Understanding Coordinate Clauses

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Understanding Coordinate Clauses: A CrossLinguistic Experimental Approach Bergljot Behrens, Barbara Mertins, Barbara Hemforth, and Cathrine Fabricius-Hansen Abstract The present article provides evidence suggesting that general pragmatic accounts of orderliness in the temporal interpretation of VP coordination may be somewhat biased by the choice of typically script-based (con)sequential examples. Most of the discussion in the literature has been based on examples from a single language, mostly relying on the intuitions of the author(s) of the paper. On the basis of a cross-linguistic, empirical approach to language understanding, we have tested different language speakers’ preferred interpretation of the temporal relation holding in contextualized VP conjunctive sentences that are pragmatically not typically consequential or resultative. Under these conditions, our results show a preference for temporal overlap interpretations across languages. We also find that language-specific properties modify this general bias, thus supporting a competition-based account of relating form to meaning.

1 Introduction: What Determines the Temporal Interpretation of VP Coordination?

1.1 The Script Theory and PNO The most influential accounts of the temporal interpretation of and coordination center around its directionality (see e.g., Newmeyer 1992), that is, that the order of presentation is iconic with the order of events (Grice’s maxim ‘Be orderly’).1 However, the examples discussed in the semantic-pragmatic literature are mostly restricted to consequential/enablement/resultative cases, which we understand in a one-event sense of consequentiality as spelled out in Moens (1987), or in the sense of narrative episodic structure as discussed by Caenepeel and Sandstrøm (1992). A famous example discussed in the literature is (1):

1

‘Be orderly’ is a submaxim of the maxim of manner. Linear ordering reflects temporal ordering (Grice 1975).

Understanding coordinate clauses (1) a. b.

3

Mary got married and had a baby. Mary had a baby and got married.

Carston (2002) expresses the interpretation of conjunction in a Relevance Theoretic framework as based on highly accessible narrative scripts, that is, frequently experienced actions, events, or processes and sequences of these, which are assumed to be stored in chunks (Anderson 1980; Brewer 1999). Interpreting conjunctions amounts to constructing stereotypical or highly accessible complex event structures or ‘narrative scripts’ (Carston 2002, p. 251), provided they satisfy our expectations of relevance. In the absence of explicit (encoded) signposts telling a hearer what temporal relations hold between states of affairs described in a single processing unit, as is often the case with ‘and’-conjunction, an order of presentation that matches the temporal order of the events is the least costly in processing effort demands. (Carston 2002, p. 251–252).

Is this generally the case, or can this account be biased by the fact that examples are generally provided from one language (English), and in one form (the simple past), disregarding potential competing structures? Carston reasons that temporal sequence is also generally communicated in and conjunction cases that do not involve such highly accessible scripts, and adduces the same cognitive explanation for a temporal sequence reading of such cases (Carston 2002, p. 252). Convincing examples are (2)–(4): (2) Sally cooked some vegetables and she began to feel more optimistic. (3) Mary put on her tutu and did a highland fling. (4) Bill saw his therapist and fell down the manhole. (Carston 2002, p. 251) Given that spoken and written languages are linear in nature, it seems plausible to assume that the default strategy when processing a narrative is to understand what is happening in terms of temporal sequence. This strategy has been referred to in previous literature as ‘The Principle of Natural Order” (PNO), which states that in the default case, events are reported in the order in which they occurred (see e.g., Labov 1972; Clark 1974; von Stutterheim & Klein 1987). An overview of the literature suggests that the examples on which the above generalizations are based, may be somewhat biased towards pragmatically (con)sequential cases. In cases where there is no consequential script to go by, do we actually find that the iconic interpretation is the most accessible one? Is the PNO really a default strategy when it comes to the interpretation of temporally unspecified and conjunction? Or are there other linguistic properties of the conjuncts that enter into their interpretation? These questions lie behind the cross-linguistic experiment we have conducted, and that we report on here. It is designed to test the preferred temporal interpretation of VP coordinations in which the events do not obviously relate by a consequential or enablement script. We restrict ourselves to VP coordination since

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there is a possible difference in the processing of VP versus clause coordination, not least with respect to topic time (see section 1.2 below), which may affect their preferred interpretations (see Behrens, Fabricius-Hansen, & Frazier, this volume).2 In the following we take up semantic considerations in the temporal interpretation of VP conjunction, not least with respect to the eventuality type of the predicates conjoined, since semantic type seems to affect the temporal interpretation (section 1.2). In our cross-linguistic study, we discuss a potential competition in the strength of linguistic properties for particular interpretations in an optimalityoriented perspective (section 1.3) and consider the possible effect of event duration (section 1.4) before we report on our experimental study (section 2) and present our hypotheses (section 3). The results are presented in section 4. Section 5 follows with a concluding discussion of the results.

1.2 A Semantic Approach: The Role of Eventuality Type Generally, and combines two units of the same syntactic-semantic type.3 In standard semantic accounts, the meaning of and is rendered as logical conjunction or related operations (intersection, summation), depending on the semantic type of its arguments. Under such an analysis, and cannot by itself restrict the temporal relation between the event(ualitie)s described in the two conjuncts. From a compositional point of view, if the conjoined VPs show the same tense and neither of them contains a temporal adverbial, it is the aspectual properties of the predicates that can make a difference in the temporal interpretation. As suggested by Behrens, Fabricius-Hansen, & Solfjeld (2012), conjoined VPs may under such conditions be conceived as conjoined aspect phrases (AspP). That is, in the semantic composition they conjoin below the (finite) tense phrase (TenseP), yet above the VP projection, their morphological tense being “checked” by the same c-commanding semantic Tense. Thus, the sentence Mary was happy and had a lovely time, (5) below, may be represented (somewhat simplified) as in (5’): (5’) [TopicP Maryi [TenseP Past {AspP [AspP … [VP ti be-happy]] and [AspP … [VP ti have-a-lovely-time]]}]]

2

Like Behrens, Fabricius-Hansen, & Frazier (this volume), we use the term VP coordination/conjunction in a non-technical sense for cases where the second conjunct has no overt subject but “shares” the subject of the first conjunct. Technically speaking, what is conjoined may be functional projections of the verb, as in (5’) (see also section 5.1). 3 There are exceptions, though; see Fabricius-Hansen & Ramm (2008) for a general discussion and further references.

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This means that the eventualities described in the two conjuncts relate to one and the same topic time whose relation to the utterance time is determined by (semantic) tense (Klein 1994). Since each conjunct projected to AspP relates to the topic time in accordance with its own eventuality type, conjunction of the two aspect phrases by intersection will yield temporal semantic interpretations relative to their aspectual properties (see Behrens, Fabricius-Hansen, & Solfjeld (2012) for a more detailed account). Consider the various combinations in (5) to (8): (5) (6) (7) (8)

Mary was happy and had a lovely time. (two states) Mary was annoyed and left. (a state and a proper event) Mary finished her term paper and was happy. (a proper event and a state) Mary vacuumed the apartment and made supper. (two proper events)

States—and activities/processes—are imperfective or atelic, while proper events (accomplishments/achievements expressed in the simple form in English) are generally considered perfective4 (Bohnemeyer & Swift 2004) or telic. The topic time, that is, the time for which a claim is made, is properly included in a state, but includes proper events (Klein 1994). Thus, with each conjunct projected to AspP, the conjunctions in (5)–(8) above should receive different temporal representations, as illustrated in Figure 1. (5) s and s

(6) s and e

(7) e

(8) alt. 1 e and e

(8) alt. 2 e and e

1st conj. ev. 2nd conj. ev. Topic time ev: eventuality, s: state/activity, e: proper event Figure 1 Semantically predicted temporal interpretations of examples (5)–(8)

The first example, (5), has a topic time that is included in two different states (‘being happy’ and ‘having a lovely time’), which means that the two states must overlap temporally. This is in accordance with our default interpretation. In (6) the topic time is included in the state of ‘annoyance’ (first conjunct) and includes or surrounds the proper event of ‘leaving’ (second conjunct). This means 4

Bohnemeyer and Swift (2004) use the term perfective rather than telic. However, since we include Czech in our study, which marks predicates grammatically/morphologically as perfective or imperfective, we find telicity a more appropriate term for the distinction between accomplishment and activity predicates.

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that the annoyance overlaps the leaving, and may even extend beyond it. This is also in accordance with the default interpretation. As for (7), again on the assumption that the conjoined predicates share the same topic time, the topic time should include the proper event of ‘finishing the term paper’ (first conjunct) and be included in the state of ‘happiness’ (second conjunct), that is, the happiness may go beyond the time for which the proposition is claimed to hold. This means that the default interpretation of (7), that the happy state sets in as the term paper is finished, does not follow from the semantic representation but requires a pragmatic, temporal placement of the first conjunct proper event at the beginning of the second-conjunct state. The relative temporal ordering in VP conjunctions with a state and a proper event is thus facilitated by linearity: If the state appears in the first conjunct, as in (6), the topic time—which includes the proper event—is skewed towards the end of the state described in the first conjunct. In the reverse order, that is, when the proper event appears in the first conjunct, as in (7), the topic time including this event is skewed towards the beginning of the state described in the second conjunct. Example (8), finally, has two proper events. It yields a topic time that includes both events, according to our analysis. Whether these overlap or follow each other within that topic time is left open in the semantic representation, and does not conflict with any pragmatic strengthening of the kind proposed in the pragmatic literature. A temporal sequence, needed for enablement and result readings, might be pragmatically inferred. We see that the interpretation of VP coordination is in part guided by the semantic type of the predicates, and not entirely by pragmatic scripts. The problem we raise in the present paper and that we go on to explore experimentally, is whether speakers of different languages actually prefer a (con)sequential script interpretation, as suggested by Carston (2002) in her extended script theory referred to in our introduction, or whether the formal properties of the conjuncts, as they vary across languages and as we vary their temporal properties systematically (see section 3.1), affect the interpretation one way or another. Compare (8) above (repeated here) with (9): (8) Mary vacuumed the apartment and made supper. (9) Mary vacuumed the apartment and put the chairs in place. (8) and (9) would receive the same semantic interpretation under our analysis, since the same aspectual types are coordinated in both. But how do native speakers interpret them? What properties affect their interpretation?

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1.3. The competition factor The idea has been forwarded in the linguistic literature that minimal alternatives to an expression in a particular language may affect its preferred interpretation (cf. Sæbø 2004). This idea has been formulated in an optimalitytheoretic (OT) framework to say that for a form to be optimal for a certain content, it must be at least as good as any alternative form for that content, and for a content to be optimal for a certain form, it must be at least as good as any alternative content for that form. This idea is formalized in a principle of optimal interpretation (Blutner & Zeevat 2003). In the present paper we assume, in accordance with standard OT thinking, that constraints on the assignment of meaning to form, and vice versa, are weighted (or ranked) differently across languages; however, no assumptions are made about the time course of such constraints during processing. If we apply this to (VP) and conjunctions, it means that for this form or structure to be optimal for a temporal sequence interpretation in a language, it must be at least as good as any alternative form for that content, and for temporal sequence to be optimal for the and coordinate form, it must be at least as good as any alternative content for that form. A corresponding procedure would test other potential interpretations of the same form, such as temporal overlap. We understand the PNO and script theory to imply that and conjunction is a better form for temporal sequence than for any other temporal interpretation. This is stated as a general constraint on coordination, and is, of course, in need of empirical investigation, be it corpus-based, based on experimental testing, or both. The question is whether minimally alternative forms in individual languages push the temporal interpretation of one form in one direction or the other, and whether particular linguistic properties of individual languages determine the choice of alternative forms for a content such as temporal sequence or temporal overlap. There is evidence in the psycholinguistic literature on competing interpretations of particular structures in different languages (cf. MacWhinney & Bates 1989; Bresnan & Aissen 2002; Elman, Hare, & McRae 2004) that particular language cues have different strengths for particular interpretations. Thus, for example, word order is a stronger cue for subjecthood in English than in Italian, agreement is a stronger cue than word order in Italian (Bates, Devescori, & d’Amico 1999). What is interesting here is that this idea of linguistic cues having different strengths across languages can be linked to the optimality theoretic framework we just referred to: Applying the PNO and script theory to the competition model allows us to postulate that (simple/unmarked) VP coordination is a strong cue for the sequential reading of events. However, particular language-specific properties may compete with the VP coordinate structure and may do so more or less strongly, making a particular linguistic property affect the optimal interpretation of VP conjunction.

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Languages differ in the number of alternative forms they have available to express a meaning. When for example a speaker wants to describe a situation in which one referent is involved in two events or activities, he or she has different linguistic options to describe the two events within one sentence without explicitly marking a particular temporal or causal/consequential relation between them. The options differ across languages, which gives us reason to believe that the types of alternative forms in the individual languages affect the strength of the coordinate structure as a cue to a specific temporal reading. Let us in the following look at alternatives in the four languages under study: English, Czech, German, and Norwegian. Apart from forms that make the temporal relation explicit, such as temporal connectives or subordinating conjunctions, English has a choice among the following structures to express temporal sequence or temporal overlap: (10) a. Peter read an article and scribbled down some notes. (VP conj.—simple form) b. Peter was reading an article and scribbling down some notes. (VP conj.—progressive) c. Peter read an article, scribbling down some notes. (free ing-adjunction) d. Peter read an article and he scribbled down some notes. (clause conj.—simple form) e. Peter was reading an article and he was scribbling down some notes. (clause conj.—progressive) Note that the progressive alternative in (10b), in which the finite tense marker necessarily appears only in the first conjunct and thus has scope over both conjuncts, definitely relates the events by temporal overlap/simultaneity and not temporal sequence. Since the progressive form is obviously a very strong cue for a simultaneous interpretation of coordinated event descriptions, we have reason to hypothesize that this structure is a very strong competitor to the alternative, simple form in VP conjunction, pushing the interpretation of the simple form of the conjuncts to a sequential interpretation. The fact that English also has the adjunction alternative, to express simultaneity/overlap, as in (10c), might strengthen the sequentiality reading option of the simple form. Finally, clause conjunctions, as in (10d) and (10e), are alternatives that differ from VP coordination in a non-aspectual dimension. The status of clause conjunction as a competitor in the temporal domain is unclear, so we leave it out of the discussion; but see Behrens, Fabricius-Hansen, & Frazier (this volume) for an experimental study testing the difference between non-progressive S and VP coordination.5 German and Norwegian do not have a genuine grammaticalized aspect system, nor do they possess an equivalent of the English free -ing adjunct (10d) (see 5

We use the terms S conjunction and clause conjunction interchangeably.

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Behrens, Fabricius-Hansen, & Solfjeld 2012). Leaving clause conjunction aside, then, we consider VP conjunction in these languages to have no real competitors to relate events by temporal simultaneity or sequence (apart from structures that mark the temporal relation explicitly). In our competition-based account we would therefore expect greater vacillation in the preferred interpretation of VP coordination in these languages than in English. Czech is a pro-drop language, which means that there is no distinction between clause conjunction and VP conjunction as long as the subject is the same for the two conjuncts. Also there are no participial adjuncts in Czech. As for aspect, however, Czech makes a basic grammatical opposition between the imperfective and the perfective aspect. Both aspects can be marked on the verb by inflectional morphology (see Cvrček et al. 2010; Schmiedtová, von Stutterheim, & Carroll 2011). Importantly, Czech also has the so-called simplex verbs. These verb forms are not morphologically marked for aspect but nevertheless have a fixed aspectual interpretation. Most simplex verbs are imperfective (e.g., psát ‘to write’). There is also a small group of simplex perfective verbs (e.g., dát ‘to give’). Notably, juxtaposition of two perfectively marked verbs or two simplex perfective verbs yields a sequential interpretation (cf. Schmiedtová 2004, p. 43). For the present experiment we use only imperfective simplex verbs. This means that the conjuncts in the Czech testing items are all conceived as activities (cf. section 2.2). The question then is whether the aspectual forms chosen in English and Czech are interpretive cues that compete with the generally stated interpretation of the coordinate structure. Given that grammaticalized aspect is a cue for the temporal interpretation of proper events, our considerations above let us predict a default sequential interpretation for VP coordination even when there is no pragmatic script to go by, unless language-specific grammaticalized aspectual properties or other linguistic properties are so strong that they overrule that interpretation. If grammatical aspect marking is mandatory, it may be a stronger cue to the temporal interpretation than the VP coordinate structure itself. Imperfective aspect marking may push the preferred interpretation of and conjunction toward one of simultaneity. It should be mentioned here that the languages under consideration also differ in their preferences for adverb placement: In Czech and German, adverbials preferably precede the syntactic object, while in English and Norwegian they are in post-object position. Having information about the duration of an event earlier in Czech and German may have an influence when coercion of an eventuality type is necessary during the processing of the coordination (see Bott & Hamm, this volume). We will come back to potential effects of this language specific difference in the discussion (section 5).

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1.4 Duration markers and the interpretation of VP coordination We have observed that integrating an event expressed in a second conjunct with the event in the first conjunct may be easier when the first conjunct expresses a particular manner of motion. Thus, intuitively, there is a stronger tendency to read the two events as taking place at the same time in (11b), in which the first conjunct expresses a manner of motion, than in (11a), in which the motion verb is neutral: (11) a. b. c.

He went home and listened to the radio. He strolled home and listened to the radio. He raced home and listened to the radio.

A central feature in manner-of-motion verbs is duration. In contrast to the manner-of-motion example in (11b), the example in (11c) involves a motion that is understood as temporally shorter than for (11b). With that, a sequential interpretation of (11c) seems more likely than simultaneity or temporal overlap, which is more likely to come up in the interpretation of (11b). This observation has motivated our next question: Does the duration of the event in the first conjunct affect the preferred temporal interpretation of the coordinated events? Since similar manners of motion are expressed differently across languages— some manners are expressed in adverbs rather than inherently in verbs (Talmy 2000)—and there is not always a correlation of expressive means in the different languages, it is a challenge to design a cross-linguistically valid experiment to test the temporal interpretation of such variants of VP coordination. However, duration is expressed by equivalent temporal adverbials in all the languages under study, so that adverbials appear more amenable for cross-linguistic experimental design. Events of long duration in the first conjunct intuitively seem to have the same effect as verbs of slow motion. Consider the interpretation of (12a) and (12b): (12) A new family had just moved into the elegant house across the street. a. Claudia beat her oriental rug for a long time and eyed the new neighbor’s stylish car up and down. b. Claudia beat her oriental rug in a hurry and eyed the new neighbor’s stylish car up and down. With a temporal adverbial of short duration in the first conjunct, as in (12b), a sequential reading seems the preferred option, while a simultaneous interpretation is more accessible when the event is marked as temporally long, as in (12a), with a for x time adverbial generally not used with accomplishment predicates (but see section 5 for discussion).

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An explicit duration marker, in other words, may be a cue that competes with the VP structure itself for its preferred temporal interpretation, in the sense that adverbials denoting long duration strengthen temporal integration, while adverbials denoting short duration weaken this interpretation to the benefit of temporal sequence. In our experimental studies, we will investigate how far explicit marking of duration interacts with the aspectual cue in the languages that mark aspect grammatically. The different number of alternatives in the different languages, as well as the difference in type of alternatives across these languages, allows us to hypothesize that an unmarked form, namely the VP conjunction unmarked for aspect, will yield different preferred interpretations in the four languages we have chosen to investigate in this study. Furthermore, an explicit marker of long duration is likely to affect interpretation in the direction of overlap as compared to a marker of short duration, the latter being more likely to strengthen a sequential interpretation. Before specifying these hypotheses in greater detail in section 3, we will present the design of our cross-linguistic experiment.

2 Experimental Design

2.1 The Norming Study In order to include only items not biased for either of the interpretations (sequentiality or overlap), we ran a norming study. On the assumption that pragmatic considerations should not strongly vary across the languages under investigation, we only ran this norming study in Czech and German. The experiment was run as an acceptability judgment task on the web (WebExp2).6 Forty-two highly parallel sentence sets such as (13a–d) were constructed for German and Czech. (Note that the English versions in (13) are glosses only). Two factors were varied in the norming study: The duration of the first-conjunct event (short vs. long) and the temporal relation between the two events (sequential vs. overlapping). Both are expressed by temporal adverbials, placed in the first and the second conjunct, respectively. In the examples below the duration adverbial is in italics, while the relation adverbial is underlined. The goal of the norming study was to select for our experiment only sentences where the first event could plausibly be short or long and where both events allowed for a sequential as well as an overlapping temporal relation.

