TY - JOUR A1 - Felser, Claudia A1 - Drummer, Janna-Deborah T1 - Binding out of relative clauses in native and non-native sentence comprehension JF - Journal of psycholinguistic research N2 - Pronouns can sometimes covary with a non c-commanding quantifier phrase (QP). To obtain such 'telescoping' readings, a semantic representation must be computed in which the QP's semantic scope extends beyond its surface scope. Non-native speakers have been claimed to have more difficulty than native speakers deriving such non-isomorphic syntax-semantics mappings, but evidence from processing studies is scarce. We report the results from an eye-movement monitoring experiment and an offline questionnaire investigating whether native and non-native speakers of German can link personal pronouns to non c-commanding QPs inside relative clauses. Our results show that both participant groups were able to obtain telescoping readings offline, but only the native speakers showed evidence of forming telescoping dependencies during incremental parsing. During processing the non-native speakers focused on a discourse-prominent, non-quantified alternative antecedent instead. The observed group differences indicate that non-native comprehenders have more difficulty than native comprehenders computing scope-shifted representations in real time. KW - Pronoun binding KW - c-command KW - Eye-movement monitoring KW - Non-native language KW - processing KW - German Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-022-09845-z SN - 0090-6905 SN - 1573-6555 VL - 51 IS - 4 SP - 763 EP - 788 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Puebla Antunes, Cecilia A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Discourse Prominence and Antecedent MisRetrieval during Native and Non-Native Pronoun Resolution JF - Discours : revue de linguistique, psycholinguistique et informatique N2 - Previous studies on non-native (L2) anaphor resolution suggest that L2 comprehenders are guided more strongly by discourse-level cues compared to native (L1) comprehenders. Here we examine whether and how a grammatically inappropriate antecedent’s discourse status affects the likelihood of it being considered during L1 and L2 pronoun resolution. We used an interference paradigm to examine how the extrasentential discourse impacts the resolution of German object pronouns. In an eye-tracking-during-reading experiment we examined whether an elaborated local antecedent ruled out by binding Condition B would be mis-retrieved during pronoun resolution, and whether initially introducing this antecedent as the discourse topic would affect the chances of it being mis-retrieved. While both participant groups rejected the inappropriate antecedent in an offline questionnaire irrespective of its discourse prominence, their real-time processing patterns differed. L1 speakers initially mis-retrieved the inappropriate antecedent regardless of its contextual prominence. L1 Russian/L2 German speakers, in contrast, were affected by the antecedent’s discourse status, considering it only when it was discourse-new but not when it had previously been introduced as the discourse topic. Our findings show that L2 comprehenders are highly sensitive to discourse dynamics such as topic shifts, supporting the claim that discourse-level cues are more strongly weighted during L2 compared to L1 processing. KW - pronoun resolution KW - non-native sentence processing KW - discourse KW - prominence KW - interference KW - German KW - eye-movement monitoring Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4000/discours.11720 SN - 1963-1723 IS - 29 PB - Université de Paris-Sorbonne, Maion Recherche CY - Paris ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Felser, Claudia A1 - Jessen, Anna T1 - Correlative coordination and variable subject-verb agreement in German JF - Languages : open access journal N2 - Coordinated subjects often show variable number agreement with the finite verb, but linguistic approaches to this phenomenon have rarely been informed by systematically collected data. We report the results from three experiments investigating German speakers' agreement preferences with complex subjects joined by the correlative conjunctions sowohl horizontal ellipsis als auch ('both horizontal ellipsis and'), weder horizontal ellipsis noch ('neither horizontal ellipsis nor') or entweder horizontal ellipsis oder ('either horizontal ellipsis or'). We examine to what extent conjunction type and a conjunct's relative proximity to the verb affect the acceptability and processibility of singular vs. plural agreement. Experiment 1 was an untimed acceptability rating task, Experiment 2 a timed sentence completion task, and Experiment 3 was a self-paced reading task. Taken together, our results show that number agreement with correlative coordination in German is primarily determined by a default constraint triggering plural agreement, which interacts with linear order and semantic factors. Semantic differences between conjunctions only affected speakers' agreement preferences in the absence of processing pressure but not their initial agreement computation. The combined results from our offline and online experimental measures of German speakers' agreement preferences suggest that the constraints under investigation do not only differ in their relative weighting but also in their relative timing during agreement computation. KW - correlative coordination KW - subject– verb agreement KW - German Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6020067 SN - 2226-471X VL - 6 IS - 2 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bosch, Sina A1 - De Cesare, Ilaria A1 - Demske, Ulrike A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - New empirical approaches to grammatical variation and change JF - Languages : open access journal Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6030113 SN - 2226-471X VL - 6 IS - 3 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Reifegerste, Jana A1 - Jarvis, Rebecca A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Effects of chronological age on native and nonnative sentence processing BT - evidence from subject-verb agreement in German JF - Journal of memory and language N2 - While much attention has been devoted to the cognition of aging multilingual individuals, little is known about how age affects their grammatical processing. We assessed subject-verb number-agreement processing in sixty native (L1) and sixty non-native (L2) speakers of German (age: 18-84) using a binary-choice sentence-completion task, along with various individual-differences tests. Our results revealed differential effects of age on L1 and L2 speakers' accuracy and reaction times (RTs). L1 speakers' RTs increased with age, and they became more susceptible to attraction errors. In contrast, L2 speakers' RTs decreased, once age-related slowing was controlled for, and their overall accuracy increased. We interpret this as resulting from increased L2 exposure. Moreover, L2 speakers' accuracy/RT patterns were more strongly affected by cognitive variables (working memory, interference control) than L1 speakers'. Our findings show that as regards bilinguals' grammatical processing ability, aging is associated with both gains (in experience) and losses (in cognitive abilities). KW - sentence processing KW - subject-verb agreement KW - attraction errors KW - second-language processing KW - aging Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.104083 SN - 0749-596X SN - 1096-0821 VL - 111 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam [u.a.] ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pañeda, Claudia A1 - Lago, Sol A1 - Vares, Elena A1 - Veríssimo, João Marques A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Island effects in Spanish comprehension JF - Glossa : a journal of general linguistics N2 - A growing body of experimental syntactic research has revealed substantial variation in the magnitude of island effects, not only across languages but also across different grammatical constructions. Adopting a well-established experimental design, the present study examines island effects in Spanish using a speeded acceptability judgment task. To quantify variation across grammatical constructions, we tested extraction from four different types of structure (subjects, complex noun phrases, adjuncts and interrogative clauses). The results of Bayesian mixed effects modelling showed that the size of island effects varied between constructions, such that there was clear evidence of subject, adjunct and interrogative island effects, but not of complex noun phrase island effects. We also failed to find evidence that island effects were modulated by participants' working memory capacity as measured by an operation span task. To account for our results, we suggest that variability in island effects across constructions may be due to the interaction of syntactic, semantic-pragmatic and processing factors, which may affect island types differentially due to their idiosyncratic properties. KW - extraction islands KW - Spanish KW - reading comprehension KW - working memory KW - sentence processing Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.1058 SN - 2397-1835 VL - 5 IS - 1 PB - Open Library of Humanities CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Do processing resource limitations shape heritage language grammars? JF - Bilingualism : language and cognition Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728919000397 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 23 IS - 1 SP - 23 EP - 24 PB - Cambridge University Press CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Patterson, Clare A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Delayed Application of Binding Condition C During Cataphoric Pronoun Resolution JF - Journal of Psycholinguistic Research N2 - Previous research has shown that during cataphoric pronoun resolution, the predictive search for an antecedent is restricted by a structure-sensitive constraint known as ‘Condition C’, such that an antecedent is only considered when the constraint does not apply. Evidence has mainly come from self-paced reading (SPR), a method which may not be able to pick up on short-lived effects over the timecourse of processing. This study investigates whether or not the active search mechanism is constrained by Condition C at all points in time during cataphoric processing. We carried out one eye-tracking during reading and a parallel SPR experiment, accompanied by offline coreference judgment tasks. Although offline judgments about coreference were constrained by Condition C, the eye-tracking experiment revealed temporary consideration of antecedents that should be ruled out by Condition C. The SPR experiment using exactly the same materials indicated, conversely, that only structurally appropriate antecedents were considered. Taken together, our results suggest that the application of Condition C may be delayed during naturalistic reading. KW - Sentence processing KW - Cataphora KW - Pronouns KW - Binding KW - German KW - Eye-movement monitoring KW - Self-paced reading Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-018-9613-4 SN - 0090-6905 SN - 1573-6555 VL - 48 IS - 2 SP - 453 EP - 475 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lago, Sol A1 - Garcia, Anna Stutter A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - The role of native and non-native grammars in the comprehension of possessive pronouns JF - Second language research N2 - Previous studies have shown that multilingual speakers are influenced by their native (L1) and non-native (L2) grammars when learning a new language. But, so far, these studies have mostly used untimed metalinguistic tasks. Here we examine whether multilinguals’ prior grammars also affect their sensitivity to morphosyntactic constraints during processing. We use speeded judgment and self-paced reading tasks to examine the comprehension of German possessive pronouns. To investigate whether native and non-native grammars differentially affect participants’ performance, we compare two groups of non-native German speakers with inverse L1–L2 distributions: a group with L1 Spanish – L2 English, and a group with L1 English – L2 Spanish. We show that the reading profiles of both groups are modulated by their L1 grammar, with L2 proficiency selectively affecting participants’ judgment accuracy but not their reading times. We propose that reading comprehension is mainly influenced by multilinguals’ native grammar, but that knowledge of an L2 grammar can further increase sensitivity to morphosyntactic violations in an additional language. KW - comprehension KW - English KW - gender agreement KW - German KW - multilingualism KW - Spanish Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658318770491 SN - 0267-6583 SN - 1477-0326 VL - 35 IS - 3 SP - 319 EP - 349 PB - Sage Publ. CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lago Huvelle, Maria Sol A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Agreement attraction in native and nonnative speakers of German JF - Applied psycholinguistics : psychological and linguistic studies across languages and learners N2 - Second language speakers often struggle to apply grammatical constraints such as subject-verb agreement. One hypothesis for this difficulty is that it results from problems suppressing syntactically unlicensed constituents in working memory. We investigated which properties of these constituents make them more likely to elicit errors: their grammatical distance to the subject head or their linear distance to the verb. We used double modifier constructions (e.g., the smell of the stables of the farmers), where the errors of native speakers are modulated by the linguistic relationships between the nouns in the subject phrase: second plural nouns, which are syntactically and semantically closer to the subject head, elicit more errors than third plural nouns, which are linearly closer to the verb (2nd-3rd-noun asymmetry). In order to dissociate between grammatical and linear distance, we compared embedded and coordinated modifiers, which were linearly identical but differed in grammatical distance. Using an attraction paradigm, we showed that German native speakers and proficient Russian speakers of German exhibited similar attraction rates and that their errors displayed a 2nd-3rd-noun asymmetry, which was more pronounced in embedded than in coordinated constructions. We suggest that both native and second language learners prioritize linguistic structure over linear distance in their agreement computations. KW - agreement attraction KW - German KW - linear distance KW - Russian Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716417000601 SN - 0142-7164 SN - 1469-1817 VL - 39 IS - 3 SP - 619 EP - 647 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER -