of priming sentence sets
Prime type
Examples
Prepositional to-dative
Prepositional for-dative
Double-object to-dative
Double-object for-dative
A
A
A
A
Prepositional to-dative
Prepositionalfor-dative
Double-object fo-dative
Double-objectfor-dative
The secretary wastaking a cake to her boss.
The secretary wasbaking a cake for her boss.
The secretary was taking her boss a cake.
The secretary wasbaking her boss a cake.
Preposirional fo-dative
Prepositional for-dative
Double-object to-dative
Double-objet! for-dative
A rock star sold some pure cocaine to his manuger.
cheerleader
cheerleader
cheerleader
cheerleader
offered n seat POher friend.
saved a seatfor her friend.
offered her friend a seat.
saved her friend a seat.
A rock star got some pure cocaine for his manager.
A rock star sold his manager some pure cocaine.
A rock star got his manager some pure cocaine.
Materials
The experimental materials were comprised of 32 pictures of dative events
paired with priming sentences drawn from 32 different sets. The priming
sentence sets consisted of quadruplets such as those shown in Table 1. Each
quadruplet contained a to-dative in its prepositional form, a for-dative in its
prepositional form, and the double-object versions of both. The to- and fordatives were identical except for their verbs and the prepositions that headed
tbe preposi&mnl phrases in their prepositional forms.
The 32 experimental pictures each depicted an action involving an agent,
an objecr undergoing the action, and a beneficiary of the action; Typical
actions involved giving, showing, handing, and reading performed in the
context of events such as a boy giving an apple to a teacher, a woman showing
a dress to a man, a man handing a pitcher to a woman, and a girl reading a
book to a boy. The pictures were drawn in black ink on a white background
and photographed for presentation on slides Half had the beneficiary of the
action on the right, and half on the left.
Each picture was paired with one of the sentence sets, taking care that the
pairings did not create semantic or thematic relationships. As a result, the
priming sentences did not appear to be related to the pictures with which
they occurred.
An additional 128 items (64 pictures and 64 sentences) served as fillers in
the presentation lists. These provided the materials for the cover recognition
memory test, added variety to the lists, and camouflaged the structural re-
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Closed-class immanence
173
obtain a written record of the descriptions of the experimental pictures. The
transcriptions included the subjects’ utterances along with markers for hesitations, false starts, and other dysfluencies.
Scoring
The transcribed descriptions of the experimental pictures were scored as
prepositional datives or as double-object datives. To be scored as a prepositional dative, a description had to contain a dative verb followed first by the
theme (the object undergoing the action) as the direct object and then by the
beneficiary as the object of the preposition to. To be scored as a double-object
dative, a description had to contain a dative verb followed by the beneficiary
as the first object and by the theme as the second object. To be scored in
either category, a description had to have a grammatical alternative in the
other category that reversed the positions of the theme and the beneficiary.’
Descriptions not meeting these criteria were excluded from the analyses.
These criteria yielded 1,961 analyzable sentences from 3,072 descriptions
(64%). Of the analyzable sentences, 25.0% occurred in the prepositional to
condition, 24.7% in the prepositional fov condition, 24.9% in the double-object to condition, and 2.5.3% in the double-object for condition (the percentages do not sum to 100 because of rounding). The primary data consisted of
the proportions of prepositional datives among the storable responses for
each subject in each condition.
Among the picture descriptions there were a few prepositional and doubleobject for-datives (17, or 1% of a.11the responses). These were excluded from
the analyses of the to-datives. Because of their low rate of occurrence and
relatively even distribution over priming conditions, they were not considered
further.
Design and data analyses
Every subject received 32 experimental pictures, 8 in each of the four
priming conditions formed by crossing the preposition factor (to or for) with
the form factor (prepositional or double-object dative). Every experimental
picture was presented to 96 subjects, 24 in each of the same four conditions.
Analyses of variance were performed on the data, with separate analyses
‘This is a methodological point, not a theoretical one. Double-object datives sewed as a baseline against
!anAthe open+Aass lexical content
which to assessthe occurrence of priming, since they preserve the meanin,n _.._
of the primed prepositional datives, but not the grammatical form or the closed-class content. The descriptions
scored as prepositional datives therefore had to admit a contra! form. There is no implied commitment to the
view that the different forms of these sentences originate in the same abstract syntactic representation.
174
K. Bock
treating subjects and items as random effects. Effects were treated as significant when their probability was less than or equal to .05.
