Dynamics of semantic processing:
The interpretation of bare quantifiers
Frank Wijnen
1*and Edith Kaan
2to appear in Language and Cognitive Processes
1Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS Utrecht University
Trans 10
3512 JK Utrecht, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] tel. +31 30 253 6436 fax +31 30 253 6000 *corresponding author 2Program in Linguistics University of Florida 4131 Turlington Hall ~ Box 114545 Gainesville, FL 32611-5454, USA e-mail: [email protected]
Dynamics of Semantic Processing: The Interpretation of Bare Quantifiers
Abstract
A bare cardinal, such as ‘four’ in the fragment Five ships sailed out. Four…,can be interpreted in at least three ways: (1) as four of the five ships mentioned (a ‘forward directional’ reading); (2) as four other ships (a parallel reading); or (3) as four different entities (a non-anaphoric reading). The first reading is preferred, although this prefer-ence can be influprefer-enced by various factors. In the present study, we investigated at which point during on-line processing bare cardinals are interpreted. Results from a comple-tion task, a difficulty rating task and an on-line incremental acceptability judgment task suggest that there is an immediate preference to interpret bare cardinals as forward di-rectional, leading to processing difficulty at the cardinal when it is not compatible with such an interpretation (as in Five ships sailed out. Six…). However when later informa-tion at the verb contradicts a forward direcinforma-tionality reading, revision into a parallel reading is almost effortless.
Acknowledgements
Portions of the results reported were presented earlier at the 14th Annual CUNY Con-ference on Human Language Processing, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (PA), 15-17 March 2001, and the workshops From Sentence Processing to Discourse Interpretation: Crossing the Borders (Utrecht University, July 3, 2001), and Syntax and Beyond (Max Planck Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Leipzig, 29-30 August 2003). EK was supported by McDonnell-Pew grant #2000-2044; FW by a fellowship of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). We thank Carolien van den Hazelkamp for her help in running Experiment 3.
Dynamics of Semantic Processing: The Interpretation of Bare Quantifiers
To date, the bulk of online studies of sentence processing have dealt with struc-ture building. Syntactic ambiguity has proven to be a useful window onto the time course of parsing and the nature of (initial) attachment decisions. In this study, we go beyond structure building proper, and investigate sentential semantic processing, which has thus far received only scarce attention. We are interested in the decisions underlying the on-line construction of a semantic representation and, particularly, the time course of processing. In analogy to what has been done in research on syntactic processing, we use ambiguity as a tool. Our experiments make use of the ambiguity inherent to bare quantifiers, i.e., noun phrases in which the nominal head is unexpressed, and the deter-miner consists of a cardinal.
Quantifiers, such as three, some, and every have a restrictor and a nuclear scope. In a sentence like (1a), the quantifier all has men as its restrictor, and laugh as its nu-clear scope. The sentence expresses the following proposition “For all x in the relevant domain, if it is true that x is a man, then x laughs.” In current semantic analyses, we often see the denotation of a structure like this expressed in the form of a so-called tri-partitestructure (1b, cf. Diesing, 1990).
1. a. All men laugh.
b. S
operator restrictor nuclear scope all(x) men(x) laugh(x)
In cases like example 1, each of the components of the semantic representation is identified in the surface structure of the sentence.The situation changes in a nontriv-ial way when parts of the quantificational (tripartite) structure are not overtly given, as with ‘five’ in example (2).
2. Ten protesting students marched by. Five were shouting insults.
A perceiver needs to infer the restrictor of a bare cardinal in order to understand the sentence. For most people, it is most natural to assume that the restrictor of five is the set of students that marched by. A moment’s reflection, however, helps in realizing that this is not the only permissable interpretation. The five unspecified entities could also be, for example, five other students who happened to disagree with those protesting. This ambiguity resembles the ambiguity that can arise from pronominal anaphora in particular contexts, such as in (3), where both ‘he’ and ‘him’ can refer to both John and Bill. In fact, we would argue that the bare cardinal construction is akin to such pro-nominal anaphors, as both appear to be interpreted by direct reference to a discourse model (cf. Hankamer & Sag, 1976).
3. John met Bill. He asked him a favor.
A difference between pronouns and bare quantifiers is that in the case of bare quantifiers as in (2), the anaphor denotes a subset from a set defined in the preceding context, rather than an individual entity. Another difference is that a pronominal is an
overt anaphor, while the anaphoric element in constructions such as (2) is not. It is a null nominal: “five [NP ∅]”. We can ask whether the (non)overtness of the nominal re-strictor (“five ∅” as opposed to “five students”) makes a difference in the interpreta-tional preference. Note that the same ambiguity arises both with overt and non-overt restrictors. Just as ‘five’ in example (2), ‘five students’ in (4) can either refer to five of the ten just mentioned, or five other students. Nonetheless, there appears to be a slight difference in preference, such that ‘five students’ is more easily interpreted as not be-longing to the set of ten protesters previously introduced, whereas ‘five ∅’ is preferably associated with this set. We will briefly return to this issue in the results section of Ex-periment 1.
4. Ten students marched by. Five students were shouting insults.
Two main questions arise with respect to the processing of quantifier restrictor ambiguity. First, why do people prefer to take the antecedent of ‘five’ in example (2) above to denote five elements out of the previously specified set, rather than five other students? An answer to a question like this should take the form of a model of compre-hension enumerating the factors (syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, etc.) that co-determine interpretation, and spelling out their interactions in a principled way.
The second question concerns the time course of processing. At what point dur-ing the processdur-ing of a structure like (2) does the processor assign an interpretation to the null anaphor? Two diametrically opposed hypotheses are conceivable. Either the processor defers interpretation until sufficient information has been perceived, in order to unerringly determine the intended meaning, or it attempts to fully process and
inter-pret the underspecified element as soon as it is presented. This opposition, as may be clear, is parallel to the opposition between determinism and non-determinism (incre-mentality) in structural parsing (Crocker, 1999; Mitchell, 1994), including the possibil-ity that backtracking and repairing (‘garden pathing’) occur under particular circum-stances in the case of the non-deterministic processor.
In this study we focus on the second issue (time course), assuming a model of quantifier interpretation along the lines proposed by Hendriks and De Hoop (2001). Their ‘optimality semantics’ is framed in the Optimality Theory framework, proposed by Prince and Smolensky (1997; 2004); for applications to syntax, see, e.g. Keller and Alexopoulou (2001). Optimality semantics is a constraint satisfaction model, modeling the assignment of interpretations to linguistic expressions from the listener’s point of view: the interpretation assigned to a given syntactic structure is the result of the appli-cation of a set of ranked constraints. These constraints are ‘soft’, that is, they can be violated in order to satisfy higher ranked constraints. The model proposed by Hendriks and De Hoop is especially geared to explaining the interpretation of underspecified lin-guistic expressions (ellipses, comparatives), which pose a challenge to strict composi-tionality. Below we will only discuss the constraints that are relevant for the interpreta-tion of quantifier restrictors (for more details, see Hendriks & de Hoop, 2001).
One general pragmatic constraint is Don’t Overlook Anaphoric Possibilities
(DOAP). It says that if a linguistic expression is ambiguous between anaphora and in-dependent reference, the anaphoric reading is preferred. For our set relation examples, this predicts that a restrictor should be found in the preceding discourse context. Frazier (1999 p. 113) also suggests that there is a strong preference for reconstructing a covert restrictor from context, which, she argues, “is related to conversational maxims and the
principle of relevance.”
