Colin Phillips

Professor, Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, Linguistics
Director, Language Science Center
(301) 405-3082colin@umd.edu
1413F Marie Mount Hall
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Research Expertise
Language Acquisition
Neurolinguistics
Psycholinguistics
Publications
Syntactic category constrains lexical access in speaking
When we choose which word to speak, do nouns and verbs compete, when the express similar concepts? New evidence says No: syntactic category plays a key role in limiting lexical access.
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Shota Momma (*16), Julia Buffinton, Bob Slevc
Dates:
We report two experiments that suggest that syntactic category plays a key role in limiting competition in lexical access in speaking. We introduce a novel sentence-picture interference (SPI) paradigm, and we show that nouns (e.g., running as a noun) do not compete with verbs (e.g., walking as a verb) and verbs do not compete with nouns in sentence production, regardless of their conceptual similarity. Based on this finding, we argue that lexical competition in production is limited by syntactic category. We also suggest that even complex words containing category-changing derivational morphology can be stored and accessed together with their final syntactic category information. We discuss the potential underlying mechanism and how it may enable us to speak relatively fluently.
Unaccusativity in sentence production
Shota Momma argues that sentence planning in speech production manifests the grammatical distinction between unaccusative and unergative intransitives.
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Shota Momma, L. Robert Slevc
Dates:
The relationship between parsing and generation
Do speaking and comprehension use the same mechanisms in building grammatical structure? Shota Momma and Colin Phillips say Yes.
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Shota Momma
Dates:
Negative polarity illusions and the format of hierarchical encodings in memory
"The bill that no senator endorsed will ever become a law." This is ungrammatical, but may initially seem acceptable, a 'grammatical illusion.' Here Dan Parker and Colin Phillips show how this particular type of illusion depends on timing.
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Dan Parker
Dates:
Locality and Word Order in Active Dependency Formation in Bangla
In real-time comprehension, people are eager to relate question words like "what" to the nearest possible predicate. But is it strurctural or linear nearness that matters? The two possibilities can be distinguished in Bangla.
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Dustin A. Chacón, Mashrur Imtiaz, Shirsho Dasgupta, Sikder M. Murshed, Mina Dan
Dates:
The role of language processing in language acquisition
How does development in a child's ability to comprehend speech in real time relate to their successes and challenges in acquiring a grammar?
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Lara Ehrenhofer
Dates:
Learning obscure and obvious properties of language
Lara Ehrenhofer and Colin Phillips respond to commentary on their discussion of how development in the capacity to parse speech online relates to grammar acquisition in young children.
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Lara Ehrenhofer
Dates:
Interference in the processing of adjunct control
"*The discovery that the researcher described was certified after debunking the myth himself." This is unacceptable, but in online comprehension the presence of "researcher" may make it seem better than it is. Dan Parker investigates the effect.
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Daniel Parker, Sol Lago
Dates:
Aligning grammatical theories and processing models
How should theories of grammar relate to models of language processing?
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Shevaun Lewis
Dates:
The structure-sensitivity of memory access: Evidence from Mandarin Chinese
Interpretation of a reflexive pronoun requires consultation of memory for prior context. What role does the syntax of that context play in guiding that process? Brian Dillon reports a study on Mandarin Chinese.
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Brian Dillon, Wing Yee Chow, Matt Wagers, Taomei Guo, Fengqin Liu
Dates:
Immediate sensitivity to structural constraints in pronoun resolution
Real-time interpretation of pronouns is sometimes sensitive to the presence of grammatically-illicit antecedents and sometimes not. Why?
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Wing-Yee Chow, Shevaun Lewis
Dates:
Going the distance: Memory and control processes in active dependency construction
Matt Wagers and Colin Phillips probe the representation of displaced NPs in memory. They argue that only very coarse-grained information, such as syntactic category, is actively maintained and used to make parsing decisions.
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Matthew Wagers
Dates:
The psycholinguistics of ellipsis
"I read this and so should you" - a review of psycholinguistic work on the grammatical representation of ellipsis.
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Dan Parker
Dates:
No semantic illusions in the 'Semantic P600' phenomenon: ERP evidence from Mandarin Chinese
Do ERP date indicate that semantics runs independently of syntax in comprehension? Wing Yee Chow and Colin Phillips evaluate the evidence and say No.
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Wing-Yee Chow
Dates:
Derivational order in syntax: Evidence and architectural consequences
A précis of the evidence for left‐to‐right derivations in syntax, and how this relates to the nature of real‐time mechanisms for building linguistic structure.
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Shevaun Lewis
Dates:
A test of the relation between working-memory capacity and syntactic island effects
Syntactic island effects are more likely to be due to grammatical constraints or grounded grammaticized constraints than to limited processing resources.
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Jon Sprouse, Matt Wagers
Dates:
Some arguments and non-arguments for reductionist accounts of syntactic phenomena
Can psycholinguistics tell us whether a syntactic pattern is explained by grammar or by processing? Colin Phillips explores the question in relation to island constraints, agreement attraction, constraints on anaphora, and comparatives.
Linguistics
Dates:
Syntactic and Semantic Predictors of Tense in Hindi: An ERP Investigation
Brian Dillon and Colin Phillips find different ERP signals for a grammatical error, depending on whether its detection was based on semantic versus morphosyntactic information.
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Brian Dillon, Andrew Nevins, Alison C. Austin
Dates:
Examining the evidence for an independent semantic analyzer: An ERP study in Spanish
Claire Stroud and Colin Phillips challenge recent claims that some kind of semantic composition operates independently of syntax in online language processing, with an ERP study of Spanish.
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Clare Stroud
Dates:
Relating Structure and Time in Linguistics and Psycholinguistics
Linguistics and psycholinguistics differ not in their topic but in their tools, and our choice of tools should be commensurate to the hypotheses we are testing. A case study of long-distance dependencies serves to illustrate the point.
Linguistics
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Matt Wagers
Dates:
Linguistics and psycholinguistics differ not in their topic but in their tools, and our choice of tools should be commensurate to the hypotheses we are testing. A case study of long-distance dependencies serves to illustrate the point.
The Real-Time Status of Island Phenomena
Are all syntactic islands an epiphenomenon of performance constraints, or are some a direct expression of the competence grammar? Colin Phillips provides support for the latter view, with reading time studies of parasitic gap constructions.
Linguistics
Dates: