Variation in the use of syntactic alternations has long been an explanatory target of language production theories. In this work, we test the predictions of several semantic, pragmatic and psycholinguistic theories of language use for the English dative alternation. We first experimentally test the role of incremental constituent informativity in the dative alternation, and find that contrary to information structural and RSA models of production, informativity has little effect on production preferences. We then more rigorously focus on accessibility effects, demonstrating that a lossy-context automatic policy can recover a key pattern of accessibility. Ultimately, we conclude that incremental production is modulated primarily by both accessibility and lexical semantic effects, rather than audience design pressures.

Authors:

Neil Rathi: Stanford University; Brandon Waldon: Georgetown University; Judith Degen: Stanford University