DOAP can be satisfied in various ways. One is captured by the Forward direc-tionality constraint: “The topic range included by the domain of quantification of a de-terminer (set A) is reduced to the topic range induced by the intersection of the two ar-gument sets of this determiner.” (Hendriks & de Hoop, 2001 p. 19). For instance, in example (2), the forward-directional interpretation of ‘five’ is that its restrictor is ‘stu-dents that marched by’, and hence, that the new (nuclear scope) information is predi-cated of this set, rather than of, say, a general set of students. Forward directionality is a structural property of discourse, contributing to its informativeness (see Van Kuppevelt, 1996).
An anaphoric reading of an expression can also arise by means of Parallelism, a general constraint applying to various kinds of ellipsis and anaphora: “As an antecedent of an anaphoric expression, choose a (logically, structurally, thematically) parallel ele-ment from the preceding clause[s]” (Hendriks & de Hoop, 2001 p. 20). For instance, in sentence (2), the parallel interpretation would be one in which ‘students’, as the element structurally parallel to the zero noun phrase in the second sentence, is the restrictor of ‘five’. This results in a reading in which ‘Five’ refers to ‘five other students’. We no-ticed that parallelism in this particular case is not the preferred option – in constraint satisfaction terms: Forward Directionality outranks Parallelism.
Finally, there is the constraint Avoid contradiction. This constraint is ranked above all others, which means that other constraints can be violated in order to prevent a semantic contradiction. For instance, in (5), the weaker constraint Parallelism must win out over Forward Directionality, since otherwise a contradiction would arise (since twelve cannot be a subset of ten).
5. Ten protesting students marched by. Twelve were shouting insults.
The reverse condition, in which e.g. Forward Directionality is saved by violating Avoid Contradiction, does not occur. Example (6) can never be interpreted to mean that ‘three students did and did not attend the meeting’, as Forward Directionality would prescribe.
6. Four students attended the meeting. Three did not.
As pointed out above, the focus of this study is not the factors that determine in-terpretation, but the real time process that underlies it. As a working hypothesis, we assume that semantic processing shares a distinguishing feature with parsing, viz. that it makes immediate, defeasible commitments. This is what Frazier (1999) calls the strong immediacy principle for interpretation.
Processing studies of quantifiers
Direct empirical evidence on the time course of quantifier interpretation is scarce: Kurtzman & MacDonald (1993) and Villalta (2003) primarily deal with scope ambigui-ties in sentences with two quantifiers. Kurtzman & MacDonald tested sentences such as
Every kid climbed a tree and A kid climbed every tree, in which every can have wide or narrow scope. These sentences were followed by a continuation sentence that was com-patible with either the wide or narrow scope reading. Judgment data on these continua-tions indicate that various factors determine whether the quantifier was assigned narrow or wide scope. However since the data were based on end-of-sentence judgments, these
experiment do not yield much information concerning the dynamics of quantifier inter-pretation.
An interesting claim regarding the time course of quantifier interpretation is made by Villalta (2003). On the basis of research on scope ambiguities in how many
questions, Villalta proposes a model in which the semantic processor prefers to avoid reanalysis (an instantiation of economy), and hence, in the case of ambiguity, the first quantifier is not assigned a referent until the second is encountered. Self-paced reading time data are argued to be in line with this model.
In a different line of research, Sanford, Moxey & Paterson (1994) observed that quantifiers differ from each other with respect to which set they make salient. On the one hand, so-called ‘positive’ quantifiers make the reference set salient, i.e., the set de-noted by the quantified phrase. ‘Negative’ quantifiers, on the other hand, increase the salience of the complement of the reference set (i.e., the complement set). This has an immediate online effect, as demonstrated in eye-tracking experiments, suggesting that quantifiers are interpreted immediately, although other interpretations of these data can-not be excluded.
One study that is most closely related to the one reported here is Frazier, Clifton, Rayner, Deevy, Koh & Bader (2003). A series of experiments was conducted, using discourses like the one in (7), in various languages.
7. Five ships appeared at the horizon Three ships sank.
noun phrase in the second sentence refers to a subset of entities from the set introduced in the first sentence (a Forward Directionality reading, in our terminology). In addition, the off-line results suggest that this preference is modulated by the structural position of the quantified phrase, viz. inside or outside the verb phrase. Eye tracking experiments showed that the Forward Directionality preference emerges online, such that it modu-lates the processing time of a subsequent text segment that either is compatible or in-compatible with the preferred reading. However in this study, the crucial regions were not well-balanced across conditions. In addition, the critical quantifier could sometimes be compatible with both forward directionality and a parallel reading.
The present study
In the present study, we used discourses in which the crucial element is a bare cardinal, i.e., a number word without a following noun. The experimental paradigm is illustrated in (8).
8.
a. Forward Directional
It turned out that five ships did not survive the hurricane.
The coast guard reported this morning that four had capsized during the night in the towering waves.
b. Late Parallel
It turned out that five ships survived the hurricane.
The coast guard reported this morning that four had capsized during the night in the towering waves.
c. Early Parallel
It turned out that three ships survived the hurricane.
The coast guard reported this morning that four had capsized during the night in the towering waves.
In all three conditions, the second sentence contained a bare quantifier (four). In the Forward Directional condition (8a), this quantifier can plausibly refer to a set of entities mentioned in the first sentence ‘five ships’. In the Late Parallel condition (8b), the verb in the second sentence (capsized) is only compatible with the interpretation of ‘four’ as referring to a set of different ships, i.e., ships that were not among the ones that survived the hurricane. In the Early Parallel condition (8c), the number word used in the first sentence is smaller than in the second. The quantifier in the second sentence can therefore not refer back to the set mentioned earlier, but must refer to a set of other ships. If there indeed is a preference for a forward directional interpretation of bare quantifiers and if online interpretation is immediate and complete, one could expect the following pattern of results. First, in the Late parallel condition (8b), readers will imme-diately interpret ‘four’ as referring to the set of ships mentioned earlier, in accordance with Forward Directionality. Consequentially, they will experience difficulty at the verb downstream, ‘capsized’, which signals that the forward directional reading is incorrect and a parallel reading needs to be constructed. Second, in the Early Parallel condition (8c), forward directionality is counteracted right at the bare cardinal itself, and an im-mediate revision toward parallelism will ensue, leading to an increased difficulty at and immediately after the quantifier. The Forward Directionality condition (8a) serves as a control.
Three experiments (in Dutch) were conducted. The first was a sentence comple-tion study with the primary aim to verify whether materials like (8) in fact yield a for-ward directionality preference. To this end, participants were presented with two-sentence discourses like the one exemplified in (8), in which the second two-sentence was cut off after the quantifier in subject position (‘four’ in the example).
The second experiment was an offline difficulty rating study. Given a preference for forward directionality and the assumption of immediate full interpretation, it was expected that the critical sentence in items like (8b) and (8c) would be judged to be more difficult than items like (8a), because the b- and c-versions entail a revision of the initial interpretation.
Experiment three, finally, comprised a continuous acceptability judgment task. The critical sentences of discourses like (8) were presented in a phrase-by-phrase mov-ing window paradigm, and participants were asked to judge at each new segment whether the sentence up to that point was still interpretively acceptable. This task yields two dependent variables: rejection rates and decision times per segment. We expected that if a particular segment was incompatible with the preferred Forward Directionality interpretation participants would either reject it, or would spend more time processing on this or subsequent segments.
