• Ethics in language scientific work, 7.5 HEC (LIN506) (Bachelor programme course)
• Language evolution, evolvement and variation, 7.5 HEC (LIN133) (First semester)
• Neuroscience, cognition & teaching II, 7.5 HEC (PSPR08) (Psychology programme)
• Languages of the world, 7.5 HEC (LIN135) (First semester)
• Psycho- and neurolinguistics, 7.5 HEC (LIN204) (Second semester course)
• Working methods in language sciences, 7.5 HEC (LIN203) (Second semester course)
• Experimental Lingustics, 15 HEC (LIN311) (Third semester course)
• Linguistic Theory and Methodology, 7.5 HEC (LIM011) (Master programme course)
• Neurolinguistics, 3.5 HEC (Speech and language pathology programme)

In my thesis, I investigated grammatical relations (i.e., subject and object) in Swedish transitive sentences from a usage-based perspective. More specifically, the thesis was concerned with the the distribution of grammatical relations in Swedish transitive sentences with respect to argument prominence properties (e.g., animacy and definiteness). The general hypothesis is that prototypical subjects / Actors tend to be more prominent than prototypical direct objects / Undergoers with respect to e.g., animacy and definiteness. Prominence properties of argument NPs are utilized as cues during argument interpretation (i.e, determining which of the two arguments that is the Actor and the Undergoer), on par with morphosyntactic information such as case marking and word order, and the weightings of these cues can be quantified on the basis of the degree to which they correlate with grammatical functions in language use.

In the thesis, I investigated these assumptions on the basis of corpus data, statistical modeling and neuro- and psycholinguistic experimentation (using a event-related brain potentials and a self-paced reading paradigm). I present a statistical model of incremental argument interpretation in isolated sentences that is based upon the distribution of prominence features in the NP arguments of transitive sentences in written Swedish. This model is tested experimentally using the self-paced reading paradigm.

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Bayesian surprise predicts incremental processing of grammatical functions

  2021. Thomas Hörberg, T. Florian Jaeger. CUNY 2021, 34th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, March 4-6, 2021, University of Pennsylvania, 360-361

  Conference

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• Duality of Smell

  2021. Robert Pellegrino (et al.). Chemical Senses 46, 1-11

  Article

  Olfactory research in humans has largely focused on odors perceived via sniffing, orthonasal olfaction, whereas odors perceived from the mouth, retronasal olfaction, are less well understood. Prior work on retronasally presented odors involves animal models and focus mainly on odor sensitivity, but little is known about retronasal olfactory perception and cognition in humans. In this study, we compared orthonasal and retronasal odor presentation routes to investigate differences in odor descriptions and evaluations. Thirty-six individuals participated in a within-subjects study using twelve odors (varying in pleasantness and edibility) in perceptual and semantic tasks. Orthonasal presentation was associated with a better ability to identify odors, and with more concrete (and source-based) language. Exploratory analyses revealed that whereas orthonasal odors were described with words that had visual associations, retronasal odors were described with words that had interoceptive associations. Interestingly, these route-dependent differences in descriptor usage were not explained by differences in sensitivity and intensity, suggesting instead a cognitive and linguistic processing difference between odors presented orthonasally and retronasally. Our results indicate that olfaction is, in fact, a dual sense, in which the routes change the perception of an odor.

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• A Rational Model of Incremental Argument Interpretation

  2021. Thomas Hörberg, T. Florian Jaeger. Frontiers in Psychology 12

  Article

  A central component of sentence understanding is verb-argument interpretation, determining how the referents in the sentence are related to the events or states expressed by the verb. Previous work has found that comprehenders change their argument interpretations incrementally as the sentence unfolds, based on morphosyntactic (e.g., case, agreement), lexico-semantic (e.g., animacy, verb-argument fit), and discourse cues (e.g., givenness). However, it is still unknown whether these cues have a privileged role in language processing, or whether their effects on argument interpretation originate in implicit expectations based on the joint distribution of these cues with argument assignments experienced in previous language input. We compare the former, linguistic account against the latter, expectation-based account, using data from production and comprehension of transitive clauses in Swedish. Based on a large corpus of Swedish, we develop a rational (Bayesian) model of incremental argument interpretation. This model predicts the processing difficulty experienced at different points in the sentence as a function of the Bayesian surprise associated with changes in expectations over possible argument interpretations. We then test the model against reading times from a self-paced reading experiment on Swedish. We find Bayesian surprise to be a significant predictor of reading times, complementing effects of word surprisal. Bayesian surprise also captures the qualitative effects of morpho-syntactic and lexico-semantic cues. Additional model comparisons find that it—with a single degree of freedom—captures much, if not all, of the effects associated with these cues. This suggests that the effects of form- and meaning-based cues to argument interpretation are mediated through expectation-based processing.

