Chapter 6 Focus
6.3 Acceptability judgment
6.3.2 Method
6.3.2.1 Participants
The experiments were conducted with 16 native speakers of Turkish, 16 native speakers of Russian as well as with 16 native speakers of Urum. The
Turkish native speakers (7 female, 9 male) were tested at the University of Bielefeld (Germany) and were bilingual in German and Turkish. The age of the participants ranged from 21-36 with a mean age of 27.7 years. All Turkish participants were asked to rate the frequency of using Turkish on a scale from 1 (=rarely) to 5 (=very frequently/several hours a day), which resulted in an average of 3.8. The 16 speakers of Russian and Urum were tested in Tbilisi (Georgia). They were all born in Georgia but stated that Russian or Urum, respectively, is their native language. The Russian speakers (11 female, 5 male) ranged in age from 16-54 with an average of 32.69 years.
The Urum speakers (10 female, 6 male) ranged from 17-76 with a mean age of 45.5 years. All Russian speakers were bilingual in Georgian. All Urum speakers were moreover fluent in Russian and for the most part also in Georgian.
6.3.2.2 Material and design
The method used in this study is an acceptability judgment task of controlled question and answer (Q/A) pairs. The study consists of two parallel exper-iments: Experiment 1 investigates the effect of focus on the linearization of subjects and objects in V-medial constructions. Experiment 2 analyzes the effect of focus on the linearization of subjects and objects in V-final con-structions. For each of the two experiments I used a 2x2x2 factorial design with the factors FOCUS TYPE (2 levels: non-identificational vs. corrective), FOCUSED ARGUMENT(2 levels: subject vs. object) and ARGUMENT ORDER
(2 levels: canonical vs. non-canonical). Whereas the factors F-TYPE and F-ARGUMENTwere manipulated in the context sentences (cf. the design in Table 6.11), the factor A-ORDERwas manipulated in the target answers.
Table 6.11: Experimental design of focus acceptability judgment (context conditions)
F-TYPE
non-identificational corrective
F-ARGUMENT subject N/SBJ C/SBJ
object N/OBJ C/OBJ
Each experiment consisted of 16 items. The items were short sequences comprising a context sentence followed by either a question word (in case of the non-identificational conditions) or a question phrase (in case of the corrective conditions) and two answering possibilities which contained the target structures.
Each of the four context sentences was presented together with two answers, which only differ with respect to the linearization of the arguments (canonical vs. non-canonical order). Consider for instance the V-medial Turkish Q/A-pairs in (230)-(233). Please note that all direct objects in the Turkish target sentences are marked with the accusative suffix-(y)I, since bare objects in Turkish have to be realized immediately left-adjacent to the verb and are not allowed to occur in any other position (e.g., Kornfilt 1997).
(230) Turkish: N/SBJ
Biri someone
ta¸sı-yor
carry-PROG[3]
çanta-yı.
bag-ACC
Kim?
who
‘Someone is carrying the bag. Who?’
a. Kadın woman
ta¸sı-yor
carry-PROG[3]
çanta-yı.
bag-ACC
‘A woman is carrying the bag.’ (SVO)
b. Çantayı ta¸sıyor kadın. (OVS)
(231) Turkish: N/OBJ
Kadın woman
ta¸sı-yor
carry-PROG[3]
bir one
¸sey.
thing
Ne-yi?
what-ACC
‘A woman is carrying something. What?’
a. Kadın ta¸sıyor çantayı. (SVO)
b. Çantayı ta¸sıyor kadın. (OVS)
(232) Turkish: C/SBJ
Erkek boy
oku-yor read-PROG[3]
kitab-ı.
book-ACC
De˘gil not
mi?
Q
‘A boy is reading the book. Is that true?’
a. Hayir, no
kız girl
oku-yor read-PROG[3]
kitab-ı.
book-ACC
‘No, a girl is reading the book.’ (SVO)
b. Hayir, kitabı okuyor kız. (OVS)
(233) Turkish: C/OBJ
Kız girl
oku-yor read-PROG[3]
dergi-yi.
magazine-ACC
De˘gil not
mi?
Q
‘A girl is reading the magazine. Is that true?’
a. Hayir, kız okuyor kitabı. (SVO)
b. Hayir, kitabı okuyor kız. (OVS)
For the Russian translations of the four Q/A-pairs, consider the examples in (234)-(237).