Experiment 1: sentence completion Participants
Twenty-four native speakers of Dutch (four men), all of them students at Utrecht Uni-versity, took part in the experiment. Their ages ranged from 18 to 36 years. All were naïve as to the purpose of the experiment.
Materials
Twenty-four 2-sentence texts in Dutch were constructed, each in three versions, as ex-emplified in (8). The crucial (bare) quantifier was the subject of a subordinate clause in the second sentence. We used subordination in order to create a distance spanning sev-eral words between the end of the first sentence and the crucial quantifier. This was done to prevent spill-over or wrap-up effects from impingingon the processing of the bare cardinal in the on-line study (Experiment 3).
The items that were used in the questionnaire study were presented only up to and including the bare cardinal in the second sentence. Inspecting example (8) above will make clear that this resulted in a materials set in which two thirds of the critical sentences had a bare cardinal smaller than the cardinality of the small restrictor defined by the introductory sentence. These items differed with regard to the verb phrase used in the introductory sentence (cf. 8a and 8b). In the remaining one third of the stimuli, the cardinal in the first sentence was smaller than the crucial one in the second sentence (cf. 8c). A list of the materials used in this and the next experiments can be found in the appendix.
The experimental items were distributed across three lists, such that only one version of every item was present on each list. The experimental items were inter-spersed with 48 filler items, all consisting of 2-sentence discourses, of which the second sentence contained anaphoric and non-anaphoric quantified expressions of various types, and which were also cut off directly after these quantifiers. The order of presenta-tion was determined by quasi-randomizapresenta-tion, with the restricpresenta-tion that no more than two experimental items were presented in direct succession. Each list had its own random
order.
Procedure
The lists were compiled into 10-page stapled booklets, with an instruction on the first page and 9 pages of items (8 items per page). The instruction stated that the participants were to complete the second sentence without much contemplation, in a way that they felt was most natural, and furthermore that they were required to go through the list in one run, without retracing or correcting previously completed sentences.
Results and discussion
The sentence completions were assigned to one of the following four categories: for-ward directional responses (ex. 9); parallel responses (ex. 10); non-anaphoric responses (ex. 11); ambiguous and null responses.
9. Bij een busongeluk in Spanje waren twintig mensen betrokken. De ANWB liet weten dat er tien // mensen omgekomen waren. (participant nr. 3)
‘Twenty people were involved in a bus accident in Spain. The tourist office re-ported that ten // people had died.
10. Uit de brief bleek dat drie leerlingen het examen hadden gehaald. De rector meldde daarbij dat er vier // leerlingen gezakt waren. (participant nr. 1)
‘The letter stated that three students passed the exam. The principal reported that four // had failed.’
11. In de halve finale van de Grand Prix haalden zeven coureurs de eindstreep niet. De talloze toeschouwers zagen hoe er drie // auto’s total loss waren na afloop.
(participant nr. 6)
‘Seven drivers did not make to the finish in the semi-finals of the Grand Prix. The innumerable spectators saw how three // cars were totaled at the end.’
Table 1 gives an overview of the results. The distribution of response types was affected by Condition, as indicated by a χ2 value of 129.91 (df = 4, p < 0.001) for the full 3 (condition) by 4 (response type) contingency table. Overall, parallel responses occurred most often (41.5%). This type of response was most often observed in the Early Parallel condition (8c). This was expected since the cardinal (quantifier) in the second sentence was larger than in the first. In the two conditions in which the first car-dinal was larger than the second, forward directional responses predominated (40.4%) although not as strongly as expected on the assumption that Forward Directionality is the default. In particular, condition (8b) yielded more parallel responses than condition (8a), despite the fact that in both conditions the first cardinal was larger than the second. Conversely, forward directional continuations were less numerous in condition (8b) (32.3%) than in condition (8a) (48.4%). The χ2 value for the 2 (conditions 8a, b) by 2 (parallel/forward directional response) contingency table is 19.8, which was significant at the .001 level.
(Insert TABLE 1 about here)
The items used here were constructed with the second experiment in mind. The Late and Early Parallel items (cf. 8b and 8c above) were designed to track the per-ceiver’s reaction to information contradicting the forward directional interpretation of
the bare quantifier. The Forward Directional items (8a), by contrast, while keeping the second sentence constant (for methodological reasons), were not intended to engender such a contradiction. As a result of these desiderata, the first sentences of the Forward Directional items contained a verb phrase that was different from that in the Late and Early Parallel items. The observed difference in percentages of parallel responses be-tween on the one hand Forward Directional items, and, on the other, Late and Early Parallel items might be ascribed to this difference. It is unclear, however, why the dif-ferent verb phrases yield these difdif-ferent response patterns. One factor might be the abil-ity of the verb phrase to evoke a contrast, and, hence, a set of contrasting entities. This might facilitate a parallel interpretation of the bare cardinal. However, our attempts to objectify this quality have not been successful.
In the Introduction, we briefly touched upon the difference between bare cardi-nal and full noun phrase anaphors with respect to quantifier interpretation. We therefore investigated the frequencies of full NP and bare cardinal continuations in our data. A total of 573 classifiable responses was collected (3 were ambiguous). In 278 of these (48.5%), no overt noun was supplied. In 104 cases (18.2%), the relevant noun given in the first sentence was repeated, and 191 responses (33.3%) contained a different (new) noun. We cross-classified these data against type of response (forward-directional, par-allel, and non-anaphoric). Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of responses classified as non-anaphoric contained new nouns (96.4%). Most pertinent to the overt/non-overt is-sue are the forward directional and parallel continuations. Table 2 supplies the frequen-cies of continuations with new nouns, repeated nouns and elided nouns. When a forward directional response was given, null nouns occurred 2.7 times as often as overt nouns (repeated and new). For the parallel responses the ratio was 1.4 (χ2 = 8.61, df = 2, p =
.013). Excluding the responses where new nouns were supplied, the distributional dif-ference between the forward directional and parallel responses was marginally signifi-cant (χ2 = 3.5, df = 1, p = .061). These data agree with the intuition that bare cardinals are more easily associated with a forward directional interpretation than full nominals.
(insert TABLE 2 about here)
Summarizing, the data from the completion study suggest that there is a prefer-ence for forward directional interpretation of bare cardinals, but that this preferprefer-ence is apparently easily modulated by other factors.
Experiment 2: difficulty rating
In order to see whether the interpretational preference attested in Experiment 1 also affected perceived difficulty, we conducted a difficulty rating using the full versions of the sentences.
Participants
Forty-three volunteers, drawn from the same population as in Experiment 1, took part in the experiment (age 18 to 44 years; 7 male). None of them had participated in Experi-ment 1.
Materials
Ex-periment 1, except that the continuation sentences were complete (see (8)). For each item, three versions were constructed. In the (a) version (Forward Directional), the bare cardinal in the subordinate subject position of the second sentence, as well as the predi-cate were compatible with a forward directional interpretation. In the (b) version (Late Parallel), the bare cardinal in the second sentence allowed a forward directional inter-pretation, but the predicate was incompatible with this, so that eventually a parallel in-terpretation of the bare quantifier was the only option. In the (c) version (Early Paral-lel), the cardinality of the second sentence cardinal disallowed forward directionality, and the predicate forced a parallel reading.
