Short-Term Forgetting in Sentence Comprehension: Crosslinguistic Evidence from Verb-Final Structures

Autor/inn/en	Vasishth, Shravan; Suckow, Katja; Lewis, Richard L.; Kern, Sabine
Titel	Short-Term Forgetting in Sentence Comprehension: Crosslinguistic Evidence from Verb-Final Structures
Quelle	In: Language and Cognitive Processes, 25 (2010) 4, S.533-567 (35 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0169-0965
Schlagwörter	Sentences; Sentence Structure; Verbs; Grammar; Memory; German; Eye Movements; Reading Comprehension; Language Processing; Short Term Memory; Information Technology; College Students; Prediction; Statistical Analysis; Michigan + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Sentence analysis; Satzanalyse; Satzbau; Satzstruktur; Grammatik; Gedächtnis; Deutscher; Augenbewegung; Leseverstehen; Sprachverarbeitung; Kurzzeitgedächtnis; Informationstechnologie; Collegestudent; Vorhersage; Statistische Analyse
Abstract	Seven experiments using self-paced reading and eyetracking suggest that omitting the middle verb in a double centre embedding leads to easier processing in English but leads to greater difficulty in German. One commonly accepted explanation for the English pattern--based on data from offline acceptability ratings and due to Gibson and Thomas (1999)--is that working-memory overload leads the comprehender to forget the prediction of the upcoming verb phrase (VP), which reduces working-memory load. We show that this VP-forgetting hypothesis does an excellent job of explaining the English data, but cannot account for the German results. We argue that the English and German results can be explained by the parser's adaptation to the grammatical properties of the languages; in contrast to English, German subordinate clauses always have the verb in clause-final position, and this property of German may lead the German parser to maintain predictions of upcoming VPs more robustly compared to English. The evidence thus argues against language-independent forgetting effects in online sentence processing; working-memory constraints can be conditioned by countervailing influences deriving from grammatical properties of the language under study. (Contains 8 footnotes, 7 tables, and 8 figures.) (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	Psychology Press. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10