Papers by Dorota Klimek-Jankowska
Journal of Slavic linguistics, 2022
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory
This study contributes to a longstanding discussion on the status of aspectual morphology and the... more This study contributes to a longstanding discussion on the status of aspectual morphology and the aspectual architecture in Slavic by investigating aspectual properties of perfective and imperfective VP idioms in Polish. The investigation reveals that only lexical prefixes which can result in idiosyncratic meanings are part of basic perfective VP idioms. Building on the idea that little v is a demarcation line for idiomatic meanings, it is concluded that lexical prefixes are vP-internal. It is also shown that basic imperfective VP idioms are compatible with some superlexical prefixes and basic perfective VP idioms are compatible with secondary imperfective morphology, which suggests that such morphology is vP-external. Further semantic analysis of the interaction of basic imperfective VP idioms with different classes of superlexical prefixes shows that the compatible ones measure over some scale associated with vP-external material or the temporal trace of an (idiomatic) event. In c...
Imperfective aspect underspecified for number: Evidence from an eye-tracking during reading experiment
Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics
In an eye-tracking during reading experiment we investigated the processing of ambiguous Polish i... more In an eye-tracking during reading experiment we investigated the processing of ambiguous Polish imperfective verbs in contexts with disambiguating (‘frequently’ and ‘yesterday’) and neutral preceding adverbs. Grammatical number of NP objects was also manipulated. Verb regions received significantly longer regression path times when following a neutral compared to 'yesterday' contexts. This implies that in neutral contexts both senses of polysemous imperfective verbs are activated on the verbal region. Post-hoc analyses revealed more regressions from singular objects in neutral contexts, suggesting that a preference for a more frequent plural event sense was created before the first fixations on the object were made. Finally, we observed an effect consisting of longer first pass times on singular objects and more regressions from the following region in contexts with ‘frequently’, which is consistent with the view that imperfective aspect is underspecified for number. This pa...
Studies in Polish Linguistics
Ten dwuczęściowy artykułkonsoliduje fakty dotyczące polisemii z zakresu psycholingwistyki oraz le... more Ten dwuczęściowy artykułkonsoliduje fakty dotyczące polisemii z zakresu psycholingwistyki oraz leksykografii teoretycznej i obliczeniowej oraz prezentuje wyniki badańilościowych i jakościowych przeprowadzonych na dużym zbiorze danych polisemicznych w języku polskim, na podstawie których proponujemy uszczegółowionąklasyfikacjępolisemii oraz opracowujemy poszerzone spektrum podobieństwa sensów słów wieloznacznych. W drugiej części publikacji wykazujemy, że polisemia nie jest zjawiskiem stabilnym, a relacje między sensami mogąbyćoceniane odmiennie przez różnych mówców w zależności od ich postrzegania świata, wiedzy o życiu i skojarzeń. Wskazujemy na kilka parametrów zróżnicowania, które mogąwpłynąćna ocenępodobieństwa sensów i reprezentacjęw mentalnym leksykonie polisemii przez metonimięi metaforę. ABSTRACT The Spectrum of Sense Remoteness in Polysemy: Bridging Computational and Theoretical Lexicography with Psycholinguistics (Part 2) This two-part paper bridges insights from psycholin...
Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 2020
The present paper reports two ERP experiments in Polish which examined the processing of mismatch... more The present paper reports two ERP experiments in Polish which examined the processing of mismatches between perfective and imperfective verbs and temporal modifiers which preceded the VP (Experiment 1) and followed it (Experiment 2). The mismatch between perfective verb and a preceding durative adverbial elicited an N400 on the object. No ERP effect was found for the analogous mismatch between imperfective verbs and a preceding time-span adverbial. The mismatching temporal adverbial elicited an early positivity (potentially an early P600) when it followed a perfective VP and a LAN when it followed an imperfective VP. The results suggest that: (i) the domain of aspectual interpretation in Polish is a VP; (ii) mismatches with perfective and imperfective verbs are resolved differently depending on the degree of their semantic specificity (only semantically underspecified imperfective verbs can be easily adjusted to the requirements of the preceding context); (iii) the position of the temporal adverbial plays a role in that a preverbal adverbials sets up a frame within which the eventuality should be interpreted and the aspectual value computed on AspP can be potentially adjusted to it (semantic integration reflected in N400) whereas a postverbal adverbial must agree with the aspectual value already computed on AspP (syntactic integration reflected in an early positivity or a LAN). Keywords: processing of aspectual mismatches, perfective and imperfective aspect, Polish, domain of aspectual interpretation, semantic (un)specificity, ERPs 2
Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3(1): 78. 1–26, 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.365, 2018
Traditionally, languages are assumed to minimally manifest a distinction between nouns and verbs.... more Traditionally, languages are assumed to minimally manifest a distinction between nouns and verbs. This assumption has occasionally been debated in the theoretical linguistic literature, in particular in the context of challenging verbal noun constructions that simultaneously manifest nominal and verbal features. From a psycholinguistic perspective, one of the most promising diagnostic criteria for determining whether a given word belongs to the category NOUN or VERB is an event-related brain potential (ERP) component, P200, whose amplitude is larger for verbs than for nouns. So far, a challenge for the interpretation of the P200 has been whether this component reflects verbal (e.g., action) semantics, lexical category or verb-related morphological operation. In the present study we report an ERP experiment whose goal was to contribute to a better understanding of the nature of the " verbal " P200 component by monitoring the comprehension of Polish morphologically related finite verbs, converbs, and verbal nouns. Thereby, we manipulated the syntactic category and morphological complexity of the critical words while keeping their semantics identical. The results show that finite verbs engender a smaller amplitude of the P200 component than less prototypical " verbs " such as verbal nouns and converbs. Based on this observation, we argue that the P200 component reflects the brain activation triggered by the demands of verb-related morphological integration processes performed on the verbal base of derived forms.
This study focuses on the syntax and semantics of simple and periphrastic future forms in Polish.... more This study focuses on the syntax and semantics of simple and periphrastic future forms in Polish. There are three central aspects of the proposed analysis. First, it is argued that both in simple and periphrastic future constructions, it is a combination of present tense and perfective aspect which is responsible for the expression of future time reference. Second, the study presents an account of some new semantic contrasts between simple and periphrastic future forms. Finally, this paper contains a preliminary comparative analysis of periphrastic be-future forms in Polish and Slovenian.
Future Times, Future Tenses , 2014
In Polish two types of constructions express future time reference: a ‘simple future’ (SF) and a ... more In Polish two types of constructions express future time reference: a ‘simple future’ (SF) and a ‘periphrastic future’ (PF). These two seemingly simple constructions raise four complex questions concerning their syntax, semantics, and diachrony: What is the syntactic structure of future constructions in Polish? Why does Polish have two variants of the periphrastic future (one with an l-participle as a complement of the future auxiliary będzie and another with an infinitive as a complement of będzie)? (More specifically, can the fact that at some point in the history of Polish the two variants developed be attributed to the semantics of these forms, or should it be treated as a diachronic accident?) How is future reference obtained in the Polish future constructions? Assuming that there is the same mechanism for securing future time reference both in SF and PF, what then is the difference between SF and PF?
Keywords: Polish simple future, periphrastic future, biclausal constructions, monoclausal constructions, perfective aspect, temporal gap
In this paper we account for some novel contrasts in the distribution of futurate, simple and per... more In this paper we account for some novel contrasts in the distribution of futurate, simple and periphrastic future forms in Polish. We work out the formal semantics of these forms using a force-theoretic framework recently proposed by Copley (2012) and Copley & Harley (2011). More precisely, we explain how the semantics of these forms constrains their distribution depending on the availability of a plan in the context of use.
We show that the use of a force-theoretic model in combination with basic
pragmatic principles allows us to explain the preferences in the choice of
different forms referring to future eventualities. The distribution of futurates and periphrastic and simple future forms in Polish is not determined by strict semantic constraints, but still it is not completely free. We can observe a systematicity in the use of these forms and this can be explained if one considers the interaction between the semantics of these forms and the pragmatic constraints, i.e., the question of which of the discussed forms satisfies the requirements of a given context in the best way.