The experimental items were distributed across three lists, in such a way that each list contained all conditions, but only one version of each item was present on each list (Latin square). The experimental items were interspersed with 48 filler items, all of which contained anaphoric and non-anaphoric quantified expressions of various types. The order of presentation for all items was determined by quasi-randomization, with the restriction that no more than two experimental items were to be presented in direct suc-cession. Each list had its own order.
Procedure
The lists were assembled into 10-page stapled booklets, 8 items per page. The second sentence of an item was printed immediately below the first. Below each item, a scale was printed, containing five integers (1 through 5) separated by dashes. The Dutch word
makkelijk ‘easy’ appeared to the left of the leftmost digit (‘1’), and the word moeilijk
‘hard’ directly to the right of the rightmost digit (‘5’). The first page contained instruc-tions. Participants were asked to mark the subjective difficulty of each item by circling
one of the digits 1 though 5 on the scale directly below it, and not to look back at previ-ously marked items.
Results and Discussion
Forward directional items were rated to be easiest (2.06, sd = 0.91), followed by late parallel items (2.12, sd = 0.94), which in their turn were easier than early parallel items (2.27, sd = 0.99). The effect of condition was significant in a one-way repeated meas-ures ANOVA (F1(2,41) = 5.25, p = .009; F2(2,22) = 4.20, p = 0.028). A planned com-parison analysis indicated a linear trend in the data (F1(1,42) = 10.51, p = .002; F2(1,23) = 8.38, p = .008). Post hoc t-tests supported this: There was a significant difference be-tween the Early Parallel and Late Parallel conditions (t1(42) = -2.03, p = 0.048; t2(23) = -2.39, p = 0.026). The difference in difficulty between the Early Parallel and Forward Directional conditions was reliable as well (t1(42) = 3.24, p = 0.002; t2(23) = 2.89, p = 0.008). The difference between Late Parallel and Forward Directional conditions did not reach significance, however (t = 0.765 by participants; t = 0.312 by items).
These results confirm our expectations. Discourses that enforced a parallel read-ing of the bare cardinal, both early and late, were more difficult than discourses that were fully compatible with a forward directional interpretation. However, unexpectedly, the late parallel condition was easier than the early parallel condition. In order to further clarify these findings, we return to the results of Experiment 1. Recall that in Experi-ment 1 the (a) items, which correspond to the Forward Directional items in the present difficulty rating study, predominantly produced forward directional continuations. The low difficulty scores obtained for this condition thus match the completion data. The (b) items in the completion study (corresponding to the Late Parallel items in this
experi-ment), however, yielded a mixed pattern, in which parallel continuations were only slightly more frequent than forward directionality continuations. This may imply that in the present experiment, in which all Late Parallel items (by definition) enforced parallel interpretations, participants’ expectations were supported in some cases, but contra-dicted in others. If this is the case, the proportion of parallel continuations per item in Experiment 1 should be negatively correlated with the difficulty rating in Experiment 2. The correlation coefficient computed on the averaged difficulty ratings of the 24 Late Parallel items paired with the corresponding proportions of parallel continuation re-sponses was -.184. This, however, was not statistically reliable (p = .195, one-tailed).
For the (c) items in Experiment 1, which correspond to the Early Parallel items in the present experiment, parallel responses were most preferred, followed at short dis-tance by non-anaphoric responses. Keep in mind that the first sentence verb phrases in the Early Parallel items were identical to those in the Late Parallel items (see ex. 8 above). In Experiment 2 the Late Parallel items always resolved to a parallel set read-ing, which implies, again, that readers’ expectations most likely were confirmed for some items, but not for others. In the latter cases, interpretive re-analysis is expected to take place. As re-analysis is assumed to impact on difficulty rating, we predict that, over items, a preference for parallel continuations (as demonstrated in experiment 1) will be associated with a low difficulty rating in the Early Parallel condition. This is borne out by the data, as the correlation between proportion parallel completion responses (Exp. 1) and difficulty rating (Exp. 2) was -.466 (p = .011, one-tailed).
In conclusion, the results of Experiments 1 and 2 together appear to be compati-ble with the hypothesis that readers immediately assign an interpretation to the bare cardinal. The difference in rated difficulty between Early Parallel and Late Parallel
con-ditions can be accommodated by taking the completion results into account, which indi-cate variation in continuation preferences, implying differences in the propensity to re-analyze at the verb in the late parallel condition. Obviously, all of the above rests on the assumption that difficulty ratings reflect processing effort. To get a more direct view of what may actually happen in processing the construction we are interested in, we con-ducted Experiment 3.
Experiment 3: Continuous Acceptability Judgment
This experiment was designed to provide a direct test of the hypothesis that semantic processing is incremental and immediate (like syntactic parsing), which has the follow-ing implications:
1. The reader, upon recognizing a null anaphor, as cued by a bare cardinal, imme-diately infers the set of entities denoted.
2. When the selected interpretation turns out to be in conflict with other informa-tion in the sentence, an immediate revision will ensue, reflected by measures of processing effort.
In Experiment 3, as in the preceding one, we used materials in which the inferred inter-pretation of the null nominal could be contradicted at two points in the critical sentence: either by the bare cardinal, or by the verb later in the sentence. In order to have some certainty that processing difficulty (due to semantic infelicity) would be detected at the point where it arises, we used a continuous, segment-by-segment acceptability judgment task. This task was profitably used in other studies of the processing of semantic infor-mation, including anomalies, and notably also with materials containing null anaphors
(Mauner, Tanenhaus, & Carlson, 1995; Tanenhaus, Boland, Mauner, & Carlson, 1993).
Method Participants
Sixty paid volunteers, drawn from the same subject pool as the previous experiments, took part (18-28 years of age, 45 women). None of them had participated in experi-ments 1 or 2.
Materials
The set of 24 two-sentence items used in Experiment 2 was slightly revised, in order to remove some infelicities, and to make sure that the linear positions of critical words were identical across items. For each item, four versions were constructed, illustrated in (12) below. Version (a) instantiated the baseline Forward Directional condition. Version (b) represented the Late Parallel condition, and Version (c) the Early Parallel condition. Condition (d) was new in this experiment. It is anomalous in the sense that the cardinal in the second sentence disallows forward-directionality, whereas the verb phrase is in-compatible with a parallel reading. This condition served as a control to see whether the continuous acceptability judgment task was indeed sensitive enough to pick up differ-ences in response to semantic anomalies.
12. (slashes indicate segment boundaries) (a) Forward directional
Een legerarts heeft vijf jongens gekeurd voor militaire dienst. ‘an army doctor has five boys screened for military service’
An army doctor screened five boys for military service
Uit het dossier / bleek / dat er / drie / bij het onderzoek / waren afgekeurd / wegens / een slechte rug.
‘From the file / appeared / that there / three / in the examination / were rejected / due to / a bad back’
According to the file three were declared unfit after the examination on account of a bad back.
(b) Late Parallel
Een legerarts heeft vijf jongens goedgekeurd voor militaire dienst.
An army doctor declared five boys fit for military service.
Uit het dossier / bleek / dat er / drie / bij het onderzoek / waren afgekeurd / wegens / een slechte rug.
(c) Early Parallel
Een legerarts heeft twee jongens goedgekeurd voor militaire dienst.