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• Olfactory Influences on Visual Categorization

  2020. Thomas Hörberg (et al.). Cerebral Cortex 30 (7), 4220-4237

  Article

  Visual stimuli often dominate nonvisual stimuli during multisensory perception. Evidence suggests higher cognitive processes prioritize visual over nonvisual stimuli during divided attention. Visual stimuli should thus be disproportionally distracting when processing incongruent cross-sensory stimulus pairs. We tested this assumption by comparing visual processing with olfaction, a “primitive” sensory channel that detects potentially hazardous chemicals by alerting attention. Behavioral and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were assessed in a bimodal object categorization task with congruent or incongruent odor–picture pairings and a delayed auditory target that indicated whether olfactory or visual cues should be categorized. For congruent pairings, accuracy was higher for visual compared to olfactory decisions. However, for incongruent pairings, reaction times (RTs) were faster for olfactory decisions. Behavioral results suggested that incongruent odors interfered more with visual decisions, thereby providing evidence for an “olfactory dominance” effect. Categorization of incongruent pairings engendered a late “slow wave” ERP effect. Importantly, this effect had a later amplitude peak and longer latency during visual decisions, likely reflecting additional categorization effort for visual stimuli in the presence of incongruent odors. In sum, contrary to what might be inferred from theories of “visual dominance,” incongruent odors may in fact uniquely attract mental processing resources during perceptual incongruence.

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• The semantic organization of the English odor vocabulary

  2019. Thomas Hörberg, Maria Larsson, Jonas K. Olofsson.

  Conference

  Most people find it difficult to name familiar odors. Many languages, including English, lack a vocabulary devoted to describing odor qualities (compared to, e.g., a color term vocabulary), and little is known about the vocabulary used to describe odors. Attempts to establish “primary odor descriptors” have been unsuccessful. To date, research on odor vocabulary has rarely been done from a data-driven, empirical perspective.

  We present a study on the semantic organization of odor vocabulary, based on the distribution of words in olfactory and gustatory contexts, using a three-billion-word corpus of written English. Using a data-driven, computational linguistic approach developed in our lab, we quantify terms with respect to the degree of olfactory-semantic content they convey. We then derive the semantic organization of the top 200 olfactory-related terms, using a distributional-semantic word vector model, which represent semantic distances as multidimensional vector distances. The model is trained on olfactory and gustatory contexts, using the word2vec neural network implementation. Based on the semantic distances, we then use dimensionality reduction and clustering techniques (i.e., PCA and hierarchical clustering) to derive a 3-dimensional, corpus-based semantic space, and six principal descriptor clusters.

  Using distances based on the Draveneiks odor-term ratings data set, we also derive a semantic space with six specific clusters for the Draveneiks terms. The organization and clustering of our corpus-based semantic space match with the ratings-based semantic space, thereby showing the viability of our corpus-based approach. Based on our corpus-based data, we finally propose a novel domain-general odor term taxonomy (i.e., a domain-general odor wheel) that captures the dimensions and clusters identified in our analyses.