Results
The proportions of prepositional datives (all of them to-datives) produced in
each priming condition are shown in the upper panel of Figure 3. The figure
reveals a generalized syntactic priming effect:’ f the responses following
datives, compared to .37
prepositional dative primes, .43 were prepositio
following double-object datives. This difference was significant over subjects
(F(1,95) = 7.97) and marginally significant over items (F(1,31) = 3.80, p =
.06). The effect cannot be attributed to the match between the preposition
in the priming form and the preposition in the response, since the prepositional to primes actually seemed somewhat less effective at priming the
positional to form than were the prepositional for primes, .41 versus -45.
wever, this difference was not significant in planned comparisons (the
95% confid.ence interval halfwidth for the contrast was .075 for subjects and
.I02 for items). Relative to their respective double-object conditions, the
prepositional-to and prepositional-for forms produced comparable increases
of .05 and .07 in the production of prepositional datives.
There was a trend suggesting that for-datives were somewhat more likely
to elicit prepositional forms in all conditions. This effect was marginal for
subjects (F(1,95) = 3.27, p < .08)but nonsignificant for items (F(1,31) =
‘>
6. )*
o assess the transient effects of the priming sentences on the production
process, analyses were performed on the dysfluencies that occurred in the
prepositional and double-object descriptions. Two measures were examined
for ah of the sentences included in the form analyses. The first was the mean
number of initial hesitations and false starts that occurred per description.
An initial hesitation was coded whenever the transcription indicated that
subjects delayed the initiation of their descriptions (with fillers such as
“ummm” or “ahhh,” with repetition or prolongation of sentence initial articles and other elements of the subject noun phrase, and with unusually long
latencies to speech). False starts were noted when descriptions were initiated,
stopped, and reinitiated. The second measure was the mean number of mediai hesitations per description. Medial hesitations included dysfluencies that
occurred after the subject noun phrase but before compEetion of the second
or indirect object, and were predominantly pauses, repetitions, and stutters
or prolongations of words.
Table 2 summarizes the results for these measures, in terms of the number
of dysfluencies per utterance. It shows that the production of prepositional
q
Closed-class immanence
Figure 3.
175
Production of prepositional to-datives following priming sentences presented in prepositional or double-object dative forms. Each priming form
occurred in both a to version and a for version. The top panel shows the
results ,for lists in which four to nine fillers separated each of 32 priming
trials (Experiment 1) and the bottom panel for lists in which ten fillers
separated each of 16 priming trials (Experiment 2). In neither experiment
did t!ae closed-class composition of priming sentences reliably affect t&e
,forms of sentences that subjects produced.
PREP03lTIONAL
176
K. Bock
Table 2.
Dysfluencies in prepositional and double-object descriptions (Experiment I)
Form of utterance
Double-object
Priming condition
Prepositional
Prepositional to-dative
Prepositional@--dative
Double-object m-dative
Double-object for-dative
Number of initial dysfluencies per utterance
A8
.39
.38
.-I2
A.5
42
A7
Al
Prepositional ro-dative
Prepositionalfor-dative
Double-object lo-dative
Double-object for-dative
Number of medial dysfluencies per utterance
A9
.38
.33
.12
.32
.36
A0
.35
datives created more dysfluencies in both locations, over all conditions, than
the prodllction of double-object datives. The number of dysfluencies of all
types was 38 for each prepositional description, compared to .75 for each
double-object description. This difference was significant across subjects in a
Wilcoxon signed-ranks test, z = 1.66. No other effects were reliable. In
5articular. the prepositional to-datives that followed to-dative primes were
no more fluent than those that followedftir-datives. They were actually somewhat less fluent, although not significantly so.
If structural repetition occurs without lexical repetition, lexical repetition
may be found without structural repetition. To explore this, I counted the
occurrences of the words to and for outside of the target syntactic siructures,
including infinitives and complementizers. There was a weak correspondence
between the prepositions in the primes and the tos and fors appearing in the
‘descriptions, 88 matching to 77 mismatching, but this, was not reliable (t (45)
= .90, one-tailed p = .19).
Discussion
The results of the first experiment failed to support the closed-class immanence hypothesis. There was no tendency for utterances with closed-class
constituents that matched those of the priming sentences to occur more often
than utterances with closed-class constituents that mismatched those of the
priming sentences. At the same time, variations in the phrase structures of
the utterances were reliably associated with similar variations in the phrase
structures of the priming sentences. Such evidence suggests that the syntactic
frames of sentences are instantiated in a more abstract organizational scheme
than that envisioned by the closed-class hypothesis.