An army doctor declared two boys fit for military service
Uit het dossier / bleek / dat er / drie / bij het onderzoek / waren afgekeurd / wegens / een slechte rug.
(d) Anomalous
Een legerarts heeft twee jongens gekeurd voor militaire dienst.
An army doctor screened two boys for military service
Uit het dossier / bleek / dat er / drie / bij het onderzoek / waren afgekeurd / wegens / een slechte rug.
in Experiment 2, except for twelve items that were changed in order to obtain clear infe-licities. An example is given in (13), in which the word ‘valken’ (falcons) has no con-nection to the preceding context, which yields an incoherent discourse.
13. Zeker tien uilenpaartjes leefden in het toegankelijke deel van het natuurgebied.
At least ten owl pairs lived in the accessible part of the nature reserve.
Volgens de opzichter hadden de meeste valken geen enkele vrees voor mensen.
According to the ranger, most falcons were not afraid of humans.
Four lists were constructed, in such a way that all conditions were present in each list, but only one version of each experimental item was included (Latin Square). Lists were presented in random order, different for each participant.
Procedure
Participants were seated in front of a computer monitor in a dimly lit, sound-attenuating room. Stimulus presentation and data acquisition were controlled by in-house software (FEP ‘Flexible Experiment Program’1) running on a Silicon Graphics UNIX work-station. Each trial started with a blank screen, on which appeared a small gray window containing the text ‘DRUK OP EEN KNOP OM VERDER TE GAAN’ (push a button to proceed). Upon pressing a button on a button box, the screen was refreshed, showing a black window slightly above the vertical midpoint of the screen, with a fixed height of 2 cm, and a variable width, dependent on the length of the introductory sentence of the item. This sentence was presented at once in full. At the next button press, the window was erased, and replaced by a new window at a slightly lower position, with a fixed
height and a width corresponding to the length of the second, critical sentence. This sentence was presented segment by segment, in non-incremental moving-window mode. Participants were instructed to press the right-hand button on the box if they thought the segment was a plausible continuation of the preceding context (button was labeled GOED ‘correct’), or the left-hand button if the segment was an implausible continuation (FOUT, ‘incorrect’). Presentation of a new segment (and erasing the previous one) oc-curred upon each press on the GOED button, until the end of the sentence was reached. Presentation of the critical sentence was interrupted, and the trial ended, however, when the participant pressed the FOUT button. The intervals between each two subsequent button presses during presentation of the critical sentences were measured and stored for later analysis. After a trial ended, the screen was erased, and the window with the text push a button to proceed reappeared.
Participants were instructed to read at a pace that allowed them to understand and judge the content of the sentences. It was stressed that in judging they should rely on their first impression, and not unnecessarily delay their response. They were allowed to take breaks between trials. Completion of the experiment took about 25 minutes.
Results
Two sets of MANOVAs were performed, one on cumulative rejection rates per seg-ment, the second on reading times for segments judged acceptable. In both analyses a 2*2 within-subject (and within-item) design was applied, with factors ‘cardinal’ (For-ward Directional vs. non-For(For-ward Directional) and ‘verb’ (For(For-ward directional com-patible (13a and 13d) vs. Forward Directional incomcom-patible verb phrase (13b and 13c). Responses with latencies of 150 ms or less were considered as missing data.
Rejection rates
Figure 1 presents the cumulative percentages of rejections for the critical (second) sen-tences, per segment for each condition. Up to and including Segment 3 the conditions did not diverge, and correspondingly, MANOVAs on these data did not show any sig-nificant effects.
(Insert FIGURE 1 about here) (Insert TABLE 3 about here)
Starting with segment 4 (the bare cardinal), and continuing until the end of the critical sentence, the Early Parallel (c) and Anomalous (d) conditions, which contain non-forward-directional cardinals, yielded higher rejection rates than the Forward-directional (a) and Late Parallel (b) conditions. This was backed by a significant effect of the factor Cardinal, both by subjects and by items, in segments 4 through 8, as sum-marized in Table 3. It may be unexpected to see the rejection rates go up right at the bare cardinal itself, since, in principle, this cardinal could be followed by an overt non-anaphoric restrictor. It is possible that our participants learned to expect the cardinals to have a null complement, as a result of which they did not defer their judgment until the next segment.
The Forward Directional/non-Forward Directional-contrast in the verb phrase (the Forward Directional (a) and Early Parallel (c) conditions versus the Late Parallel (b) and Anomalous (d) conditions) produced a significant result in the by-participants (F1) analysis of segment 4, i.e. before the verb was processed. At this segment, slightly
higher rejection rates were observed in cases where the verb was compatible with a for-ward-directional reading than in cases where it was not (23.1% vs. 19.7%). There is no obvious explanation for this finding, other than that it might be related to the difference between the conditions with regard to the introductory sentence.
The crucial verb was presented in segment 6, and analyses yielded significant main effects in this and the subsequent segment (and somewhat of a trend in the by-participants [F1] analysis of segment 8; see Table 3). For segment 6, the average cumu-lative rejection rate for forward-directional verbs was higher than for non-forward di-rectional verbs (50.1% vs. 42.7%). This must be ascribed largely to the difference be-tween the Early Parallel (c) and Anomalous conditions (d), in which the cardinal in the second sentence was larger than in the first. Figure 1 shows that rejection rates in-creased in the Anomalous condition (d, forward directional verb) relative to the Early Parallel condition (c [non-forward directional verb] 67.7% vs. 51.3%), whereas in the Forward Directional (a) and Late Parallel (b) conditions, the difference at the verb was negligible (32.5% in condition a [forward directional verb]; 34.2% in condition b [non-forward directional verb]). As shown in Table 3, the resulting interaction was statisti-cally reliable, not only in segment 6, but also in segments 7 and 8.
This finding suggests that a verb contradicting forward-directionality, following a bare cardinal that is compatible with it (i.e., Late Parallel), is no less acceptable than a verb that supports forward-directionality. Only in the very last segment of the critical sentence (segment 8), the Late Parallel (b) condition yielded a higher rejection rate than the fully Forward Directional condition (a). This difference was significant in a post-hoc test (by participants: t = -2.85, df = 59, p = .003 (one-tailed); by items: t = -1.77, df = 23, p = .045 [one-tailed]).
Reading times
With respect to the effect of the cardinal, the reading time data replicated the pattern of the rejection rates. As depicted in Figure 2, the average processing time (for ‘accept’ responses only) at the cardinal (segment 4) in the Early Parallel (c) and Anomalous (d) conditions taken together was about 123ms longer than in the Forward Directional (a) and Late Parallel (b) conditions (985ms vs. 862ms). A similar difference was found at the next segment (1252ms vs. 1134ms). These differences were statistically robust (see Table 4). In segment 6, a numerical difference in the same direction as that in segments 4 and 5 was still present (1417ms vs. 1338ms), but this was no longer statistically reli-able.
No main effects of the factor Verb or interactions were significant at or after the presentation of the verb (segment 6). On the basis of our hypothesis, we expected that at segment 6 and later segments, the average reading times in the Late parallel condition (non-forward directional verbs following forward-directional cardinals) would be longer than in the Forward Directional condition (directional verbs following forward-directional cardinals). And indeed, there was a 100ms difference in the predicted direc-tion. A t-test comparing the Forward Directional and Late Parallel conditions at segment 6 (the critical verb) yielded a (marginally) significant result (by participants: t = -1.893, df = 54, p = .032 [one-tailed]; by items: t = -1.51, df = 23, p = .073 [one-tailed]). Furthermore, the Anomalous condition (d) was predicted to show a prolonged process-ing time of the verb, compared to the Early Parallel condition (c). The data showed a 162ms difference in the predicted direction. However, this difference between the Early Parallel and Anomalous conditions (c and d) did not reach significance in a t-test.
(Insert FIGURE 2 about here ) (Insert TABLE 4 about here )
Discussion
The question we aimed to answer in the present experiment was whether readers make immediate interpretive commitments, and, if so, whether they would revise the constructed interpretation when confronted with information that was incompatible with it. First of all, the results of Experiment 3 corroborate the previous finding that if the bare cardinal disallows forward directionality, readers experience processing difficulty. Secondly, the data indicate that this difficulty emerges immediately upon encountering the critical element. Rejection rates increased from the cardinal onward, and if a non-forward directional cardinal was accepted, processing times were significantly longer than in cases where the cardinal allowed forward-directionality. We take these data to support our hypothesis that semantic commitments are made immediately.
What happens if a semantic commitment is contradicted by a verb that forces a parallel interpretation? Note, first, that our task does pick up on interpretive difficulty brought about by information contained in the verb. The Anomalous condition com-prised a cardinal disallowing forward directionality, followed by a verb indicating that the denoted set is to be taken from the set defined in the first sentence after all. The re-jection rates showed a clear increase starting at the verb in this condition. In the Late Parallel condition, in which the cardinal allowed a forward directional interpretation but the downstream verb enforced a parallel interpretation, reading times at the verb tended to be longer than those in the Forward Directional condition. However, the rejection
rates did not increase in a reliable measure. This constitutes some initial support for our hypothesis that the semantic processor performs an on-line reanalysis when forced to by material incompatible with the interpretation created thus far.
The overall pattern in the Late Parallel condition – a weak reading time effect and a belated (end-of-sentence) rejection effect – suggests that readers may entertain different processing strategies, or that different items may invoke different strategies across readers. Conceivably, two courses of action may occur at the verb when it is in-compatible with forward directionality. In some cases, an immediate revision occurs of the interpretation constructed thus far. This is reflected by an increase in reading time in comparison to a fully forward-directional condition. In other cases, assigning an inter-pretation is deferred, which is not altogether unreasonable, as the sentence might unfold in a way that honors forward directionality in the end, cf. ex. (14), in which the verb ‘afgekeurd’ at first sight appears to rule out the forward directional interpretation of ‘drie’, but in fact does not.2
14. Vijf jongens waren goedgekeurd voor militaire dienst.
Five boys had been declared fit for military service.
Volgens het rapport waren er drie afgekeurd voor taken aan het front.
According to the report, three had been rejected for (excepted from) front duties.
In our Late Parallel items, however, no such favorable development occurred. This, then, yielded an increase of rejection responses at the sentence final segment as compared to the Forward Directional condition. We checked whether those participants and items for which the rejection rate at the final segment (segment number 8) in the
Late Parallel condition was higher than in the Forward Directional conditions, did not
have longer reading times in Late Parallel as compared to the Forward Directional con-ditions at segment 6 (the critical verb). One observation is in line with our reasoning. We found a significant negative correlation between, on the one hand, the difference in rejection rate between the Late Parallel and Forward Directional conditions at segment 8 and, on the other, the difference in processing time between these two conditions at segment 6, over items (r = -0.36, p = .05, one-tailed). This can be interpreted to mean that Late Parallel items that did not immediately force the readers to change the For-ward Directional interpretation of the null anaphor at the verb (as would have been indi-cated by a reading time difference), were more likely to be rejected at the end of the sentence.
General Discussion
The main aim of this study was to determine when readers commit themselves to an interpretation of a bare quantifier, i.e., a cardinal associated with a non-overt restrictor, such as ‘five ∅’. We explored the hypothesis that the processor builds an interpretive structure incrementally, selecting fully specified representations for each element of a sentence in succession (cf.Frazier, 1999). An implication of this model is that the inter-pretive processor, like an incremental parser, can be ‘garden-pathed’, and may occa-sionally backtrack and revise interpretations made earlier.
Results from the present experiments support this hypothesis: when the dis-course continued in a way that violated the preferred constraint of Forward Directional-ity, an increase was seen in perceived difficulty (Experiment 2), and on-line rejection
rates and decision times (Experiment 3). These effects were modulated by the point of disambiguation: a strong effect is seen when the cardinal in the second sentence is not compatible with a Forward Directional interpretation (Early Parallel conditions). How-ever, the effect was much weaker when only the verb in the second sentence contra-dicted a Forward Directional interpretation (Late Parallel conditions). This suggests that when the cardinal allows both a Forward Directional and a Parallel reading, the time course and strength of the commitment to a particular reading may be influenced by factors such as the nature of the information in the preceding sentence (Experiment 2), or the likelihood of upcoming information that more strongly supports one reading over another (see Example 14). Further experimentation is needed to more exactly determine what structural and semantic factors affect the forward directionality preference, seman-tic commitments, and the resolution of a semanseman-tic garden path effect.
Notes
(1)
See www.let.uu.nl/~Theo.Veenker/personal/projects/fep/doc/fepdoc.html.
(2)
The two possible strategies proposed here might also be related to whether participants discovered that cardinals were not followed by nouns.
References
Crocker, M. (1999). Mechanisms for sentence processing. In S. Garrod & M. Pickering (Eds.), Language processing. Hove: Psychology Press.
Diesing, M. (1990). The syntactic roots of semantic partition. Unpublished PhD, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.
Frazier, L. (1999). On sentence interpretation. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Frazier, L., Clifton, C., Rayner, K., Deevy, P., Koh, S., & Bader, M. (2003). Interface problems: Structural constraints on interpretation. Amherst, MA.
Hankamer, J., & Sag, I. (1976). Deep and surface anaphora. Linguistic Inquiry, 7, 391-426.
Hendriks, P., & de Hoop, H. (2001). Optimality theoretic semantics. Linguistics and Philosophy, 24, 1-32.
Keller, F., & Alexopoulou, T. (2001). Phonology competes with syntax: experi-mental evidence for the interaction of word order and accent placement in the realiza-tion of informarealiza-tion structure. Cognirealiza-tion, 79, 301-372.
Kurtzman, H. S., & MacDonald, M. C. (1993). Resolution of quantifier scope ambiguities. Cognition, 48, 243-279.
Mauner, G., Tanenhaus, M. K., & Carlson, G. N. (1995). Implicit arguments in sentence processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 357-382.
Mitchell, D. C. (1994). Sentence parsing. In M. A. Gernsbacher (Ed.), Handbook of Psycholinguistics (pp. 375-409). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Prince, A., & Smolensky, P. (1997). Optimality: From neural networks to uni-versal grammar. Science, 275, 1604-1610.
Prince, A., & Smolensky, P. (2004). Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sanford, A. J., Moxey, L. M., & Paterson, K. (1994). Psychological studies of quantifiers. Journal of Semantics, 10, 153-170.
Tanenhaus, M. K., Boland, J., Mauner, G., & Carlson, G. N. (1993). More on combinatory lexical information: Thematic structure in parsing and interpretation. In G. Altmann & R. Shillcock (Eds.), Cognitive models of speech processing. The second Sperlonga meeting. Hove: Erlbaum.