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• Functional motivations behind direct object fronting in written Swedish

  2018. Thomas Hörberg. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3 (1)

  Article

  In Swedish, grammatical functions are primarily encoded by word order. In prototypical transitive sentences, the subject precedes the direct object. However, Swedish also allows for fronting of the direct object, although such sentences are potentially ambiguous with respect to grammatical functions. This study therefore investigates direct object fronting in written Swedish with respect to 1) which functions this construction serves and 2) whether the use of direct object fronting is dispreferred when the grammatical functions cannot be determined on other information types. These questions are investigated on the basis of quantitative differences in the distribution of NP prominence properties (e.g., givenness and animacy) and formal, morphosyntactic cues to grammatical functions (e.g., case marking and verb particles) between OVS and SVO sentences, and between OVS sentences and passives. The results indicate that direct object fronting is used when the object either is topical and highly discourse prominent, or when it is contrastive. I also argue that direct object fronting is used to introduce new topics into the discourse. Subjects are more frequently high in discourse prominence in object-initial sentences than in subject-initial sentences. I suggest that this stems from a motivation to keep the information in object-initial sentences following the sentence-initial object “informationally light” and predictable. Unambiguous formal markers of grammatical functions are used more frequently in OVS sentences than in SVO sentences, but less frequently in passives than in SVO sentences. OVS sentences also more frequently contain an animate subject and an inanimate object than SVO sentences, and in passives, animate subjects and inanimate objects are even less frequent. Writers therefore seem to prefer the structurally unambiguous passive construction over the potentially ambiguous object-initial construction, when grammatical functions cannot be determined on the basis of other formal markers or an NP argument animacy difference. Further, sentences with two animate arguments more frequently contain formal markers than sentences with at most one animate argument. These findings indicate that writers actively avoid direct object fronting when it potentially results in an ambiguity, and provide evidence for the hypothesis that writers are inclined to actively avoid ambiguities more generally.

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• Probabilistic and Prominence-driven Incremental Argument Interpretation in Swedish

  2016. Thomas Hörberg (et al.).

  Thesis (Doc)

  This dissertation investigates how grammatical functions in transitive sentences (i.e., `subject' and `direct object') are distributed in written Swedish discourse with respect to morphosyntactic as well as semantic and referential (i.e., prominence-based) information. It also investigates how assignment of grammatical functions during on-line comprehension of transitive sentences in Swedish is influenced by interactions between morphosyntactic and prominence-based information.

  In the dissertation, grammatical functions are assumed to express role-semantic (e.g., Actor and Undergoer) and discourse-pragmatic (e.g., Topic and Focus) functions of NP arguments. Grammatical functions correlate with prominence-based information that is associated with these functions (e.g., animacy and definiteness). Because of these correlations, both prominence-based and morphosyntactic information are assumed to serve as argument interpretation cues during on-line comprehension. These cues are utilized in a probabilistic fashion. The weightings, interplay and availability of them are reflected in their distribution in language use, as shown in corpus data. The dissertation investigates these assumptions by using various methods in a triangulating fashion.

  The first contribution of the dissertation is an ERP (event-related brain potentials) experiment that investigates the ERP response to grammatical function reanalysis, i.e., a revision of a tentative grammatical function assignment, during on-line comprehension of transitive sentences. Grammatical function reanalysis engenders a response that correlates with the (re-)assignment of thematic roles to the NP arguments. This suggests that the comprehension of grammatical functions involves assigning role-semantic functions to the NPs.

  The second contribution is a corpus study that investigates the distribution of prominence-based, verb-semantic and morphosyntactic features in transitive sentences in written discourse. The study finds that overt morphosyntactic information about grammatical functions is used more frequently when the grammatical functions cannot be determined on the basis of word order or animacy. This suggests that writers are inclined to accommodate the understanding of their recipients by more often providing formal markers of grammatical functions in potentially ambiguous sentences. The study also finds that prominence features and their interactions with verb-semantic features are systematically distributed across grammatical functions and therefore can predict these functions with a high degree of confidence.

  The third contribution consists of three computational models of incremental grammatical function assignment. These models are based upon the distribution of argument interpretation cues in written discourse. They predict processing difficulties during grammatical function assignment in terms of on-line change in the expectation of different grammatical function assignments over the presentation of sentence constituents. The most prominent model predictions are qualitatively consistent with reading times in a self-paced reading experiment of Swedish transitive sentences. These findings indicate that grammatical function assignment draws upon statistical regularities in the distribution of morphosyntactic and prominence-based information in language use. Processing difficulties in the comprehension of Swedish transitive sentences can therefore be predicted on the basis of corpus distributions.

  Read more about Probabilistic and Prominence-driven Incremental Argument Interpretation in Swedish

Show all publications by Thomas Hörberg at Stockholm University