人脑对复杂句的记忆不完整，导致误判否定极性词的使用是否合法。
Noisy memory encoding explains negative polarity illusions
- 基于记忆损耗与上下文意外度理论，解释否定极性词误用现象
- 相似限定词组合使误判率显著上升，实验验证强度差异达显著水平
- 揭示人类语言处理在资源限制下的理性重构机制，适合认知科学读者
句子如‘那些从未被批评家推荐的作者，却曾获得畅销小说认可’在语法上应为错误（因‘ever’未受许可），但常被评价为可接受，此现象称作‘否定极性错觉’。本文提出，基于Hahn等人（2022）的损失性上下文意外度理论——即人们对复杂句的编码存在缺陷——可解释该现象。我们假设：主句与从句主语中的限定词记忆模糊，可能引发限定词交换，从而允许‘ever’出现。当两处限定词越相似，错觉效应越强。六组新限定词配对（如‘few’与‘many’、‘few’与‘most’）的可接受性判断任务支持该假说，尤其发现‘许多作者，那些少数批评家推荐的，曾获得畅销小说认可’这一句在无时间压力下仍触发更强错觉。结果进一步支持人类语言处理的非完美性与资源理性：面对工作记忆限制，人们会从有噪声的语言输入中重建最可能的内容，以促进下游处理。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
A sentence like "The authors that no critics recommended have ever received acknowledgment for a best-selling novel" is sometimes rated as acceptable even though, strictly speaking, it is ungrammatical because the negative polarity word "ever" is not licensed where it is. This behavioral effect is sometimes called a "negative polarity illusion". Here we propose that the lossy context surprisal theory of Hahn et al. (2022) -- whereby people have an imperfect encoding of complex sentences -- might explain this effect. We hypothesize that people have poor memory representation of the determiners in the main-clause and embedded-clause subjects and could entertain a determiner exchange that licenses ever. We propose that more similar determiners in those positions would trigger stronger illusion effects. Acceptability judgment tasks with six novel determiner pairs (e.g., "few" and "many", "few" and "most") support our proposal, showing, specifically, that a novel sentence, "Many authors that few critics recommended have ever received acknowledgment for a best-selling novel", triggered a much stronger illusion than the canonical one even without time pressure. These results offer further support for the suggestion that human language processing is imperfect and resource-rational: in face of working memory limitations, humans rationally reconstruct what is most likely from noisy linguistic input to facilitate downstream processing.
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