Questions and Answers in Linguistics, Dec 2016
This paper is a contribution to a long-standing debate between constructionist, lexicalist, and e... more This paper is a contribution to a long-standing debate between constructionist, lexicalist, and emergentist schools of thought related to the question of what determines the category of lexically ambiguous
words whose meanings belong to different syntactic categories (e.g., duck, walk). In the lexicalist view part-ofspeech information is stored in the mental lexicon. According to the syntax-first (or constructionist) view, the ambiguous word is assigned to the syntactic category NOUN or VERB solely on the basis of the morphosyntactic frame in which it occurs irrespective of its meaning. In contrast, the emergentist view assumes an interaction of many constraints (semantic and syntactic) whereby semantic constraints are weaker than syntactic constraints in the resolution of word class ambiguities because while semantic context only favors one of the meanings of ambiguous words but does not exclude the competitors, syntactic context supports one meaning of an ambiguous word by ruling out its alternative interpretation. We intend to provide an overview of recent psycholinguistic studies focusing on the processing of word-class ambiguities in order to show that the
syntax-first approach is too restrictive while the emergentist view is too permissive. What seems to be at issue is that when grammatical category-ambiguous words are processed, it is not that all constraints are available at the same time and they compete but rather different sources of information can be predicted to affect the process of
lexical disambiguation at different stages during processing.
Keywords: lexical categories, noun, verb, ambiguities, processing, emergentist view, syntax-first view
Studies in Polish Linguistics, 2017
The main goal of the reported study is to test the cross-linguistic validity of the existing psyc... more The main goal of the reported study is to test the cross-linguistic validity of the existing psycholinguistic models of morphological processing by contributing the results of a masked priming lexical decision experiment on the processing of Polish semantically transparent and opaque compounds. All these models are concerned with the question of whether morphologically complex words are decomposed during online processing or whether they are stored as chunks in the mental lexicon. We contribute new data from Polish showing that reaction times to target words semantically related to the heads of transparent compounds were significantly faster than to target words semantically related to the heads of opaque compounds in Polish. This may be interpreted as evidence in favour of the view that semantically transparent compound words are decomposed and we access the lemmas of their constituent elements whereas semantically opaque compounds are not decomposed and there is no access to their constituent lemmas. Streszczenie Przedmiotem artykułu jest weryfikacja istniejących modeli psycholingwistycznych opisujących przetwarzanie wyrazów morfologicznie złożonych w mentalnym leksykonie. Wszystkie te modele koncentrują się na pytaniu, czy wyrazy morfologicznie złożone są dekomponowane na bieżąco podczas przetwarzania języka, czy są one przechowywane jako nierozłączna całość. Aby odpowiedzieć na to pytanie, zaplanowaliśmy eksperyment z wykorzystaniem torowania semantycznego i decyzji leksykalnej, dla dwóch typów pols-kich wyrazów złożonych: (i) transparentnych znaczeniowo (przewidywalnych, np. bajko-pisarz) i (ii) nietransparentnych znaczeniowo (nieprzewidywalnych, np. żółtodziób), gdzie jednostkami prymującymi były wyrazy semantycznie związane z ośrodkami tych wyrazów złożonych (np. autor i buzia). Otrzymane wyniki zostały skonfrontowane z podobnymi badaniami, które skupiały się na przetwarzaniu wyrazów złożonych w innych językach. Niniejsze badanie dostarcza nowych danych z języka polskiego i demonstruje, że trans
This study accounts for the observed patterns of variation and ambiguity in the expression and in... more This study accounts for the observed patterns of variation and ambiguity in the expression and interpretation of aspect in bare habitual statements in Polish in the framework of Bouma's (2008) recent version of stratified bi-directional Optimality Theory (OT).