6

See http://www.webexp.info/. We would like to thank Oliver Bott for his help in setting up this experiment.

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(13) a.

b.

c.

d.

Jan ass sehr langsam sein Gulasch und las dann die Zeitung. Honza jedl v klidu guláš a potom četl noviny. ‘John ate very slowly his goulash and read the newspaper afterwards.’ Jan ass sehr schnell sein Gulasch und las dann die Zeitung. Honza jedl rychle guláš a potom četl noviny. ‘John ate very quickly his goulash and read the newspaper afterwards.’ Jan ass sehr langsam sein Gulasch und las dabei die Zeitung. Honza jedl v klidu guláš a přitom četl noviny. ‘John ate very slowly his goulash and read the newspaper at the same time.’ Jan ass sehr schnell sein Gulasch und las dabei die Zeitung. Honza jedl rychle guláš a přitom četl noviny. ‘John ate very quickly his goulash and read the newspaper at the same time.’

Each participant saw all items in all conditions (168 items all in all) in randomized order. Fifteen native Czech participants from the Charles University in Prague as well as 10 native German participants from Osnabrück University participated in the norming study. Their task was to judge the acceptability of the sentences on a scale from 1 (fully acceptable) to 8 (totally unacceptable). Judgment scores were individually z-standardized to compensate for interindividual differences in the use of the scale. Out of 42 items, the 21 most acceptable ones across languages and conditions were selected. Critically, across languages, t tests showed no reliable difference for sequential or overlapping eventualities in the “long” condition (sequential: z score = -.33; overlapping: z score = -.36; all ps > .40). Overlapping interpretations were, however, considered less acceptable than sequential interpretations for the “short” condition (sequential: z score = .13; overlapping: z score = -.41; p < .01).7 Looking at the languages individually, however, this difference was only significant for German (p < .001) but not for Czech (p > .40).

2.2 The Experiment Methods The experiment was set up as a pen-and-pencil questionnaire with a Latin square design of three lists and two different randomizations, resulting in six lists. 7

Note that lower numbers mean higher acceptability because of the acceptability scale.

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Each list had 21 critical items, 28 fillers and three training items. The critical items were contextualized and tested under three different conditions: NEUTRAL versus SHORT and LONG, that is, differing in the type of durative adverbial used in the first conjunct. Aspectually unmarked forms were used in all languages. An example (with the three different conditions) is given in (14): (14) At lunchtime all the workers went to the cafeteria. John ate his lunch slowly and read the newspaper ___________. (LONG) John ate his lunch in a hurry and read the newspaper ___________. (SHORT) John ate his lunch and read the newspaper ___________. (NEUTRAL) afterwards

at the same time

herself

mine

Participants were instructed to indicate their preferred interpretation of the temporal relation of the events by choosing one of the four alternative expressions—italicized in (14)—for the underlined, open space (only two of which actually expressed temporal relations). The stories were first written as English on the basis of the German and Czech pretested materials and then translated/adapted into highly parallel equivalents in Czech, German, and Norwegian. Thirty-eight Czech, 30 English, 36 German, and 30 Norwegian university students in the respective countries answered the questionnaire for their individual languages. Instructions were kept the same across all languages.8

2.3 The Critical Items: Eventuality Types and Temporal Adverbials In section 1.2 we argued that the temporal interpretation of VP coordination, at least in part, depends on the aspect or eventuality types of the two conjuncts. As far as our critical items in English, German, and Norwegian are concerned, the majority have either an accomplishment VP (ACC) in both conjuncts or an accomplishment in the first conjunct and an activity (ACT) in the second conjunct;9 these two main combinations are illustrated in (15) and (16) (items #208

Adaptation in translation may have led to slight variations, since we want the texts to be as natural as possible in the individual languages. 9 Some, if not all, our accomplishment predicates might in fact be considered semantically underdetermined, in principle allowing both a genuine (i.e., completed) accomplishment interpretation and an activity interpretation (leading

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3 and #15-3). In a few cases, like (17) (item #37-3) below, both conjuncts are activities.10 (15) At lunchtime all the workers went to the cafeteria. John ate his lunch and read the newspaper _______. Jan aß sein Gulasch und las ______ die Zeitung. (ACC + ACC) (16) Last Saturday was an exceptionally beautiful day. Mary polished the car and chatted with her neighbor ______. Klara wusch das Auto und schwätzte ____ mit der Nachbarin. (ACC + ACT) (17) Even during exam week the students found time for some relaxation. Tommy cycled along the river and listened to music on his iPod _______. Thorsten fuhr mit dem Rad am Fluss entlang und hörte _____ Musik auf seinem iPod. (ACT + ACT) Note, however, that although activity predicates, like states, may be considered imperfective/atelic per default because of their sub-interval property (Bohnemeyer & Swift 2004), maximal instantiations of activities are temporally bounded. They have a beginning and an end, and they may even have a more or less prototypical length: You normally do not chat with your neighbor for hours on end or cycle along the river for days without stops. In practice, then, activities do not differ that much from accomplishments, except for their inherent atelicity. Consequently, relative to a topic time of adequate length, accomplishment-activity coordination, as in (16), might open for both simultaneous and sequential readings, as predicted for accomplishment-accomplishment coordination like (15) (see section 1.2). And in most of our items, as in (15)–(17), the opening sentence does in fact specify a time interval that is a suitable temporal frame for the accomplishments and/or bounded activities described in the conjuncts. The temporal adverbials occurring in the first conjunct under the LONG condition are mostly genuine duration adverbials like for two hours/i to timer/zwei Stunden (lang)/dvě hodiny, which coerce accomplishments into activities, leaving out the culmination point, or disambiguate neutral predicates correspondingly (Bott & Hamm, this volume). The adverbials used under the SHORT condition mostly indicate duration more indirectly, by specifying speed rather than temporal up to but not reaching the culmination point), yet they are pragmatically strengthened to the former if nothing speaks against it (see Bott & Hamm, this volume). As for Czech, both conjuncts had simplex imperfective verbs, which can only be interpreted as activities (see section 1.2). 10 For reasons of space and readability our illustrations here appear in English and German only.

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extension (quickly/raskt/schnell/rychle); but in some cases, duration adverbials are used here too (for a short while/en liten stund/kurz/krátce). On the whole the modifying adverbials used in the experiment are very similar in their temporal properties. It should be noted, however, that some of the German and Czech parallel adverbials were closer to each other than to the English and Norwegian parallels. German and Czech share features that make very close formulations possible; for example, the German adverbial connectives dabei and dann have close semantic parallels in Czech přitom and potom, and in both languages these two adverbials take up parallel positions in the sentence as other temporal adverbials. However, German/Czech dabei/potom have no exact counterpart in English or Norwegian (see Fabricius-Hansen 2005, for dabei). English/Norwegian then/så, on the other hand, correspond to dann/potom in their temporal meaning but require a different sentential position than other temporal adverbials, and were therefore discarded as alternatives.

