Sensitivity to NP-Type: Processing Subject-Object Ambiguities in Dutch  

Oleh:

Kaan, Edith

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Journal of Semantics (Sebagian Full Text) vol. 15 no. 4 (Nov. 1998), page 335—354.
Topik: Subject-Object Ambiguities; Dutch Language; NP-Type
Fulltext: vol 15, no 4, p 335-354.pdf (1,003.01KB)

Isi artikel

According to some theories of sentence processing, the human language processor relies mainly on syntax-based strategies when dealing with structural ambiguities. In this paper I show that the parser is also sensitive to the nature of the noun phrases'used and their discourse related properties. Dutch 'which' clauses are at least locally ambiguous between a subject-object and an object-subject reading. On the basis of syntax-based parsing strategies (e.g. the Active Filler Strategy, Frazier 1987), a subject-object preference is expected. However, several on-line and questionnaire studies show that the type of second NP affects the order preference: when the second NP is a non-pronominal NP the subjectobject order is preferred, but more strongly so when the second NP is indefinite than when it is definite; when the second NP is a definite pronoun, in contrast, the object-subject order is preferred. A corpus study yields the same pattern, except for the non-pronominal definite NP cases: 'which' questions with a definite second NP more frequently occur in a object-subject rather than a subject-object order. This discrepancy can be explained in terms of the discourse status of the NP referent.

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