The Pistol that Injured the Cowboy: Difficulty with Inanimate Subject-Verb Integration Is Reduced by Structural Separation

Autor/inn/en	Lowder, Matthew W.; Gordon, Peter C.
Titel	The Pistol that Injured the Cowboy: Difficulty with Inanimate Subject-Verb Integration Is Reduced by Structural Separation
Quelle	In: Journal of Memory and Language, 66 (2012) 4, S.819-832 (14 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0749-596X
DOI	10.1016/j.jml.2012.03.006
Schlagwörter	Phrase Structure; Verbs; Nouns; Sentence Structure; Experiments; Eye Movements; Comparative Analysis + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Phrasenstruktur; Satzbau; Satzstruktur; Erprobung; Augenbewegung
Abstract	Previous work has suggested that the difficulty normally associated with processing an object-extracted relative clause (ORC) compared to a subject-extracted relative clause (SRC) is increased when the head noun phrase (NP1) is animate and the embedded noun phrase (NP2) is inanimate, compared to the reverse animacy configuration. Two eye-tracking experiments were conducted to determine whether the apparent effects of NP animacy on the ORC-SRC asymmetry reflect distinct processes of interpretation that operate at NP2 and NP1. Experiment 1 revealed a localized difficulty interpreting the embedded action verb when the preceding NP2 was inanimate as compared to animate, but this difficulty in subject-verb integration did not extend to the broader region of words in the RC and matrix verb where difficulty was observed in processing ORCs as compared to SRCs. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the difficulty associated with integrating an inanimate NP with an action verb is reduced when the two appear in separate clauses, as in the case of an SRC. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.) (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10