3 Hypotheses On a competition-based account, we stated above (section 1.3) a general prediction that VP conjunction could yield different preferred interpretations across the four languages under study. Given conjunction of event descriptions, notably events that are not pragmatically linked by consequentiality, we would predict conjunction with the simple form in English to show a preference for sequential interpretations, because of competition from the progressive and the adjunct alternatives, which generally express simultaneity (but see Behrens, Fabricius-Hansen, & Frazier, this volume, for the status of the adjunct construction); German and Norwegian should also show a preference for sequentiality, on the basis of the assumed universally valid extended script theory and PNO. Czech, however, in which the unmarked form is the imperfective simplex, would show a preference for simultaneous interpretations, because of a competition from the perfective alternative. In other words, the unmarked imperfective in Czech is hypothesized to be a stronger cue for temporal overlap than VP conjunction itself, and if VP conjunction by default should yield a temporal sequence interpretation across languages, as assumed by the PNO, the imperfective may counteract that interpretation. Given that an explicit duration marker, a marker for short duration versus a marker for long duration, is a cue for temporal (non)integration, we hypothesize that markers for long duration will increase the interpretation of simultaneity, while short duration markers will be a cue to increase/strengthen sequential readings.

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The reasoning above is based on the hypothesis that the PNO and the extended script theory hold, that is, that VP conjunction by default yields a sequential interpretation. Let us now consider the alternative: Say that VP coordination is at least an equally good cue for simultaneity readings. Then, if the coordinated events are not pragmatically consequential, simultaneous readings should be preferred in German and Norwegian. If aspect marking is complementary in English, we might still expect more sequential readings in English than in German and Norwegian, other things being equal. An explicit marking of long duration should not have any strong effect in German, Norwegian, and Czech, since the default reading now is hypothesized to be simultaneity anyway. A marking of long duration in English, however, could still possibly strengthen overlap interpretations, as it may be a cue to counteract the hypothesized non-progressive aspect effect. An explicit, short duration marker, on the other hand, should cue more sequential readings, at least for English, German, and Norwegian. A short duration marker is in principle also acceptable with the imperfective simplex in Czech; however, it is possible that Czech native speakers will expect the verb in the first conjunct to be perfective under this condition. It is therefore predicted that the readers will sense a clash between the short duration marker and the simplex imperfective, which may affect the preferred interpretation of temporal overlap. If it does, it is a strong cue for temporal non-integration. Let us sum this up in the following predictions on the two competing accounts of VP coordination: Alternative 1 PNO and the extended script theory—sequential interpretation is the preferred interpretation: • Under the NEUTRAL condition, because of the progressive alternative, a sequential interpretation should be strongly preferred in English. In German and Norwegian, a sequential interpretation should be preferred, although less so than for English because of a lack of alternative aspectual forms. For Czech, we predict grammatical aspect to be a stronger cue than the general extended script principle, so we predict a weaker preference for sequential interpretation than for the other languages. • Under the LONG condition, sequential interpretations should decrease across the languages, but sequential interpretations should still be strong, except for Czech. • Under the SHORT condition, sequential interpretations should increase across the languages and definitely be the preferred interpretation.

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Alternative 2 Simultaneous interpretation is at least as strong as content for VP coordination as any other temporal interpretation: • Under the NEUTRAL condition, a preference for overlap interpretations is predicted across the board, since there is no pragmatic ground for a sequential interpretation. The preference should be stronger for Czech than for the other languages, and weaker for English than for German, Norwegian, and Czech. • Under the LONG condition, no great positive effect on simultaneous interpretations is predicted for German, Norwegian, and Czech, but a stronger effect on English because of the progressive alternative. • Under the SHORT condition, we predict an increase of sequential interpretations across the languages (as under alternative 1), yet still a preference for overlap interpretations.

4 Results Table 1 shows the frequencies of choice of sequential and overlapping interpretations for the four languages and the three duration conditions: NEUTRAL, LONG, and SHORT. Percentages of choice indicate a general preference for overlapping interpretations, yet modulated by the duration of the first event as well as by the factor Language. Table 1 Percentages of choice of sequence and overlap interpretations across languages and duration conditions

Language CZECH GERMAN ENGLISH NORWEGIAN

Temporal interpretation SEQUENCE OVERLAP SEQUENCE OVERLAP SEQUENCE OVERLAP SEQUENCE OVERLAP

NEUTRAL . 21 . 79 . 29 . 71 . 36 . 64 . 38 . 62

LONG . 22 . 78 . 30 . 70 . 44 . 56 . 43 . 57

SHORT . 38 . 62 . 44 . 56 . 50 . 50 . 56 . 44

Judged on the basis of the percentages, the results show that under the NEUTRAL condition overlap interpretations win over sequential interpretation across the languages. The LONG condition in comparison to NEUTRAL has no strong effect on the interpretation in Czech and German, but apparently causes an unexpected reduction of simultaneous interpretations in Norwegian and English. The SHORT condition weakens the temporal overlap interpretations in all the

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languages tested. These results indicate that our predictions, given a default preference for temporal integration, are closer to the results of our study than the predictions based on a default preference for temporal sequence, as stated in section 2. In the following we consider the results in view of more precise statistical analyses.

4.1 Main Effects of Language For inferential statistics, we calculated log-odds of sequential and overlapping interpretations: log2(p(sequential)/p(overlapping)). Note that negative log-odds correspond to a higher number of overlapping interpretations, whereas positive values correspond to a higher number of sequential interpretations. We established a general preference for overlapping interpretations across languages (students-t1[133] = -8.67, p < .001, t2[78] = -3.71, p < .001). This preference is reliable for all languages except for Norwegian across participants and for Czech and German across items. Czech: students-t1[37] = -7.28, p < .001; t2[19] = -5.46, p < .001; English: students-t1[29] = 2.68, p < .02; t2[19] = -1.03, n.s.; German: students-t1[35] = -6.51, p < .001; t2[19] = -2.66, p < .02; Norwegian: students-t1[29] = -1.59, n.s.; t2[19] = -.02, n.s.

Fig. 2 Log-odds (log2(p(seq)/p (sim)) for each language, across the three conditions. Error bars correspond to one standard error of the mean.