Traditionally, languages are assumed to minimally manifest a distinction between nouns and verbs.... more Traditionally, languages are assumed to minimally manifest a distinction between nouns and verbs. This assumption has occasionally been debated in the theoretical linguistic literature, in particular in the context of challenging verbal noun constructions that simultaneously manifest nominal and verbal features. From a psycholinguistic perspective, one of the most promising diagnostic criteria for determining whether a given word belongs to the category NOUN or VERB is an event-related brain potential (ERP) component, P200, whose amplitude is larger for verbs than for nouns. So far, a challenge for the interpretation of the P200 has been whether this component reflects verbal (e.g., action) semantics, lexical category or verb-related morphological operation. In the present study we report an ERP experiment whose goal was to contribute to a better understanding of the nature of the " verbal " P200 component by monitoring the comprehension of Polish morphologically related finite verbs, converbs, and verbal nouns. Thereby, we manipulated the syntactic category and morphological complexity of the critical words while keeping their semantics identical. The results show that finite verbs engender a smaller amplitude of the P200 component than less prototypical " verbs " such as verbal nouns and converbs. Based on this observation, we argue that the P200 component reflects the brain activation triggered by the demands of verb-related morphological integration processes performed on the verbal base of derived forms. available at: https://www.glossa-journal.org/articles/10.5334/gjgl.365/
Acta Linguistica Academica, 2018
This paper is a contribution to a long-standing discussion related to the domain of aspectual
int... more This paper is a contribution to a long-standing discussion related to the domain of aspectual
interpretation. More precisely, it focuses on the impact of the degree of specificity and
morphological complexity on the time course of processing of perfective (prefixed perfective
and semelfactive perfective) and imperfective (simple imperfective and iterative imperfective)
verbs in Polish. In two experiments, eye-tracking during reading and self-paced reading, we
tested a hypothesis based on Frisson & Pickering (1999), Pickering & Frisson (2001) and
Frisson (2009) that the interpretation of semantically underspecified verbs should be delayed to
the end of a sentence. As predicted, in both of the reported experiments significantly longer
reading measures were observed for aspectually underspecified simple imperfective verbs as
compared to aspectually more specific perfective verbs in the sentence-final region. Our second
major prediction was that morphological complexity of aspectual forms should cause
computational cost directly on the verbal region. As predicted, significantly longer reading
times were observed on morphologically complex (prefixed) perfective verbs and (suffixed)
semelfactive perfective verbs as compared to their morphologically simple imperfective
counterparts in the eye-tracking experiment. This effect was not confirmed in the self-paced
reading experiment. This difference between the results obtained in the two reported
experiments is attributed to the differences between the methods used.
[prefinal version] the original version available here: https://akademiai.com/doi/abs/10.1556/2062.2018.65.2-3.4
Mood, Aspect, Modality Revisited New Answers to Old Questions, 2016
The main goal of this paper is to investigate the limits of tacit aspectual adjustment operations... more The main goal of this paper is to investigate the limits of tacit aspectual adjustment operations (the so-called coercion) in Polish as a language with a rich overt aspectual morphology. Following the standard definition of coercion according to which " coercion is triggered if there is a conflict between the aspectual character of the eventuality description and the aspectual constraints of some other element in the context " and " [t]he felicity of an aspectual reinterpretation is strongly dependent on linguistic context and knowledge of the world " (de Swart 1998: 360), we created contexts with two kinds of mismatches, i.e., morphological and semantic/pragmatic conflicts, which should potentially give rise to coercion. These contexts involving converbs, simultaneous and anterior, served as the basis for two online acceptability rating questionnaires as well as an Event Related Potentials (ERP) study. Our initial expectation was that perfective aspect in Polish due to its semantic and morphological markedness will considerably constrain coercion. In contrast, imperfective aspect in Polish as being semantically and morphologically unmarked should potentially allow for coercion. In contexts with a word-internal morphological clash between the aspectual requirements of a converbial morpheme and the aspectual form of a verbal stem we found no evidence for coercion. Such mismatches are clearly processed as morpho-syntactic violations. In contexts involving a conflict between the semantic/pragmatic selectional requirements of converbs (i.e., temporally anchored participial clauses functioning in a sentence as adverbial modifiers) and the aspectual properties of a main clause eventuality instead of the expected coercion we found experimental evidence proving the psychological reality of semantically based morphological blocking (understood as a competition between two potentially possible forms in which the form which is more specific/informative (here: the perfective one) blocks the use of the less specific form (here: the imperfective one). Ours results differ from the experimental findings of previous studies which were conducted mainly in languages with less articulated aspectual morphology. In sum, we provide new experimental evidence pointing to the conclusion that any discussion on the process of aspectual interpretation should take into account the semantics of overt aspectual operators supplemented with tacit adjustments (coercion) and possible blocking effects (resulting from the existence of a competition between two forms).
Journal of Logic, Language and Information, 2012
This study accounts for the observed patterns of variation and ambiguity in the expression and in... more This study accounts for the observed patterns of variation and ambiguity in the expression and interpretation of aspect in bare habitual statements in Polish in the framework of Bouma’s (2008) recent version of stratified bi-directional Optimality Theory (OT).