However, one feature of the data is problematic. Even though the priming
pattern for the to-dative form did not indicate facilitation of the closed-class
frame, it may seem to suggest inhibition. Such a result could be readily
explained by elaborating the syntactic immanence view with processing assumptions that predict detriments in performance with frame repetition. For
example, the construction of successive frames incorporating the same closedclass elements could produce interference rather than enhancement, or the
immediate reconstruction of a frame might be blocked by a cognitive refractory period. The nonsignificant trend toward elevated dysfluencies associated
with to-dative priming of the to-dative fo,,,,
lkBIUsome credence to this line
- iem+
of argument.
However, the appearance of interference may be traceable to a particular
feature of the construction of the test lists. Th’e priming trials were spaced so
that, on the average, only six other sentence or picture trials separated them.
Previous work suggests that the residues of syntactic priming may be relatively long-lasting. At short intervals, Levelt and Kelter (1982) found that a
form-correspc>ndence zffect generally occurred both when a priming item
immediately preceded a subject’s speech and when it was separated by a
clause or so of distracting material. Over longer intervals, Weiner and Labov
(1983) reported that the occurrence of a passive sentence in sociolinguistic
interviews was associated with the prior occurrence of a passive any-w’lere in
the preceriing five utterances, and Bock and Kroch (in press) reported decreased use of a form when an alternative to that form had been repeatedly
used, even when the last use of the alternative occurred 12 sentences earlier.
Such persistence indicates that priming from one trial in the present experiment could have affected subsequent trials. This would increase variability
among the items and weaken the priming effect. The second experiment was
conducted in order to reduce the contamination across priming trials.
eri
2
The problematic features of the first experiment were addressed in a replication that increased the separation of the priming trials. Instead of the median
of six fillers that occurred between priming trials in Experiment 1, ten fillers
separated all priming trials in Experiment 2. To make this possible, the priming sentences from half of the sentence sets were given to one group of
subjects, and those from the other half to a second group.
178
K. Buck
Method
sul!ljects
There were 192 subjects from the same source as Experiment
1.
Materials
The materials were the same as those in the first experiment, but their
assignments to presentation lists differed. Items constructed from half of the
priming sets were assigned to four MS, and items constructed frqrn the remaining priming sets were assigned to four other lists. The only difference
between the former and latter lists was in the specific priming items they
I
contained.
Every list contained 192 items, includirrg the 32 items that constituted the
I4 priming trials, 32 unrepeated fillers, and 64 repeated fillers. Ten filler
trials occurred between the priming trials. The constraints on the fiilers were
the same as in the first experiment.
Procedure
The procedure from Experiment 1 was repeated, except that ea.ch list was
divided into thcze blocks of trials, with 76 trials in the first block, 80 in the
second, and 36 I!n the last.
Scoring
The scoring criteria duplicated those of the first experiment. They yielded
0 analyzable sentences from 3,072 descriptions (63%). Of the analyzable
sentences, 25.1% occurred in the prepositional to condition, 24.5% in the
prepositional for condition, 25.0% in the double-object to condition, and
25.4% in the double-object fov condition.
Design and data analyses
Every subject received 16 experimental pictures, 4 in each of the four
priming conditions formed by crossing the preposition factor (to or for) with
the form factor (prepositional or double-object dative). Every experimental
picture was presented to 96 subjects, 24 in each of the same four conditions.
Analyses of variance were performed as in Experiment 1.
Results
The results are shown in the lower panel of Figure 3. There were no significant interactions involving different subject groups or item sets, so the data
for the two are collapsed in the figure. As the graph suggests, the syntactic
Closed-class immanence
179
forms of the sentences were reliably affected by the syntactic forms of the
priming sentences, F( 1,190) = 29.3 over subjects and F( 1,30) = 41.07 over
items, but there was no difference between the to primes and the for primes,
both Fs < 1.
In Table 3, the data are broken down for prepositional and double-object
descriptions. The influence of the priming forms is evident for both sentence
types, irrespective of the form of the preposition.
