|
The Integration Advantage due to Clefting and Topicalization| old_uid | 6444 |
|---|
| title | The Integration Advantage due to Clefting and Topicalization |
|---|
| start_date | 2009/03/10 |
|---|
| schedule | 14h-16h |
|---|
| online | no |
|---|
| location_info | Laboratoire de sciences cognitives et psycholinguistique |
|---|
| summary | (joint work with Rukshin Shaher, Felix Engelmann, Pavel Logacev,
Narayanan Srinivasan)
What is the functional motivation for the existence of elaborate
syntactic markers such as clefts, left-dislocated topicalizations, and
given-new ordering? Although it is clear that they are syntactic
markers that facilitate effective information-packaging that
communicates a message to the hearer/reader, it is less clear how this
kind of restructuring impacts processing in real-time sentence
comprehension. Two eyetracking studies involving Hindi address this
question. We show that such information structure markers drive the
re-allocation of attention for facilitating comprehension; this
re-allocation has the consequence that the message is processed faster
and more efficiently.
Previous work on information structure marking has shown that readers
detect focused information more quickly and accurately, and remember
it better than non-focused information. For example, in a probe
recognition and naming task, Birch and Garnsey (1995) showed that
clefted nouns ('It was a…') can be named faster than non-clefted ones.
In an eyetracking experiment, Foraker & McElree (2007) showed that
clefting a noun improves its availability in online sentence
comprehension. Birch and Rayner (1997) provided evidence that
processing a clefted noun is computationally costly. They claim that
the costly processing operations on the clefted noun reflect a more
robust encoding in memory which explains the facilitation during
retrieval found by Birch and Garnsey.
Our eyetracking experiments extend on this previous work by showing:
(i) there is an initial processing cost (encoding cost) associated
with encoding a focused element; (ii) but this results in richer
encoding, which facilitates later processing (integration advantage);
(iii) the integration advantage interacts with the widely accepted
given-before-new ordering preference.
An eyetracking study (n=32) involving Hindi clefted sentences was
carried out; the factors clefting and given-new order were
manipulated. Subjects saw two sentences, a context sentence followed
by a target sentence, which collectively described the relative
position of three objects. They were then presented with a picture and
had to indicate whether the layout in the picture matched the
description.
Context sentence:
banduuk duurbiin kii baayii taraf hai.
“The gun is to the left of the binoculars.”
Target sentence: (cleft marker in italics, given material in bold)
ek tijorii bhii hai, aur/lekin [NP1 jhanDaa] (hai jo)
One safe also is, and/but [NP1 flag] (is that)
[NP2 duurbiin] [INT kii daayii taraf] hai.
[NP2 binoculars] [INT gen right side] is
“There is a safe, and/but (it is) the flag (that ) is to the right of
the binoculars.”
We found higher first pass regression probabilities for clefted nouns
as opposed to non-clefted nouns. This can be interpreted as the
encoding cost for clefted nouns. We also found shorter re-reading
times at the clefted noun and fewer regressions to it from the
integration site. We interpret this as evidence for the integration
advantage.
In addition, although whole sentence total reading time showed a
given-new advantage (confirming the accepted opinion that given-new
order is easier to process), the clefted word itself was read faster
when it was new rather than given.
We replicated the above findings through a second eyetracking
experiment (n=32) involving Hindi left-dislocated topics that
superficially resemble clefts but have a different
information-structuring function.
In sum, we present new evidence from online sentence comprehension
that syntactic information-structure markers such as clefts and
left-dislocated topics serve to facilitate retrieval of the
clefted/topicalized element and that the initial cost of encoding can
be minimized by providing context information. |
|---|
| responsibles | Pallier |
|---|
| |
|