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Languages differ reliably with respect to their general biases (main effect Language: F1[3,133] = 12.25, p < .001; F2[3,57] = 10.36, p < .001).11 Scheffé contrasts indicate that events are more frequently interpreted as overlapping in time in Czech than in English (F1: p < .001; F2: p < .01), in Norwegian (F1: p < .001; F2: p < .001), and marginally so than in German across participants (F1: p < .06; F2: n.s.). Simultaneous interpretations are moreover reliably more frequent in German than in Norwegian (F1: p < .05; F2: p < .01). In a post-hoc classification of our materials, we found that clear cases of items involving an activity in the second conjunct (seven cross-linguistically clear cases of accomplishment + activity, two cross-linguistically clear cases of activity + activity) outnumber the homogeneous accomplishment + accomplishment (ACCACC) items (five cross-linguistically clear cases). Temporal overlap interpretations are predicted for activities in the second conjunct and not semantically excluded for accomplishments either (see section 1.2). A general preference for simultaneity/temporal overlap under the NEUTRAL condition is thus in fact what one would expect for our test items on semantic grounds. We performed a posthoc analysis of only the clear cases for English, German, and Norwegian. Because of the imperfective simplex forms used in Czech, all eventualities in Czech have to be considered activities. A comparison of the results for accomplishment and activity combinations is thus not possible for Czech. As predicted from our semantic analyses, we find a marginally significant higher preference for temporal overlap interpretations in the ACC-ACT items than for ACC-ACC items for English, German, and Norwegian, as shown in Figure X3 (t test across items: p < .08).12 Although we could not include Czech in this posthoc analysis, the overwhelming preference for temporal overlap in Czech found in our general analyses is fully compatible with our semantic analysis. Given that only ACC-ACT items clearly show a preference for overlap in English, German, and Norwegian, the general overlap preference will most probably have to be explained on semantic grounds as detailed in section 1.2.

11

Note that the factor Language is not considered as a between-participants factor, but as a within-items factor. Duration is analyzed as repeated measures for both factors. 12 There were not enough items in the ACT-ACT combinations to conduct a statistical analysis

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90   80   70   60   50  

AccAcc  

40  

AccAct  

30   20   10   0   English  

German  

Norwegian  

Fig. 3 Percentages of overlap choices for accomplishment-accomplishment and accomplishment-activity combinations for English, German, and Norwegian

4.2 Main Effect of Duration Across languages, we find a main effect of duration (F1[2,266] = 19.99, p < .001, F2[2,150] = 11.58, p < .001). Explicit marking of a short duration of the first event leads to a reduced number of overlapping interpretations (short vs. long: F1: p < .001; F2: p < .001; short vs. neutral: F1: p < .001; F2: p < .001). Neutral and long conditions do not differ reliably (all ps > .10, n.s.).

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Fig. 4 Log-odds (log2(p(seq)/p(sim)) across languages for the three conditions. Error bars corresponds to one standard error of mean.

Although we did not establish a reliable interaction of the factors Language and Duration, we will look into language differences in the different conditions in more detail.

4.3 Language Differences by Condition 4.3.1 NEUTRAL Condition For the NEUTRAL items, that is, conjuncts that are not explicitly marked for duration, we find a strong preference for simultaneity across all four languages. A reliable effect of Language was established (F1[3,130] = 6.25, p < .001; F2[3,57] = 3.01, p < .04). Overlapping interpretations were chosen more frequently in Czech than in any of the other languages (though only reliably so across participants: Scheffé tests, Czech vs. English: F1: p < .01; F2: n.s.; vs. German: F1: p < .05; F2: n.s.; vs. Norwegian: F1: p < .01; F2: n.s.). English, German, and Norwegian did not differ reliably (all ps > .50, n.s.).

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Fig. 5 Log-odds (log2(p(seq)/p(sim)) for each language under the NEUTRAL condition. Error bars corresponds to one standard error of mean.

4.3.2 LONG Condition When the event in the first conjunct is marked for long duration (e.g., for a long time, all morning, slowly), the relative preference does not change very much in any of the languages: We note a small and non-significant decrease in simultaneity (overlap interpretations) for English (NEUTRAL: -1.18; LONG: 0.37) and Norwegian (NEUTRAL: -1.04, LONG: -0.37). The main effect of Language is statistically reliable in the LONG condition as well (F1[3,130] = 11.02, p < .001; F2[3,57] = 6.44, p < .001). Reliably more overlapping interpretations are found for Czech compared to English across participants (F1: p < .001; F2: p < .02) and Norwegian (F1: p < .001; F2: p < .02) but not compared to German (p > .70, n.s.). Overlapping interpretations are also more frequent for German compared to Norwegian (Scheffé-F1: p < .03; F2: p < .05) and to English (Scheffé-F1: p < .03, F2: p < .07), but only marginally so across items.

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0   Czech  

English  

German   Norwegian  

-­‐0,5   -­‐1   -­‐1,5   Mean  LogOdds   -­‐2   -­‐2,5   -­‐3   -­‐3,5   Fig. 6 Log-odds (log2(p(seq)/p(sim)) for each language under the long condition. Error bars correspond to one standard error of mean.

4.3.3 SHORT Condition When the event in the first conjunct is marked for short duration (for a short while, in a hurry, quickly), the preferred interpretation of simultaneity is still reliable for Czech (student-t1(37) = -3.54, p < .01; t2(19) = -2.52, p < .03). German, English, and Norwegian do not show any reliable preference in this condition. A reliable effect of the factor Language was also found in the SHORT condition (F1[3,130) = 3.14, p < .03; F2[3,57] = 7.12, p < .001). However, only Czech and Norwegian differ reliably in this condition (Scheffé-F1: p < .03; F2: p < .001).

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1   0,5   0   Czech  

English  

-­‐0,5  

German   Norwegian   Mean  LogOdds  

-­‐1   -­‐1,5   -­‐2   Fig. 7 Log-odds (log2(p(seq)/p(sim)) for each language under the SHORT condition. Error bars correspond to one standard error of mean.

4.4 Summary of Results To sum up, then, temporal overlap was shown to be preferred across our object languages, yet the languages differ reliably in their biases: Czech yields more simultaneous interpretations than the other languages, and German shows a reliably stronger preference for simultaneous interpretations than Norwegian across conditions. The LONG condition had no strong effect in Czech and German, as compared to the NEUTRAL condition, but contrary to our expectations, it reduced rather than increased the simultanteous interpretations in English and Norwegian, reliably so relative to German. The SHORT condition weakened simultaneity across the board; in all the languages except Czech the participants showed no reliable preference for either alternative.

5 Discussion On an experimental basis we have shown that a temporal integration of the events described in VP conjunction is the preferred interpretation across four different languages when pragmatic knowledge does not favor a (con)sequential reading. Our results demonstrate that the extended script theory, which indicates that the default interpretation of coordination is sequential, does not hold. The

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alternative account, that the VP coordinate structure itself is at least an equally good cue for simultaneity (as compared to sequentiality), is strongly supported. In the following we discuss our results in light of the predictions made on semantic grounds (5.1), the strength of linguistic cues across languages (5.2), the duration marker effects (5.3), and finally the unexpected differences between English, Norwegian, and German under the long condition (5.4). We conclude the discussion (5.5) by proposing follow-up studies needed for formalizing a ranking or weighting of constraints on VP conjunction in different languages.