An analysis of dysfluencies such as the one reported for the first experimcst yielded the results in Table 4. The rate of dysfluencies was roughly 25%
lower, but there rem_ained an n~+~ri
v .vlual*wA~-w*
bk~~~bhby hi jXCpG&hi~l
fOKiiiSi0 be
somewhat less Went than double-object forms, with 65 dysfluencies per
prepositional utterance ~zrsus 61 per double-object utterance. However, this
failed to achieve significance% 2 Wlcoxon signed-ranks analysis, z = .95,
P = .17. Prepositional utterances appeared to be produced more fluently
when they followed prepositional primes (.60 dysfluencies per utterance) than
when they followed double-object primes (.73 dysfluencies per utterance),
but this was also not significant, z = 1.11, p = .13. No clear patterns were
evident for the to-for contrast.
Examination of the lexical repetition patterns again revealed a trend toward differential use of the words to and for after to and for prepositional
datives, but outside of the target syntactic structures. Of I72 such occurrences
of ro and for, 95 matched and 77 mismatched the preposition in the prime
(t (191) = 1.40, one-tailed p = .08). At least some of this may have been brute
phonological priming, since the open-class word CW~J
also occurred’ more
Table 3.
Number of prepositional and double-object descriptions produced
prepositional and do&z-object priming conditions (Experiment 2)
in
Form of description
Prepositional
Double-object
201
!33
2%
3.51
Prepositional
139
277
Double-object
139
354
Priming condition
ro-datives
Prepositional
Double-object
for-datives
LMost of the pictures included awe perq-le interacting in sotre way, sometimes eliciting descriptions such
as Two kids are playing catch.
180
K. Bock
Table 4.
Dysfluencies in prepositional and double-object descriptions (Experiment 2)
Form of utterance
Priming condition
Prepositional
Double-object
Number of initial dysfluencies per utterance
Prepositional m-dative
.28
.31
Prepositional for-dative
.21
.26
Double-object to-dative
.32
.25
Double-object for-dative
.31
.29
NW!
er of medial dysfluencies per utterance
Prepositional ro-dative
.31
.31
Prepositionalfor-dative
.36
.34
Double-object to-dative
.35
Double-object for-dative
A5
.36
.29
often after to than after for, 45 to 33, a difference that was statistically equivalent to the closed-class repetition effect (t(191) = 1.40, one-tailed p = .08).
Experiment 1 did not show this pattern (47 twos occurred after to and 50 after
for), but the spacing problem in that experiment may have obscured lexical
as well as structural repetition.
Even though the tendency to repeat sentence J.
c+ruct;lres increased, there were
no discernible effects of the closed-class frame variations. As in Experiment
1, then, syntactic repetition had little to do with the repetition of frames
comprised of particular closed-class constituents.
There are three differences in the results of Experiments 1 and 2 which
are probably attributable to a reduction in the influence of structural persistence across priming trials. First, unlike Experiment 1, Experiment 2 revealed
no evidence of elevation in priming for prepositional for-datives. Second, the
repetition effects in Experiment 2 were substantially larger than in Experiment 1, with fewer prepositional forms occurring after double-object primes.
One explanation for this is that the second experiment provided little opportunity for persistence of prepositional effe ?ts into double-object priming
trials, yielding a purer measure of the impact of structural repeti’iion. Finally,
the utterances. in Experiment 2 were produced more fuentiy than those in
Experiment 1, perhaps reflecting the absence of competition between the
CLrrent snd preceding priming sentences.
Closed-class immanerwe
581
A comparison of the intertrial intervals in the two experiments serves to
establish some rough bounds for syntactic persistence. Separating the priming
trials by ten utterances (consisting of filler sentence repetitions and filler
picture descriptions) removed most of the apparent cross-trial contamination
that arose in Experiment 1, where the separation averaged six utterances.
Though an explanation of the disruption of persistence effects awaits further
study, from a purely methodological perspective it appears to be important
to maximize the separation of syntactic priming trials.
The results of these experiments suggest that closed-class words are not inherent in the structural skeletons of sentences. Whether the prepositions in
the priming forms matched or mismatched the prepositions in the spontaneously produced sentences had no bearing on whether similar sentence forms
occurred: The subjects tended to produce configurations of constituents similar to those of the priming sentences, both when the prepositions were the
same and when they differed. This suggests that the specific form of a preposition can be dissociated from the structural frame in which it appears, and so
cannot be identified with it.
