The canonical word order myth: Investigating a processingtypological puzzle in the Cantonese double object construction Antonio Cheung (University of Hawai’i at Manoa) & Stephen Matthews (The University of Hong Kong) Contact: antonio1 @ hawaii.edu

2. Cantonese: the testing ground

1. Canonical advantage or head proximity?

Potential center-embedding in the canonical order  a language processing problem  inefficient to process

Rare combination (Dryer, 2005)  a typological puzzle

Double object construction

Double object construction (DOC) Structure: [S V DO IO]

S

S

Alternative construction NP

Cantonese DOC is canonical:    

The BA construction Structure: [S BA DO VASP IO]

BA construction

frequent for expressions of giving structurally basic, and pragmatically neutral, BUT Heavy DOs  center-embedding

N

佢

NP

VP

NPDO

V

畀咗

NPIO

XP

N

N

我 買 嗰 本 得意 嘅

書

你

[ S/he ] give [ I buy that CL funny

VP

BA

N

NPDO

將

佢

XP

N

我 買 嗰 本 得意 嘅

書

[ S/he ] BA [ I buy that CL funny

NPIO

V

 Structural frequency not high  Use more restrictive in Cantonese (Matthews & Yip, 1994) than in Mandarin (Li & Thomson, 1981)  Only for highly-transitive VPs  Only definite direct objects can occur after BA morpheme

N

你

畀咗

book ] give [ you ] VP processing domain “[S/he] gives [you] [the funny book that [I bought]]”

book ] [ you ] VP processing domain “[S/he] gives [you] [the funny book that [I bought]]” PRT

PRT

3. Experiments : Effects of center-embedding in language comprehension and production Expt 1: Elicited production : DOC

Method: Self-paced reading with elicited imitation 1. Self-paced word-by-word reading (comprehension) 2. “REPEAT” probe at end of sentence 3. Elicited imitation of the sentence (production) Expt 2 results (comprehension) Participants consistently read BA faster than the DOC (average RT/word, F1(1,17)=4.933, p=.040, p2 n.s.) DO complexity also significant (by participants) (F1(2,16)=5.246, p=.024, p2 n.s.).

Expt 2 results (production) Imitation considered correct when same structure repeated. DOC is recalled less accurately than the BA construction (F1(1,17)=11.86, p=.003, F2(1,23)=0.419, p=.524) DO complexity also significant (p’s<0.001) Expt 2 : Elicited imitation (accuracy of structure)

Expt 2 : Self-paced reading (average time per region) 1.0

450

0.9 440

0.8 0.7

430 Accuracy

Method: Untimed elicited production 1. Recorded sentence played at key press 2. Key press to indicate participant is ready 3. Question “What does [the subject] do?” presented 4. Free response (full sentence) to question Expt 1 results (production) Attested responses:  DOC (repetition) (1)  BA construction (2)  Serial verb construction (SVC) [S V DO bei2 IO]  Verb doubling [S give DO give IO]  Topicalization [DO, S give IO]  Heavy NP shift (HNPS) [S V IO [DO]] Shifting from the DOC increases as DO gets more complex (F1(2,40)=55.97, p<.001, F2(2,33)=17.01, p<.001).

Compare between both language comprehension and production of the DOC and the BA construction Participants: 18 Cantonese native speakers Items: 12 sets of full sentences (with bei2 “give”) [S V [N] IO] [S BA [N] V IO]  3 DO lengths: N / Adj-N / RC-N [S V [Adj-N] IO] [S BA [Adj-N] V IO]  2 constructions (DOC or BA) [S V [[RC] N] IO] [S BA [[RC] N] V IO]

RT (ms)

 No parsed Cantonese corpora  Informal corpus search: DOC frequent, RCs rare  Elicit prod. of DOC with heavy DOs to quantify effects of center-embedding Participants: 21 Cantonese native speakers Items: 12 sets of full DOC sentences (with bei2 “give”)  3 DO lengths: N / Adj-N / RC-N [S V [N] IO] [S V [Adj-N] IO] [S V [[RC] N] IO]

Expt 2: Dual-task (comprehension + production) : DOC vs. BA

420 410 400

0.1 0.0

200

DOC: canonical word order most frequent response (imitation) very little shifting when DO is simple

150 Frequency

0.4

0.2

390 380 DOC BA

Bare N

Adj-N

RC-N

407.55 387.34

398.44 389.97

438.25 422.59

DOC BA

520

100

Alternative word orders: less frequent frequency of shifting increases with DO complexity

50

500

480

DOC

V NP V NP

SVC

BA

Others

238 206 169

9 28 38

4 6 13

0 1 15

1 11 17

Selected references Hawkins, J. (2004). Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars. Oxford: OUP. Matthews, S. & L. Yeung (2001). Processing motivations for topicalization in Cantonese. In Horie & Sato, eds., Cognitive-Functional Linguistics in an East Asian Context. Tokyo:Kurosio.

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Dr William O’Grady, Dr Amy Schafer, Dr Kamil Deen, Dr Conrad Perry and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. All remaining errors are our own. This research was partially supported by grants from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (proj refnos: HKU 725804H, HKU 748207H) & by a Postgraduate Studentship from the University of Hong Kong.

RT (ms)

460 0

440

420

400

380

360

Bare N

Adj-N

RC-N

0.81 0.96

0.72 0.94

0.54 0.86

4. Implications and conclusion

Expt 2 : Self-paced reading

Bare N Adj-N RC-N

0.5

0.3

Expt 1 : Elicited production

250

0.6

[ Cl_Subj

Subj ]

[ give / BA

[[ N_RC

V_RC ]

Det

Cl_DO

[ Adj ]

ge

DO]

DOC

378.9

407.2

400.8

426.4

486.9

427.6

385.9

451.6

437.5

444.7

BA

385.3

401.9

396.5

396.4

468.1

395.2

394.3

437.4

402.1

420.3

(∅ / give)

[ Cl_IO 411.1

391.8

388.1

 Canonical structures not necessarily easier to process.  Cantonese DOC harder to process than BA  Increased DO complexity  center-embedding  slower comprehension (Expt 2: slower RT) &  production difficulty (Exp 1: lower freq of DOC in elicited production; Expt 2: lower accuracy in elicited imitation)  “Canonical advantage”: NOT supported Frequency is not an explanation: frequent ≠ easier to process Direction of causality: easy to process  frequent ?  Non-canonical BA processed faster than the DOC  Not all alternative structures incur a processing penalty (cf. topicalization in Matthews & Yeung, 2001)  “Penalty” comes from unpredictability, not for the BA-cxn: BA reliably predicts DOsyntactic relations assigned early (cf. Maximize On-line Processing, Hawkins, 2004).  Word orders with potential center-embedding are rare due to the demands on processing which they incur (Hawkins, 2004).  Cantonese canonical word order retained because speakers can use alternative constructions to avoid serious center-embedding in the canonical word order. Speakers can frequently use the DOC because the working memory can tolerate center-embedding when the DO is relatively simple.