5.1 The Semantic Predictions In the construction of our materials we were very careful to keep the same eventuality types in all the languages we tested. The semantic predictions for different combinations of eventuality types should thus hold across our object languages. Although we did not vary eventuality types systematically, we were able to analyze their possible impact in our data. As expected, eventuality types did affect interpretations and they did so similarly across languages. The strong overlap preference for accomplishment-activity items (section 4.1) certainly contributes to the more general preference for simultaneity. More particularly, the overwhelming preference for temporal overlap in Czech is in accordance with the inherent imperfectivity of the simplex forms used in the Czech items, which triggers interpretations in terms of activity-activity combinations. Altogether, then, our results show that semantics does play an important role but that it is not the only decisive factor for the temporal interpretation of VP conjunction.

5.2 Language Specific Preferences: The Strength of Cues We have seen that the languages differ markedly in interpretive preference. We attribute the results for Czech on the whole to the strength of the aspectual cue. The imperfective simplex form in Czech is clearly a stronger cue for simultaneity than VP coordination itself, as compared with the other languages. The simple form in English, on the other hand, in spite of its contrast with the progressive form, does not have the expected effect of pushing interpretation towards more sequential interpretations than Norwegian and German, which do not have grammaticalized competing structures. This indicates that the English simple form is aspectually open rather than a perfective counterpart to the progressive form. This view is in line with an experimental study by Anderson, Matlock, Fausey, and Spivey (2008) showing that, although the past progressive in English favors incomplete event interpretations, accomplishment predicates in the simple past are also consistent with incomplete events (see Bott & Hamm, this volume). The

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results of that same study can help explain the results we have found for English: Given that the simple form in English is compatible with interpretations in terms of incomplete accomplishments (that is, activities), temporal integration with an overlap interpretation is not just as likely, it is the (modestly) preferred option when world knowledge does not force or favor a sequential interpretation. This indicates that the extended script theory is pragmatically biased and that the VP coordination structure is at least as good for temporal overlap as for temporal sequence. The results across conditions for German as compared with Norwegian, however, do not strongly support our predictions, which stated that these two languages should yield similar results. Rather, English and Norwegian turn out more similar, both somewhat different from German. Simultaneous interpretations were reliably more frequent in German than in Norwegian. One notable difference between English and Norwegian as compared with German in particular is that temporal adverbials in German may be placed either before or after the object. Czech requires the adverbial before the object, but in English and Norwegian the adverbials in our material must follow the object.13 In the German and Czech version of our experiment the adverbials were placed before the object. Do the different positions of the adverbials in German on the one hand and English and Norwegian on the other offer an explanation of the results? We suspect that the difference is related to a basic word order difference between the languages. German is an OV (object-verb) language, while Norwegian, like English, is VO. In German, the duration adverbial precedes the object. On a more abstract level, the adverbial precedes not only the object, but also the lexical verb, which, if finite, is “moved” to the V2 position in main (“root”) clauses; if non-finite, and in subordinate clauses, it remains in situ, that is, in clause-final position.14 Let us illustrate with one of our items, which under the LONG condition would correspond to (18a) with the basic (subordinate) word order (the duration adverbial is in italics). (18) a.

13

(dass) Marie stundenlang das Auto wusch und mit der Nachbarin schwätzte. (that) Mary for hours the car polished and with the neighbor chatted

See for instance Frey & Pittner (1999) and Haider (2010) for more thorough descriptions of relevant topological contrasts between for example German and English. 14 Technically speaking, the V2 position is mostly identified with C (the complementizer position) or viewed as a specific (finite) functional head (F) (see e.g., Sternefeld 2008 and Haider 2010). Thus C’, or FP, coordination might be a more precise term for our VP coordination, as far as German (and Norwegian) is concerned.

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(that) Mary polished the car the whole afternoon and chatted with her neighbour.

In the German subordinate version (18a) the adverbial precedes both VP conjuncts, with the predicted effect that it can have scope over both conjuncts. This means that the conjunction of the VPs may in fact be generated below the adverbial, making for an overlap interpretation in terms of interlacing eventualities forming one complex event with the specified duration. Likewise in (19a), where two non-finite VPs are conjoined under a finite auxiliary. (19) a.

b.

Marie hat stundenlang das Auto gewaschen und mit der Nachbarin geschwätzt. Mary has for hours the car polished and with the neighbor chatted. Mary has polished the car the whole afternoon and chatted with the neighbor.

Could it be that the underlying OV structure above carries over to the main clause structure we have been concerned with, that is, that the adverbial in our test item (20a) may be interpreted as having scope over both conjuncts, in accordance with the abstract structure (20b)? (20) a. b.

Marie wusch stundenlang das Auto und schwätzte mit der Nachbarin. Marie FIN stundenlang [das Auto waschen und mit der Nachbarin schwätzen]

In English and Norwegian this possibility is ruled out since the verb of the first conjunct precedes the adverbial also in the basic (subordinate) word order; that is, the adverbial cannot structurally have scope over both conjuncts but measures the duration of the first conjunct eventuality alone, as in the English version (18b). This might facilitate an interpretation where the two eventualities are both included in the topic time, but relate to it independently of each other and thus also may follow each other, in line with alternative 1 for (8) in Figure 1 (section 1.2). Under the NEUTRAL condition, German still showed a clearer preference for overlap interpretations than English and Norwegian, although not reliably so. It may be the case that our theoretical speculation above carries over to cases without overt temporal marking, in which case it is to be expected that a temporal frame more easily scopes over both conjuncts in German and results in overlap interpretations.

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5.3 The Duration Effect We hypothesized at the outset that the explicit mention of duration would have an effect on the temporal interpretation. Under a default simultaneity interpretation of VP coordination, the explicit mention of long duration was hypothesized not to strongly affect German, Norwegian, and Czech, but possibly more so English, since it might counteract the hypothesized non-progressive effect. Since the non-progressive effect was found not to hold for English, long duration should not have any stronger effect for English than for the other languages. This is confirmed by the overall finding of our experiment: Although there is a small decrease in simultaneous interpretations in English and Norwegian in the LONG condition, we find no reliable difference between the neutral and the long condition in any of the languages. Czech still favors the simultaneous interpretation far more strongly than English and Norwegian, and again we contribute this finding to the imperfective interpretation of the Czech simplex form. One surprising result, however, is that German is reliably different from Norwegian and English in the LONG condition, and comes closer to the result for Czech, in spite of their typological differences. Our analysis of the potentially different scope properties of adverbials in German as opposed to English and Norwegian above offers a partial explanation for this effect. However, the different behavior of the LONG versus the SHORT condition needs further discussion. The SHORT condition affected the interpretation significantly across the languages under study. In all the languages it showed a reliable decrease of overlap interpretations compared to the NEUTRAL condition. For German, Norwegian, and English, participants showed no reliable preference for sequential or simultaneous interpretation. We can therefore draw the general conclusion that the explicit marking of the first event as short pushes interpretation towards a temporal non-integration of the second-conjunct event, that is, a temporal sequence of the two events. The explicit mention of short duration of the firstconjunct event is thus a strong cue for event completion, counteracting the default simultaneity of the VP conjunction structure. For Czech, German, and English, the short condition yielded reliably different results from the long condition. A reaction-time study by Coll-Florit and Gennari (2011) shows that the duration of an event(uality) affects the interpretation of its description. Thus, descriptions of durative states take longer to process than descriptions of punctual events, and they elicit semantically more diverse associations (tested on association measures as well as on measures of diversity in contexts of use in text corpora). Coll-Florit and Gennari hypothesize that longer events are represented in terms of more diverse contingency and temporal relations with other events (using the model in Moens & Steedman 1988), and claim that this is dictated by the variety of situations in which they are experienced. Non-durative events, on the

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other hand, mostly establish similar, well-defined contingency dependencies with other events, such as those leading to or resulting from the event in question. Although we have not measured response time in our study, we ask ourselves whether the rise in sequential interpretation across all four languages when our items are controlled for short duration can be linked to their proposal: The shorter the duration, the more restricted the variety of associated situations. Consequently, short duration makes temporal integration with other situations less plausible. This link is highly speculative, of course, and would need closer inspection.