Van Kuppevelt, J. (1996). Directionality in discourse: Prominence differences in subordination relations. Journal of Semantics, 13, 363-395.
Villalta, E. (2003). The role of context in the resolution of quantifier scope am-biguities. Journal of Semantics, 20, 115-162.
TABLE 1
Sentence completion responses (absolute numbers; percentage in parentheses) as a function of condition (cf. Example 8 ). In square brackets: percentages of the total number of non-ambiguous responses.
Response Condition Total
(a) Forward Directional Five…Four (b) Late Parallel Five…Four (c) Early Parallel Three…Four Ambiguous 12 (6.3%) 19 (9.9%) 11 (5.7%) 42 (7.3%) Parallel 42 (21.9%) [23.3%] 84 (43.8%) [48.6%] 113 (58.9%) [62.4%] 239 (41.5%) Forward-Directional 93 (48.4%) [51.7%] 62 (32.3%) [35.8%] 3 (1.6%) [1.7%] 158 (27.4%) Non-anaphoric. 45 (23.4%) [25%] 27 (14.1%) [15.6%] 65 (33.9%) [35.9%] 137 (23.8%) Total 192 (100%) [100%] 192 (100%) [100%] 192 (100%) [100%] 576 (100%)
TABLE 2
Sentence completion responses, classified on the basis of the nominal element following the cardinal (elided noun, repeated noun, or different noun), as a function of type of response (forward directional or parallel).
elided noun repeated noun different noun total
forward directional responses 115 (72.8%) 31 (19.6%) 12 (7.6%) 158 (100%) parallel responses 141 (59.2%) 61 (25.6%) 36 (15.1%) 238 (100%) total 256 (64.6%) 92 (23.2%) 48 (12.1%) 396 (100%)
TABLE 3
Continuous acceptability judgment: Overview of results of the repeated measures ANOVA’s for the cumulative rejection rate data.
By subjects analysis (F1)
Cardinal Verb Interaction
F df p F df p F df p segment 4 22.19 1,59 < .001 4.19 1,59 0.045 0.008 1,59 NS segment 5 71.37 1,59 < .001 0.674 1,59 NS 0.127 1,59 NS segment 6 70.5 1,59 < .001 6.75 1,59 0.012 18.98 1,59 < .001 segment 7 67.32 1,59 < .001 7.49 1,59 0.008 24.07 1,59 < .001 segment 8 59.77 1,59 < .001 3.07 1,59 0.085 46.53 1,59 < .001 By items analysis (F2)
Cardinal Verb Interaction
F df p F df p F df p segment 4 36.34 1,23 < .001 2.37 1,23 0.137 0.011 1,23 NS segment 5 52.61 1,23 < .001 0.856 1,23 NS 0 1,23 NS segment 6 45.14 1,23 < .001 4.23 1,23 0.051 7.91 1,23 0.01 segment 7 39.11 1,23 < .001 4.51 1,23 0.045 10.46 1,23 0.004 segment 8 41.09 1,23 < .001 2.14 1,23 0.157 21.34 1,23 < .001
Note: Segment 4: bare cardinal; Segment 5: adverbial phrase; Segment 6: verb; Segment 7: verb+1; Segment 8: end of sentence.
TABLE 4
Continuous acceptability judgment: Overview of results of the repeated measures ANOVA’s for the reading/decision times.
By subjects analysis (F1)
Cardinal Verb Interaction
F df p F df p F df p segment 4 10.81 1,53 0.002 1.19 1,53 0.279 0.551 1,53 NS. segment 5 4.72 1,52 0.034 0.003 1,52 NS. 2.09 1,52 0.155 segment 6 1.004 1,41 NS 0.134 1,41 NS 1.89 1,41 0.177 segment 7 3.22 1,39 0.08 0.454 1,39 . NS 0.004 1,39 . NS segment 8 0.025 1,31 NS. 3.65 1,31 0.065 0.412 1,31 NS. By items analysis (F2)
Cardinal Verb Interaction
F df p F df p F df p segment 4 6.65 1,23 0.017 1.09 1,23 0.308 0.044 1,23 NS segment 5 8.45 1,23 0.008 0.35 1,23 NS 0.93 1,23 NS segment 6 0.073 1,23 NS 0.38 1,23 NS 1.3 1,23 0.265 segment 7 4.73 1,23 0.04 0.42 1,23 NS 0.35 1,23 NS segment 8 1.62 1,21 0.218 0.007 1,21 NS 0.228 1,21 NS
Note. The degrees of freedom decrease over segments because the number of ‘reject’ responses, which are not included in the analyses, increases (see Figure 1).
FIGURE CAPTIONS
Figure 1
Continuous acceptability judgment task: averaged cumulative rejection rates (percentages) per segment per condition. (a) Forward Directional: cardinal is Forward Directional, verb is Forward Directional; (b) Late Parallel: cardinal is Forward Directional, verb is non-Forward Directional; (c) Early Parallel: cardinal is non-Forward Directional, verb is non-Forward Directional; (d)
Anomalous: cardinal is non-Forward Directional, verb is Forward Directional. The example sentence indicating segmentation corresponds to example 13.
Figure 2
Continuous acceptability judgment task: averaged reading times (ms) per segment per
condition, positive responses only. (a) Forward Directional: cardinal is Forward Directional, verb is Forward Directional; (b) Late Parallel: cardinal is Forward Directional, verb is non-Forward Directional; (c) Early Parallel: cardinal is non-Forward Directional, verb is non-Forward Directional; (d) Anomalous: cardinal is non- Forward Directional, verb is Forward Directional. The example sentence indicating segmentation corresponds to example 13.
FIGURE 1
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Uit het dossierbleek dat er drie bij het
onderzoek
waren afgekeurd
wegens een slechte rug
% cu
mu
la
ti
ve r
e
ject
io
n
a
b
c
d
FIGURE 2
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
1600
Uit het dossierbleek dat er drie bij het
onderzoek
waren afgekeurd
wegens een slechte
rug
re
a
d
in
g
tim
e
(m
s
)
a
b
c
d
APPENDIX 1
Materials used in experiments 1 (sentence completion) & 2 (difficulty rating).
Slashes indicate where the critical sentences have been cut off for the completion experiment. 1
a. Vijf schepen bleken de orkaan niet te hebben doorstaan. Five ships appeared to have not survived the hurricane b. Vijf schepen bleken de orkaan te hebben doorstaan. Five ships appeared to have survived the hurricane c. Drie schepen bleken de orkaan te hebben doorstaan. Three ships appeared to have survived the hurricane
De kustwacht meldde vanochtend dat er vier / gedurende de nacht waren vergaan in de torenhoge golven. The coast guard reported this morning that four had been wrecked during the night in the towering waves. 2
a. Een legerarts heeft vijf jongens gekeurd voor militaire dienst. An army doctor has examined five boys for military service.
b. Een legerarts heeft vijf jongens goedgekeurd voor militaire dienst. An army doctor has declared five boys fit for military service. c. Een legerarts heeft twee jongens goedgekeurd voor militaire dienst. An army doctor has declared five boys fit for military service.
Uit het dossier bleek dat er drie / bij het onderzoek waren afgekeurd wegens een slechte rug. From the file it appeared that three were declared unfit after the exam on account of a bad back. 3
a. In de amateurcompetitie zouden gisteren tien wedstrijden gespeeld worden. In the amateur competition ten matches would have been played yesterday. b. In de amateurcompetitie zijn gisteren tien wedstrijden gespeeld.
