Matthias Schlesewsky, Gisbert Fanselow, Stefan Frisch

• In the recent literature there is a hypothesis that the human parser uses number and case information in different ways to resolve an initially incorrect case assignment. This paper investigates what role morphological case information plays during the parser’s detection of an ungrammaticality or its recognition that a reanalysis is necessary. First, we compare double nominative with double accusative ungrammaticalities in a word by word, speeded grammaticality task and in this way show that only double nominatives lead to a so-called ”illusion of grammaticality” (a low rate of ungrammaticality detection). This illusion was found to disappear when the second argument was realized by a pronoun rather than by a full definite determiner phrase, i.e. when the saliency of the second argument was increased. Thus, the accuracy in recognizing an ungrammaticality induced by the case feature of the second argument is dependent on the type of this argument. Furthermore, we found that the accuracy in detecting such case ungrammaticalities isIn the recent literature there is a hypothesis that the human parser uses number and case information in different ways to resolve an initially incorrect case assignment. This paper investigates what role morphological case information plays during the parser’s detection of an ungrammaticality or its recognition that a reanalysis is necessary. First, we compare double nominative with double accusative ungrammaticalities in a word by word, speeded grammaticality task and in this way show that only double nominatives lead to a so-called ”illusion of grammaticality” (a low rate of ungrammaticality detection). This illusion was found to disappear when the second argument was realized by a pronoun rather than by a full definite determiner phrase, i.e. when the saliency of the second argument was increased. Thus, the accuracy in recognizing an ungrammaticality induced by the case feature of the second argument is dependent on the type of this argument. Furthermore, we found that the accuracy in detecting such case ungrammaticalities is distance sensitive insofar as a shorter distance leads to a higher accuracy. The results are taken as support for an ”expectationdriven” parse strategy in which the way the parser uses the information of a current input item depends on the expectation resulting from the parse carried out so far. By contrast, ”input-driven” parse strategies, such as the diagnosis model (Fodor & Inoue, 1999) are unable to explain the data presented here.…