5.4 The English and Norwegian LONG Condition Effect: Why Does It Differ from German and Czech? An adverbial of long duration was hypothesized to facilitate an overlap interpretation, as it might coerce the interpretation of the event from an accomplishment in the direction of an activity, and thus facilitate temporal integration of the second eventuality. The hypothesis was not confirmed, and furthermore, the preferred interpretation differed across languages. We found that when an adverbial of long duration was added to the event description in the first conjunct, German turned out closer to our predictions than Norwegian and English, a finding partly accounted for on the assumption discussed above (section 5.2) that even the (main clause) V2 structure of German has an underlying, basic OV structure. On that assumption one would also expect German to show a higher frequency of simultaneous interpretations under the SHORT condition than Norwegian and English, but a reliable push towards sequentiality was found for all the languages under the short condition. Why are Norwegian and English so different from German under the LONG condition in particular? As outlined in section 5.1, our experimental material combined different eventuality types. The LONG condition was designed with for adverbials in most of the items. For adverbials favor or support an activity reading of the predicate. When it is combined with an accomplishment type predicate, coercion must take place, or the reading is judged somewhat non-sensical. Bott and Hamm (this volume) take up the question of how people interpret combinations of accomplishments and temporal adverbials. What they show is that such combinations are judged sensical in German as well as in English, in spite of the typological differences, yet reading time differs significantly in the two languages. When English accomplishments in the simple form are combined with for adverbials, the reading time is significantly longer in English than in corresponding combinations in German. Furthermore, and this is important for our study here, when the adverbial is placed before the object in German, for adverbial combinations are easier to read than in adverbial combinations, and they do not

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cause any disruption in the reading. This means that any accomplishment reading is postponed till the object is read. The pre-object position of the adverbials in German thus facilitates coercion to activity readings, making for easier processing of a temporal integration of the events in the two conjuncts, and thus strengthening our theoretical assumptions above. Since English and Norwegian require the adverbial after the object, there is reason to believe that the accomplishment reading is cued, and that a restructuring of the semantic material has to take place when the adverbial is read. Furthermore, when the for adverbial follows the object in the first conjunct, scoping over the first event description only, it may have a bounding effect on the temporal interpretation of this event that favors a sequential interpretation. Although Bott and Hamm’s test does not include Norwegian, the placement of for adverbials is the same in the two languages, which makes it reasonable to think that the processing difficulty found for English also carries over to Norwegian. The facilitation of an unbounded reading in German because of the pre-object placement of the for adverbial, in contrast to English and Norwegian, may therefore account for the different outcomes in the long-duration condition in our study.

5.5 Prospects The off-line data gathered in this paper allowed us to establish some of the constraints relevant to the temporal interpretation of VP conjuncts as well as their respective weights across languages. Our explanation of the results does however also make predictions about processing complexity as well as about the time course of the integration of different constraints. The assumed differences in the time courses of coercing accomplishments into activities between German and Czech on the one hand and English and Norwegian on the other should for example show up in language specific differences in reading time profiles. Our assumptions on the processing of short duration eventualities should lead to similar effects in processing time as have been found in Coll-Florit and Gennari’s (2011) study. In short, our assumptions on the different constraints at work do have direct consequences for processing. To confirm our model, these predictions need to be tested in online tasks such as self-paced reading, eye-tracking, or the measurement of event-related potentials. In our study we presented two temporal adverbials for the informants to choose from to express their temporal interpretation: one of simultaneity, and one of sequentiality. One issue that needs further testing is whether the simultaneous interpretation comes out as the preferred one even when there is no adverbial to fill in. One reviewer of a draft of this paper kindly indicated that the use of “at the same time” to end the second conjunct would be un(der)-informative if the default interpretation of VP conjunction is overlap or simultaneity anyway. A follow-up

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study that could make the preferred interpretation under the neutral condition even clearer would be a test without temporal adverbials to “spell out" the interpretation, where the informants could choose between graphic illustrations. Two factors that we did not vary systematically in this experiment seem to have very clear effects on the interpretation of the temporal relations: the combination of eventuality types and the position of the adverb. Both factors need to be tested more systematically in future experiments. From an optimality theoretic perspective, simultaneity has been shown to be at least as good a content for the VP conjunctive structure as sequentiality. Whether the VP conjunctive structure is at least as good as another structure for that content, such as for example clause conjunction, has not been tested, but see Behrens, Fabricius-Hansen, and Frazier (this volume) for further tests. Our study was designed to test the interpretation of VP conjunction when there is no pragmatically based (con)sequential connectedness between the eventualities described in the conjuncts. To really establish that temporal overlap is in general at least as good as sequentiality for this structure would of course require a followup study of frequency of use in real text. If frequency studies show a much higher outcome for pragmatically consequential cases of VP conjunction, this may indicate that (con)sequential content is better for this form than simultaneity. However, we have seen that the predictions will vary with the typological features of individual languages. We envision a corpus-based follow-up, notably with a representative sample of different text genres, to measure the relative frequency of sequential and simultaneous uses of VP conjunction. Only with the relative frequency of use across genres can we go on to formalize a ranking of the optimality theoretic constraints on VP conjunction. What we have shown in this study, however, is that pragmatic accounts have been somewhat biased and that we need to include the relative strength of different linguistic cues in an optimality theoretic account.

References Anderson, J. (1980). Concepts, propositions and schemata: What are the cognitive units? Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 29, 121–162. Anderson, S., Matlock, T., Fausey, C. M., and Spivey, M. J. (2008). On the path to understanding the on-line processing of grammatical aspect. In V. Sloutsky, B. Love, & K. McRae (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2253–2258), Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. Bates, E., Devescori, A., & d’Amico, S. (1999). Processing complex sentences: A crosslinguistic study. Language and Cognitive Processes, 14(1), 69–123. Behrens, B., Fabricius-Hansen, C., & Frazier, L. (this volume). Pairing form and meaning in English and Norwegian: Conjoined VPs or conjoined clauses?

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