<p>Effects of NP type in reading cleft sentences in English</p>

Authors: Warren, Tessa¹; Gibson, Edward²

Source: Language and Cognitive Processes, Volume 20, Number 6, December 2005 , pp. 751-767(17)

Publisher: Psychology Press, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

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Abstract:

<p>This paper investigates factors which contribute to the complexity of English sentences with long-distance dependencies. Two hypotheses were compared: (1) increased referential processing between the endpoints of a dependency increases processing difficulty at the completion of the dependency (Gibson, 1998, 2000; Warren & Gibson, 2002) and (2) increased similarity between NPs awaiting role-assignment increases memory interference during retrieval (Gordon, Hendrick, & Johnson, 2001). Self-paced word-by-word moving-window reading times were gathered over object-extracted cleft sentences in which two NPs were varied among definite descriptions, first names, and pronouns. Reading times at the verb supported both hypotheses. As the referential hypothesis predicted, reading times were faster when the intervening subject NP had a more referentially accessible type. Consistent with the similarity hypothesis, reading times were slow when both NPs were names or descriptions. Later comprehension measures showed strong effects of similarity-based interference, but did not show effects of referential processing load.</p>

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01690960500051055

Affiliations: 1: University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA 2: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

Publication date: 2005-12-01

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