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| Titel: |
Interaction of verb selectional restrictions, noun animacy and syntactic form in sentence processing |
| Auteur: |
Caplan, David Hildebrandt, Nancy Waters, Gloria S. |
| Verschenen in: |
Language & cognitive processes |
| Paginering: | Jaargang 9 (1994) nr. 4 pagina's 549-585 |
| Jaar: |
1994-11-01 |
| Inhoud: |
We report five experiments that deal with the role of verb selectional restrictions and the animacy of nouns in the construction and interpretation of syntactic structure. In the first two experiments, the effect of the selectional restriction requirements of verbs and the animacy of nouns on sentence comprehension was assessed in a speeded acceptability judgement task. Four sentence types were presented in which syntactic complexity (object vs subject relativisation) and number of propositions were orthogonally varied. Sentences contained verbs that required either animate subjects or animate objects, and unacceptable sentences were created by violating the selectional restriction requirements of the verb in the embedded clause. Analyses of both reaction time and accuracy data showed that there was an interaction between the selectional restriction requirements of verbs (which correlated perfectly with the animacy of nouns in subject or object position), and syntactic form, on these judgments. Experiment 3 was designed to determine whether the interaction found in the first set of studies was due to the selectional restriction requirements of the verbs or the animacy of nouns in particular grammatical positions. Cleft-subject and cleft-object sentences containing verbs that imposed selectional restrictions, in which animacy of nouns was varied, were presented in a speeded acceptability judgement task. The results indicated that the interaction between type of selectional restriction (imposed on the subject vs on the object) and syntactic structure only held for sentences with pairs of nouns that varied in animacy. Experiments 4 and 5 were self-paced reading experiments that were designed to determine where in the course of sentence processing this interaction between the animacy of the nouns in particular grammatical positions and the syntactic form of a sentence occurred. In both experiments, subjects read cleft-object sentences in which the animacy of the matrix noun and the noun in subject position of the relative clause was varied, and the verbs selected for either animate subjects or animate objects. In both experiments, there were no differences in self-paced reading times until the presentation of the verb of the embedded clause, at which point there were significant differences as a function of verb type. These experiments indicate that the selectional restriction requirements of a verb and the animacy of a noun in subject and object positions interact with the syntactic form of a sentence at some stage of the sentence comprehension process. The results are discussed in terms of the architecture of the parser and the issue of the modularity of the sentence comprehension system. |
| Uitgever: |
Psychology Press |
| Bronbestand: |
Elektronische Wetenschappelijke Tijdschriften |
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