It might be objected that prepositions are immune to the closed-class effects predicted by syntactic immanence because they, like nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, serve as the heads of phrases. They do in fact seem to
differ from other members of the closed class in being exchangeable. Thus,
preps&ions participate in word exchanges, though most closed-class words
do not (Garrett, 1982). However, prepositions also divide into two types:
those that add information about an element’s direction of movement, location, and so forth (lexical prepositions), and those that are syntactically bound
(grammatical prepositions) . Grammatical prepositions tend to co-occur with
a particular verb form that subcategorizes for a particular thematic role, with
the preposition serving to uniquely mark that role for that verb form. Some
prepositions are multifunctional, in that they serve semantic functions on
some occasions (e.g., by in John was mugged by the bridge) and grammatical
ones on others (e.g., by in John was mfcgged by a teenager). However, notice
that the location of the mugging can be specified with any of several locative
prepositions (near, under, beside, on) while the agent can be specified only
with by (along with a passive verb). In some linguistic theories, grammatical
prepositions are included along with information specified in the lexical en/V&J.
tries of verbs (cf. Kaplan & Bresnan, lo””
From the perspective of the syntactic immanence hypothesis, grammati-
182
K. Both
cal prepositions should behave like other closed-class words because they
obligatorily
accompany particular thematic roles when those roles are expressed for particular verb forms. Friederici (1982, 1985) has tested this claim for
German prepositions that alternate between lexical and grammatical uses.
She found that agrammatic aphasics were less likely to produce prepositions
when they served primarily grammatical functions than when they served
lexical ones (Friederici, 1982), consistent with the deficits such patients reveal
in the use of closed-class words. In word-monitoring tasks (Friederici, 1985),
both normal and agrammatic speakers performed differently for lexical and
grammatical prepositions. Open-class words were detected faster in sentences
that were consistent with the situational or semantic bias establislred by a
context sentence than in sentences that were unrelated to it, but the detection
of closed-class words was unaffected by the semantic context. Prepositions
that served semantic functions behaved like the open-class words, while the
same prepositions zsyving grammatical functions behaved like the closed-class
words. One explanation of this pattern is that the detectability of the grammatical prepositions depended on sentence-internal syntactic factors, rather
than features of sentence meaning. In any case, grammatical prepositions
appear to function like members of the closed-class vocabulary in language
performance.
The dative to is a grammatical preposition, in that it specifies the oblique
argument or recipient of the action for dative verbs such as give, sell, and
show in their prepositional forms. Its obligatory nature is suggested by its
inclusion within the lexical entries for such verbs in lexical-fur.ctional gramaplan & Bresnan, 1982). For such reasons, it is the sort of closed-class
word that ought to inhere in sentence frames, if any of them do. It is also
the word that was produced in all of the prepositional descriptions, and the
fact that its occurrence was unaffected by the prior production of frames
containing the s~mc preposition would seem to count against the syntactic
immanence view.
These findings also indicate that the tendency to repeat syntactic structures
cannot be explained only in terms of lexical repetition. If structural repetition
were parasitic on lexical repetition, the use of a prepositional phrase would
depend on the priming of a particular preposition. Such an argument follows
readily from data reported by Levelt and Kelter (1982). In their experiments,
Dutch speakers were queried about a pictured event with one of two question
forms. The first form contained a prepositional phrase (e.g., the Dutch equivalent of To ,whom does Paul show his violin?) and the second contained a
non-prepositional variant (e.g., Whom does Paul show his violin?). The
answers revealed a strong correspondence effect, with the prepositionalphrase
form of the question tending to elicit answers with prepositional
Closed-class immanence
183
phrases (e.g., To Susan) and the non-prepositional form tending to elicit
answers without the preposition (e.g., Swan). Levelt and Kelter interpreted
this as a refleciion bf a tendency to re-use material from previous speech,
specifically the preposition” What the present experiments suggest is that
such effects may also follow from the repeated creation of a particular structural configuration. The use of the same preposition within that configuration
may have as much to do with the syntactic or semantic context as with lexical
predecessors.
At the same time, the absence of a lexically triggered syntactic effect cannot be put down to the absence of lexical priming. Trends toward to and for
repetition occurred in both experiments across infinitival, complement, and
nontarget prepositional forms. NO anaiogous trends appeared in the syntactic
repetition effect. However, the weakness of these lexical effects is surprising
in light of the ubiquity and power of lexical repetition in language production
(Bock, 1982). This unusual behavior may be another consequence of the high
frequency of closed-class words: They may be less susceptible to priming
because they are near the asymptote of accessibility, as in the frequency
saturation phenomenon reported by Gordon ;nd Caramazza (1985), and in
accord with Stemberger’s (1985) analysis of the behavior of function words
in speech errors.