Mood, Aspect, Modality Revisited
How Categorical are Categories? New Approaches to the Old Questions of Noun, Verb, and Adjective, 2015
In this paper we intend to provide a unified picture of the organization of knowledge about nouns... more In this paper we intend to provide a unified picture of the organization of knowledge about nouns and verbs in the mind emerging from the results of recent foundational studies that use a variety of different experimental techniques and research methods ranging from processing experiments, language acquisition and aphasia studies to more advanced neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies. Each of the authors of the articles discussed in the present paper attempts to show that the distinction between nouns and verbs originates only (or mainly) at one of the following levels: the conceptual-semantic, the lexical or the morphological level. Our overview points to a conclusion that the knowledge about verbs and nouns in the mind cannot be attributed to a single level, but rather it seems to be the case that it is organized in the form of a distributed network of specialized functions in which many processes related to noun or verb processing may happen in a parallel fashion. Even though in some respects the presented studies do not entirely lead to a coherent picture of what happens in the brain when people process nouns and verbs, it is still possible to find overlapping results. For example, nominal and verbal concepts of objects or actions are processed in the vicinity of the visual and motor cortex respectively. Lexical (orthographic and phonological) representations of nouns and verbs are stored in mid temporal and left frontal cortex respectively. Noun-and verb-dependent morphological operations happen in left anterior occipitotemporal gyrus and prefrontal/frontotemporal cortex respectively.
The status of categories in the linguistic theory: Introduction
New Approaches to the Old Questions of Noun, Verb, and Adjective, 2015
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Papers by Dorota Klimek-Jankowska
Keywords: Polish simple future, periphrastic future, biclausal constructions, monoclausal constructions, perfective aspect, temporal gap
We show that the use of a force-theoretic model in combination with basic
pragmatic principles allows us to explain the preferences in the choice of
different forms referring to future eventualities. The distribution of futurates and periphrastic and simple future forms in Polish is not determined by strict semantic constraints, but still it is not completely free. We can observe a systematicity in the use of these forms and this can be explained if one considers the interaction between the semantics of these forms and the pragmatic constraints, i.e., the question of which of the discussed forms satisfies the requirements of a given context in the best way.
words whose meanings belong to different syntactic categories (e.g., duck, walk). In the lexicalist view part-ofspeech information is stored in the mental lexicon. According to the syntax-first (or constructionist) view, the ambiguous word is assigned to the syntactic category NOUN or VERB solely on the basis of the morphosyntactic frame in which it occurs irrespective of its meaning. In contrast, the emergentist view assumes an interaction of many constraints (semantic and syntactic) whereby semantic constraints are weaker than syntactic constraints in the resolution of word class ambiguities because while semantic context only favors one of the meanings of ambiguous words but does not exclude the competitors, syntactic context supports one meaning of an ambiguous word by ruling out its alternative interpretation. We intend to provide an overview of recent psycholinguistic studies focusing on the processing of word-class ambiguities in order to show that the
syntax-first approach is too restrictive while the emergentist view is too permissive. What seems to be at issue is that when grammatical category-ambiguous words are processed, it is not that all constraints are available at the same time and they compete but rather different sources of information can be predicted to affect the process of
lexical disambiguation at different stages during processing.
Keywords: lexical categories, noun, verb, ambiguities, processing, emergentist view, syntax-first view
interpretation. More precisely, it focuses on the impact of the degree of specificity and
morphological complexity on the time course of processing of perfective (prefixed perfective
and semelfactive perfective) and imperfective (simple imperfective and iterative imperfective)
verbs in Polish. In two experiments, eye-tracking during reading and self-paced reading, we
tested a hypothesis based on Frisson & Pickering (1999), Pickering & Frisson (2001) and
Frisson (2009) that the interpretation of semantically underspecified verbs should be delayed to
the end of a sentence. As predicted, in both of the reported experiments significantly longer
reading measures were observed for aspectually underspecified simple imperfective verbs as
compared to aspectually more specific perfective verbs in the sentence-final region. Our second
major prediction was that morphological complexity of aspectual forms should cause
computational cost directly on the verbal region. As predicted, significantly longer reading
times were observed on morphologically complex (prefixed) perfective verbs and (suffixed)
semelfactive perfective verbs as compared to their morphologically simple imperfective
counterparts in the eye-tracking experiment. This effect was not confirmed in the self-paced
reading experiment. This difference between the results obtained in the two reported
experiments is attributed to the differences between the methods used.
[prefinal version] the original version available here: https://akademiai.com/doi/abs/10.1556/2062.2018.65.2-3.4