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Article published In: Asymmetries, Mismatches and Construction Grammar
Edited by Nikos Koutsoukos, Kristel Van Goethem and Hendrik De Smet
[Constructions and Frames 10:2] 2018
► pp. 234–268

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Match, mismatch, and envisioning transfer events

How verbal constructional bias and lexical-class concord shape motor simulation effects

 | University of Colorado Boulder
 | University of Colorado Boulder
Published online: 21 January 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cf.00020.gou
Abstract
Prior studies suggest that language users perform motoric simulations when construing action sentences and that verbs and constructions each contribute to simulation-based representation (Glenberg, A. M., & Kaschak, M. P. (2002). Grounding language in action. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 91, 558–565. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Richardson, D. C., Spivey, M. J., Barsalou, L. W., & McRae, K. (2003). Spatial representations activated during real-time comprehension of verbs. Cognitive Science, 271, 767–780. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Bergen, B. K., Lindsay, S., Matlock, T., & Narayanan, S. (2007). Spatial and linguistic aspects of visual imagery in sentence comprehension. Cognitive Science, 311, 733–764. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Bergen, B., & Wheeler, K. (2010). Grammatical aspect and mental simulation. Brain and Language, 1121, 150–158. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). This raises the possibility that motorically grounded verb and construction meanings can interact during sentence understanding. In this experiment, we use the action-sentence compatibility effect methodology to investigate how a verb’s lexical-class membership, constructional context, and constructional bias modulate motor simulation effects. Stimuli represent two classes of transfer verbs and two constructions that encode transfer events, Ditransitive and Oblique Goal (Goldberg, A. (1995). Constructions: A Construction Grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Findings reveal two kinds of verb-construction interactions. First, verbs in their preferred construction generate stronger simulation effects overall than those in their dispreferred construction. Second, verbs that entail change of possession generate strong motor-simulation effects irrespective of constructional context, while those entailing causation of motion exert such effects only when enriched up to change-of-possession verbs in the semantically mismatched Ditransitive context. We conclude that simulation effects are not isolable to either verbs or constructions but instead arise from the interplay of verb and construction meaning.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical and methodological background
    • 2.1The dative opposition, verb classes, and syntactic preference
    • 2.2Motor simulation effects and methodologies
  • 3.Predictions
  • 4.Methods
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Materials
    • 4.3Design and procedure
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Construction type significantly predicts motor simulation effects
    • 6.2Frequency-based concord significantly predicts motor simulation effects
    • 6.3Lexical-semantic concord significantly predicts motor simulation effects
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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