TY  - JOUR
A1  - Czypionka, Anna
A1  - Spalek, Katharina
A1  - Wartenburger, Isabell
A1  - Krifka, Manfred
T1  - On the interplay of object animacy and verb type during sentence comprehension in German: ERP evidence from the processing of transitive dative and accusative constructions
JF  - Linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences
N2  - Comprehension of transitive sentences relies on different kinds of information, like word order, case marking, and animacy contrasts between arguments. When no formal cues like case marking or number congruency are available, a contrast in animacy helps the parser to decide which argument is the grammatical subject and which the object. Processing costs are enhanced when neither formal cues nor animacy contrasts are available in a transitive sentence. We present an ERP study on the comprehension of grammatical transitive German sentences, manipulating animacy contrasts between subjects and objects as well as the verbal case marking pattern. Our study shows strong object animacy effects even in the absence of violations, and in addition suggests that this effect of object animacy is modulated by the verbal case marking pattern.
KW  - sentence comprehension
KW  - animacy
KW  - case marking
KW  - ERP
KW  - German
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2017-0031
SN  - 0024-3949
SN  - 1613-396X
VL  - 55
SP  - 1383
EP  - 1433
PB  - De Gruyter Mouton
CY  - Berlin
ER  -