TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bevacqua, Luca
A1  - Scheffler, Tatjana
T1  - Form variation of pronominal it-clefts in written English
BT  - a corpus study in Twitter and iWeb
JF  - Linguistics vanguard
N2  - Clefts are well-studied as a construction which induces emphasis on its clefted referent. However, little is known about the distribution of different stylistic forms of it-cleft variants. We report on a corpus study mining data from Twitter, targeting sentences clefting a pronoun in English. We examine the following features: case and syntactic role of the clefted pronoun, contraction of the copula, choice of complementiser and use of emphasis markers. The results show systematic associations between these features. A further comparison between the Twitter dataset and data from iWeb, a corpus of general-use web language, shows significant differences in levels of emphasis and formality, positioning Twitter language in the middle of the conceptual orality spectrum.
KW  - clefts
KW  - corpus study
KW  - English
KW  - emphasis
KW  - computer-mediated communication
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2019-0066
SN  - 2199-174X
VL  - 6
IS  - 1
PB  - De Gruyter
CY  - Berlin
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Jessen, Anna
A1  - Felser, Claudia
T1  - Reanalysing object gaps during non-native sentence processing
BT  - Evidence from ERPs
JF  - Second language research
N2  - The present study used event related potentials (ERPs) to investigate how native (L1) German-speaking second-language (L2) learners of English process sentences containing filler-gap dependencies such as Bill liked the house (women) that Bob built some ornaments for __ at his workplace. Using an experimental design which allowed us to dissociate filler integration from reanalysis effects, we found that fillers which were implausible as direct objects of the embedded verb (e.g. built the women) elicited similar brain responses (an N400) in L1 and L2 speakers when the verb was encountered. This confirms findings from behavioral and eye-movement studies indicating that both L1 and L2 speakers immediately try to integrate a filler with a potential lexical licensor. L1/L2 differences were observed when subsequent sentence material signaled that the direct-object analysis was in fact incorrect, however. We found reanalysis effects, in the shape of a P600 for sentences containing fillers that were plausible direct objects only for L2 speakers, but not for the L1 group. This supports previous findings suggesting that L2 comprehenders recover from an initially plausible first analysis less easily than L1 speakers.
KW  - English
KW  - ERPs
KW  - filler-gap dependency
KW  - L2 processing
KW  - reanalysis
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658317753030
SN  - 0267-6583
SN  - 1477-0326
VL  - 35
IS  - 2
SP  - 285
EP  - 299
PB  - Sage Publ.
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Cunnings, Ian
A1  - Patterson, Clare
A1  - Felser, Claudia
T1  - Structural constraints on pronoun binding and coreference: evidence from eye movements during reading
JF  - Frontiers in psychology
N2  - A number of recent studies have investigated how syntactic and non-syntactic constraints combine to cue memory retrieval during anaphora resolution. In this paper we investigate how syntactic constraints and gender congruence interact to guide memory retrieval during the resolution of subject pronouns. Subject pronouns are always technically ambiguous, and the application of syntactic constraints on their interpretation depends on properties of the antecedent that is to be retrieved. While pronouns can freely corefer with non-quantified referential antecedents, linking a pronoun to a quantified antecedent is only possible in certain syntactic configurations via variable binding. We report the results from a judgment task and three online reading comprehension experiments investigating pronoun resolution with quantified and non-quantified antecedents. Results from both the judgment task and participants' eye movements during reading indicate that comprehenders freely allow pronouns to corefer with non-quantified antecedents, but that retrieval of quantified antecedents is restricted to specific syntactic environments. We interpret our findings as indicating that syntactic constraints constitute highly weighted cues to memory retrieval during anaphora resolution.
KW  - pronoun resolution
KW  - memory retrieval
KW  - quantification
KW  - eye movements
KW  - reading
KW  - English
Y1  - 2015
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00840
SN  - 1664-1078
VL  - 6
PB  - Frontiers Research Foundation
CY  - Lausanne
ER  -