In the amateur competition ten matches were played yesterday. c. In de amateurcompetitie zijn gisteren drie wedstrijden gespeeld. In the amateur competition three matches were played yesterday.
In de krant stond dat er zes / door de thuisclub werden afgelast wegens een onbespeelbaar veld. The newspaper reported that six had been cancelled by the hosting team due to an unplayable field. 4
a. Na de brand in de varkensstal waren veertig biggen nog in leven. After the fire in the pigsty forty piglets were still alive.
b. Na de brand in de varkensstal waren veertig biggen dood. After the fire in the pigsty forty piglets were dead.
c. Na de brand in de varkensstal waren twaalf biggen dood. After the fire in the pigsty twelve piglets were dead.
Later hoorden de buurtbewoners dat er twintig / door de oude boer gered waren uit de vlammenzee. Later the neighbours heard that twenty had been saved from the flames by the old farmer.
5
a. Van de vragenlijst werden slechts acht vragen onbeantwoord gelaten. Of the questionnaire only eight questions were left unanswered. b. Van de vragenlijst werden slechts acht vragen beantwoord. Of the questionnaire only eight questions were completed. c. Van de vragenlijst werden slechts drie vragen beantwoord. Of the questionnaire only three questions were completed.
De enquêteur stelde vast dat er vier / door de ondervraagden waren overgeslagen wegens tijdgebrek. The interviewer established that four had been skipped by the respondents due to lack of time.
6
a. Bij een kettingbotsing op de A4 raakten zes auto’s betrokken. In a multiple collision on the A4 six cars were involved. b. Bij een kettingbotsing op de A4 raakten zes auto’s total loss. In a multiple collision on the A4 six cars were totaled.
c. Bij een kettingbotsing op de A4 raakten drie auto’s total loss. In a multiple collision on the A4 three cars were totaled.
In de krant stond dat er vier / in de grote ravage onbeschadigd waren gebleven op een enkele kras na. The newpaper reported that four remained undamaged in the enormous havoc, except for a few scratches. 7
a. Tien bewoners van onze flat zijn geen vrijgezel meer. Ten inhabitants of our condo are not single anymore. b. Tien bewoners van onze flat zijn vrijgezel. Ten inhabitants of our condo are single. c. Vijf bewoners van onze flat zijn vrijgezel. Five inhabitants of our condo are single.
De buurvrouw beneden vertelde dat er zes / sinds jaar en dag samenleven met hun eerste vriend of vriendin. The neighbour lady downstairs told that six have lived together for a long time with their first boyfriend or girlfriend.
8
a. Tijdens de slotzitting van het proces werden zes verdachten veroordeeld. In the closing session of the trial six suspects were convicted.
b. Tijdens de slotzitting van het proces werden zes verdachten vrijgesproken. In the closing session of the trial six suspects were acquitted.
c. Tijdens de slotzitting van het proces werden twee verdachten vrijgesproken. In the closing session of the trial two suspects were acquitted.
Op de radio hoorden we dat vier / tegen de verwachting in levenslang kregen opgelegd door de rechter. We heard on the radio that four, against expectation, were given life sentence by the judge.
9
a. In de halve finale van de grandprix haalden zeven coureurs de eindstreep niet. In the semifinals of the grand prix seven drivers did not make it to the finish. b. In de halve finale van de grandprix haalden zeven coureurs de eindstreep. In the semifinals of the grand prix seven drivers made it to the finish. c. In de halve finale van de grandprix haalden twee coureurs de eindstreep. In the semifinals of the grandprix two drivers made it to the finish.
De talloze toeschouwers zagen hoe er drie / in de laatste ronde uitvielen door een foute inhaalmanoeuvre. The innumerable spectators witnessed how three dropped out due to a faulty overtaking manoeuvre. 10
a. Na de reorganisatie van de divisie zouden twaalf werknemers hun baan kwijtraken. After the reorganisation of the division twelve employees would lose their jobs. b. Na de reorganisatie van de divisie konden twaalf werknemers hun baan behouden. After the reorganisation of the division twelve employees could keep their jobs. c. Na de reorganisatie van de divisie konden zes werknemers hun baan behouden. After the reorganisation of the division six employees could keep their jobs.
In de nieuwsbrief stond dat er acht / door de directie werden ontslagen met ingang van het volgende jaar. The newsletter reported that eight would be laid off by the management as of next year.
11
It appeared from the letter that twenty students had failed the exam. a. Uit de brief bleek dat twintig leerlingen het examen hadden gehaald. It appeared from the letter that twenty students had passed the exam. c. Uit de brief bleek dat drie leerlingen het examen hadden gehaald. It appeared from the letter that three students had passed the exam.
De rector meldde daarbij dat er vier / tot zijn verbazing waren gezakt op het onderdeel wiskunde. The provost noted that four to his amazement had failed the mathematics section.
12
a. Bij de ramp met de veerboot konden dertig opvarenden niet meer worden gered. After the disaster with the ferry thirty passengers could not be saved.
b. Bij de ramp met de veerboot konden dertig opvarenden worden gered. After the disaster with the ferry thirty passengers could be saved. c. Bij de ramp met de veerboot konden negen opvarenden worden gered. After the disaster with the ferry nine passengers could be saved.
De kustwacht maakte bekend dat er twaalf / in het koude water verdronken waren doordat slecht weer de reddingswerkers ophield.
The coast guard announced that twelve drowned in the cold water because bad weather had delayed the rescue team.
13
a. De huisbaas laat binnenkort vijf deuren opnieuw schilderen. The landlord will have five doors painted over shortly. b. De huisbaas laat binnenkort vijf deuren groen schilderen. The landlord will have five doors painted green shortly. c. De huisbaas laat binnenkort twee deuren groen schilderen. The landlord will have two doors painted green shortly.
Hij zei ons ook dat er drie / door de ingehuurde schilders rood geverfd gaan worden om wat variatie aan te brengen.
He mentioned to us that three will be painted red by the contracted painters to have some variation. 14
a. Bij een opstootje in het centrum waren zes jongeren slaags geraakt. In a riot in the city center six youngsters had come to blows.
b. Bij een opstootje in het centrum raakten zes jongeren flink gewond. In a riot in the city center six youngsters got seriously injured. c. Bij een opstootje in het centrum raakten twee jongeren flink gewond. In a riot in the city center two youngsters got seriously injured.
De uitgerukte agenten zeiden dat er vier / in het hevige gevecht ongedeerd waren gebleven op een blauw oog na. The policemen on duty said that four had stayed uninjured in the fierce fight, except for an odd black eye. 15
a. Voor de positie van eindredacteur werden vijf nieuwe kandidaten geïnterviewd. For the position of editor-in-chief five new candidates were interviewed.
b. Voor de positie van eindredacteur werden vijf mannelijke kandidaten geïnterviewd. For the position of editor-in-chief five male candidates were interviewed.
c. Voor de positie van eindredacteur werden twee mannelijke kandidaten geïnterviewd. For the position of editor-in-chief two male candidates were interviewed.
Volgens het hoofd Personeelszaken zaten er drie / blijkens hun C.V. vakbekwame vrouwen bij de sollicitanten. According to the head of the personnel department, three skilled women, as judged from their CVs, were among the applicants.
16