There is a way to weaken the closed-class hypothesis without wholly rejecting it. It is to assume a one-to-many relationship between frames and closedclass elements, so that the same frames recruit different members of the
closed-class, but in a manner different from the recruiting of the open class.
A proposal of this type has been made by Lapointe (1985) to account for the
patterns of verb-form use in agrammatism (see also Lapointe & Dell, in
press). Lapointe proposed a distinction between phrase fragments and function-word fragments, with each constituting different components of the rep, L;ire bui:3,3;;&ig ihc gsiiciation pro._
resentations of constituent structure &a+
cess. Phrase fragments are representations of maximal phrases of major lexical categories (e.g., noun phrases and verb phrases). They contain slots for
open-class words that must be filled with material retrieved from the lexicon.
Function-word fragments have nodes such as Determiner or Auxiliary to
which are bound specific function words, such as the or was, as in (a) and (b):
00 ‘yy
(the)
(W (AW
(I>
(was)
However, the function-word fragments must themselves be linked to appropriate positions within the representation of the constituent structure. Thus,
the phrase fragments contain Determiner and Auxiliary nodes into which the
184
K. Bock
function-word fragments must be inserted. When a fragment is inserted in
the tree, it carries a specific function word with it.
This dissociation between phrase fragments, function-word fragments, and
lexically represented open-class words is more consistent with the current
findings than the strong immanence claim. However, a full reconciliation
requires the assumption that the mechanisms responsible for selecting and
deploying specific function-word fragments are immune to priming. This assumption cannot be confidently rejected, because of the weakness of the
lexical priming effects and the intimation that they were restricted to the
phonological forms of the words. Recall that in the second experiment, occurrences of the word two increased after priming sentences with to, pointing
to a strictly phonological source. This leaves open the possibility that there
is an intermediate syntactic representation of function words that is not
tapped by the priiming paradigm.
The occurrence of priming from to to two also bears on the special access
claim of the closed-class hypothesis. Since to comes from the closed class and
two from the open class, priming from one to the other underscores the
argument that there is no differentiation between the classes at the phonological level (Dell et al., 1985).
The bare implication of the results of these experiments is that the processes that construct the phrasal skeletons of sentences in language production
are not inextricably intertwined with the free-standing elements of the closedclass vocabulary. It could of course happen that the story will be different for
ction words, and there are indications that it must be different for
inflectional affixes (Caramazza & Hillis, in press; Lapointe & Dell, in press).
However, it appears plausible to suppose that the effective representational
vocabulary of syntactic production processes is more abstract than the one
put forward in the closed-class hypothesis.
An obvious candidate for the theoretical model of this vocabulary is the
one employed in phrase-structure grammars (Jackendoff, 1977). There is
abundant evidence that normal production processes incorporate the kinds
of distinctions marked in such grammars (for a review see Rock, 1987).
Aphasic deficits manifested as problems in the production of closed-class
words during sentence generation (Caramazza & Hillis, in press; Kolk, van
Grunsven, B Keyser, 1985) may be rooted in problems in creating the functional equivalent of a fully elaborated phrase-structure tree (Kolk, 1987).
Since phrase-structure generation is an implicit component of theories that
incorporate the closed-class hypothesis (Garrett, 1982), such theories may
provkk more adequate accounts of language production without the
hypothesis than with it.
Closed-class immanerzce
185
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L’hypothese de la classe fermee affirme que Its mots fonctionnels jouent un r6le privilegie dans les processus
syntaxiques. On fait, en production de langage, la conjecture suivante: les mots fonctionnels sont intrinseques
et non superposes au squelette de la phrase; autrement dit. ils peuvent Ctre identifies ii ce squelette. Deux
experiences ont teste cette hypothese B l’aide de la procedure de facilitation syntaxique. Dans chacune de ces
expCr;ences. les sujets avaient tendance a produire des phrases de structure syntaxique semblable ir celle des
phrases qui leur etaient presentees auparavant; les structures des phrases generees par les sujets variaient en
fonction des differences dans les structures des phrases qui leur etaient present&s. Les changements intervenant parmi les ClCments de la classe ferm&e de ces phrases n’avaient aucun effet sur cette tendance au dcla dc
l’impact des changements de structures. Ces resultats suggerent que les morphemes libres de la classe fermee
ne sont pas des composants inherents au squelette structural de la phrase.