Psychological insubstantiality of syntactic traces

 
PIIS0373658X0011301-0-1
Publication type Article
Status Published
Authors
Affiliation: National Research University «Higher School of Economics»
Address: Moscow, 101000, Russia
Affiliation:
National Research University «Higher School of Economics»
Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry
Address: Moscow, 101000, Russia
Affiliation: National Research University «Higher School of Economics»
Address: Moscow, 101000, Russia
Affiliation:
National Research University «Higher School of Economics»
Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology, Russian Academy of Sciences
Address: Moscow, 101000, Russia
Affiliation: The University of Hong Kong
Address: Hong Kong, China
Journal nameVoprosy Jazykoznanija
EditionIssue 1
Pages102-110
Abstract

The present study employed the visual-world eyetracking paradigm to discriminate between the syntactic and context-oriented strategies concerning the processing of wh-questions in 36 native speakers of Russian. According to the syntactic-oriented strategy, while processing the questions like Kto devochku potseloval v shkole? (who-NOM girl-ACC kissed at school?), activation of the object referent devochka at the verb would signal a post-verbal trace of wh-movement. Alternatively, if the processing is context-dependent, the overt object devochka preceding the verb precludes the possibility that it could be the referent of the whfiller, and the reactivation of the subject NP referent should follow instead. Indeed, the results show that the proportion of fixations on the object NP referent at the verb was less than on the subject NP referent. Therefore identification of the referent associated with the wh-filler is not syntactically constrained, but instead is contextually fed: as soon as the context provides enough cues to exclude referents that cannot be linked to the wh-filler, the remaining referent gets associated with it.

Keywordssyntactic trace, wh-questions, eye-tracking
Received01.02.2015
Publication date01.02.2015
Number of characters1040
Cite   Download pdf To download PDF you should sign in

Price publication: 0

Number of purchasers: 0, views: 544

Readers community rating: votes 0

1. Fedorova 2008 — Fedorova O.V. Metodika registratsii dvizhenij glaz «Vizual'nyj mir»: shans dlya sblizheniya psikholingvisticheskikh traditsij // Voprosy yazykoznaniya. 2008. № 6. S. 98—120. [Fedorova O.V. Methods for registration of eye-movements «visual world»: a chance for a «rapprochement» of linguistic traditions. Voprosy jazykoznanija. 2008. No. 6. Pp. 98—120.]

2. Sharov — Sharov S.A. Obschij chastotnyj slovar' lemm // URL: www.corpus.leeds.ac.uk/serge/frqlist. [Sharov S.A. Obshchii chastotnyi slovar’ lemm [General frequency dictionary of lemmas]. Available at: www.corpus.leeds.ac.uk/serge/frqlist.]

3. Arnold et al. 2000 — Arnold J.E., Eisenband J.G., Brown-Schmidt S., Trueswell J.C. The rapid use of gender information: Evidence of the time course of pronoun resolution from eyetracking. Cognition. 2000. Vol. 76. No. 1. Pp. B13—B26.

4. Barr 2008 — Barr D.J. Analyzing ‘visual world’ eyetracking data using multilevel logistic regression. Journal of memory and language. 2008. Vol. 59. No. 4. Pp. 457—474.

5. Barr et al. 2013 — Barr D.J., Levy R., Scheepers C., Tily H.J. Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of memory and language. 2013. Vol. 68. No. 3. Pp. 255—278.

6. Chomsky 1957 — Chomsky N. Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton, 1957.

7. Cloitre, Bever 1988 — Cloitre M., Bever T.G. Linguistic anaphors, levels of representation, and discourse. Language and cognitive processes. 1988. Vol. 3. No. 4. Pp. 275—291.

8. Cooper 1974 — Cooper R.M. The control of eye fixation by the meaning of spoken language: A new methodology for the real-time investigation of speech perception, memory, and language processing. Cognitive psychology. 1974. Vol. 6. No. 1. Pp. 84—107.

9. Dickey, Thompson 2009 — Dickey M.W., Thompson C.K. Automatic processing of wh- and NP-movement in agrammatic aphasia: Evidence from eyetracking. Journal of Neurolinguistics. 2009. Vol. 22. No. 6. Pp. 563—583.

10. Dickey et al. 2007 — Dickey M.W., Choy J.W.J., Thompson C.K. Real-time comprehension of wh-movement in aphasia: Evidence from eyetracking while listening. Brain and language. 2007. Vol. 100. No. 1. Pp. 1—22.

11. Kaiser, Trueswell 2008 — Kaiser E., Trueswell J.C. Interpreting pronouns and demonstratives in Finnish: Evidence for a form-specific approach to reference resolution. Language and Cognitive Processes. 2008. Vol. 23. No. 5. Pp. 709—748.

12. Kaiser et al. 2009 — Kaiser E., Runner J.T., Sussman R.S., Tanenhaus M.K. Structural and semantic constraints on the resolution of pronouns and reflexives. Cognition. 2009. Vol. 112. No. 1. Pp. 55—80.

13. Kamide et al. 2003 — Kamide Y., Scheepers C., Altmann G.T.M. Integration of syntactic and semantic information in predictive processing: Cross-linguistic evidence from German and English. Journal of psycholinguistic research. 2003. Vol. 32. No. 1. Pp. 37—55.

14. MacDonald, MacWhinney 1990 — MacDonald M.C., MacWhinney B. Measuring inhibition and facilitation from pronouns. Journal of memory and language. 1990. Vol. 29. No. 4. Pp. 469—492.

15. Matin et al. 1993 — Matin E., Shao K.C., Boff K.R. Saccadic overhead: Information-processing time with and without saccades. Perception and psychophysics. 1993. Vol. 53. No. 4. Pp. 372—380.

16. Sussman, Sedivy 2003 — Sussman R.S., Sedivy J. The time-course of processing syntactic dependencies: Evidence from eye movements. Language and cognitive processes. 2003. Vol. 18. No. 2. Pp. 143—163.

Система Orphus

Loading...
Up