(234) Russian: N/SBJ
Kto-to someone
nesyet
carry:IPFV[3]
sumku.
bag:ACC.F
Kto?
who
‘Someone is carrying the bag. Who?’
a. Zhenshchina woman
nesyet
carry:IPFV[3]
sumku.
bag:ACC.F
‘A woman is carrying the bag.’ (SVO)
b. Sumku nesjet zhenshchina. (OVS)
(235) Russian: N/OBJ
Zhenshchina woman
nesyet
carry:IPFV[3]
chto-to.
something Chto?
what
‘A woman is carrying something. What?’
a. Zhenshchina nesjet sumku. (SVO)
b. Sumku nesjet zhenshchina. (OVS)
(236) Russian: C/SBJ
Mal’chik boy
chitayet read:IPFV[3]
knigu.
book:ACC.F
Pravda?
true
‘A boy is reading the book. Is that true?’
a. Net, no
devochka girl
chitayet read:IPFV[3]
knigu.
book:ACC.F
‘No, a girl is reading the book.’ (SVO)
b. Net, knigu chitayet devochka. (OVS)
(237) Russian: C/OBJ
Devochka girl
chitayet read:3.SG
zhurnal.
magazine:ACC
Pravda?
true
‘A girl is reading the magazine. Is that true?’
a. Net, devochka chitayet knigu. (SVO)
b. Net, knigu chitayet devochka. (OVS)
For the corresponding Urum translations finally consider the examples in (238)-(241).
(238) Urum: N/SBJ
Biri someone
gätı-rer carry-IPFV[3]
sumka-yi.
bag-ACC
Kim?
who
‘Someone is carrying the bag. Who?’
a. Gari˘ woman
gätı-rer carry-IPFV[3]
sumka-yi.
bag-ACC
‘A woman is carrying the bag.’ (SVO)
b. Sumkayi gätırer ˘gari. (OVS)
(239) Urum: N/OBJ
Gari˘ woman
gätı-rer carry-IPFV[3]
bi¸se.
something Nä?
what
‘A woman is carrying something. What?’
a. Gari gätırer sumkayi.˘ (SVO)
b. Sumkayi gätırer ˘gari. (OVS)
(240) Urum: C/SBJ
O˘glan boy
oh-ier
read-IPFV[3]
kniga-yi.
book-ACC
Düz-dür?
true-COP
‘A boy is reading the book. Is that true?’
a. Yox, no
˘gız girl
oh-ier
read-IPFV[3]
kniga-yi.
book-ACC
‘No, a girl is reading the book.’ (SVO)
b. Yox, knigayi ohier ˘gız. (OVS)
(241) Urum: C/OBJ
Gız˘ girl
oh-ier read-IPFV[3]
gazet-i.
newspaper-ACC
Düz-dür?
true-COP
‘A girl is reading the newspaper. Is that true?’
a. Yox, ˘gız ohier knigayi. (SVO)
b. Yox, knigayi ohier ˘gız. (OVS)
Due to the fact that Urum has no writing tradition the study only used au-ditory stimuli. The native speakers who recorded the stimuli were instructed to realize the context questions with a realistic prosodic contour, containing a pitch accent on the focused constituents. In order to reduce the effect of
prosody to a minimum, all target sentences were recorded word by word.
Subsequently, all recordings were resynthesized in Praat in order to have a flat intonation contour at 235 Hz and composed to target sentences. Finally, I added a declination to the global intonation contour of the target sentences, such that the difference between the left edge of the first word and the right edge of the last word is 50 Hz. Consider for instance the pitch track of a sample stimulus in Figure 6.5.
Figure 6.5: Manipulated pitch contour of SVO target sentence (Item 02, Russian)
To ensure that every participant gets every set of targets with only one of the four possible contexts, the study used a Latin square design, yielding four questionnaire versions with 32 Q/A-pairs (8 sentences x 4 contexts).
Thus, every Q/A-pair was rated by exactly four speakers. The items of the two experiments were presented together with two other experiments on the interaction of topics and word order (cf. Section 7.3). Hence, the items of the four experiments functioned as distractors to each another. The order of the items was pseudo-randomized for every participant. For a list of all experimental items used in the focus acceptability judgment task, see Appendix B.
6.3.2.3 Procedure
The procedure of the study was explained to the participants in their respec-tive narespec-tive languages. Within the instructions the participants were told that they will listen to several different Q/A-pairs, each consisting of a question followed by two continuations (A and B), which are prosodically manipu-lated. After listening to both continuations, the participants were asked to evaluate how good each of these responses fits to the respective context on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (=not acceptable at all) to 5 (=fits perfectly to the preceding context). The reasons for presenting both continuations
immediately one after another are two-fold: Firstly, presenting two sentences which only differ with regard to the linearization of their arguments should minimize the risk that participants rate targets as ‘bad’ only because of their semantic contents. Secondly, the participants should concentrate on differ-ences regarding the interpretation of the two word orders and consciously decide which answer they consider to be more appropriate in a given context.
The auditory stimuli were presented to the participants via high per-formance headphones with the help of the experimental software DMDX.
Between each question and the answering possibilities there was a 2-second pause. To facilitate the procedure for the participants, the acceptability ratings were collected on a separate answer sheet. After every rating the participants had to press ‘space bar’ on the computer keyboard in order to listen to the next Q/A pair. The experiment started with three practice trials in order to illustrate the procedure of the study which provided the opportunity to clarify any uncertainties.