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 - TY - JOUR A1 - Pan, Hui-Yu A1 - Schimke, Sarah A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Referential context effects in non-native relative clause ambiguity resolution JF - International journal of bilingualism : cross-disciplinary, cross-linguistic studies of language behavior N2 - We report the results from two experiments investigating how referential context information affects native and non-native readers' interpretation of ambiguous relative clauses in sentences such as The journalist interviewed the assistant of the inspector who was looking very serious. The preceding discourse context was manipulated such that it provided two potential referents for either the first (the assistant) or the second (the inspector) of the two noun phrases that could potentially host the relative clause, thus biasing towards either an NP1 or an NP2 modification reading. The results from an offline comprehension task indicate that both native English speakers' and German and Chinese-speaking ESL learners' ultimate interpretation preferences were reliably influenced by the type of referential context. In contrast, in a corresponding self-paced-reading task we found that referential context information modulated only the non-native participants' disambiguation preferences but not the native speakers'. Our results corroborate and extend previous findings suggesting that non-native comprehenders' initial analysis of structurally ambiguous input is strongly influenced by biasing discourse information. KW - Second language KW - sentence processing KW - ambiguity resolution KW - referential context KW - relative clause KW - self-paced reading Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006913515769 SN - 1367-0069 SN - 1756-6878 VL - 19 IS - 3 SP - 298 EP - 313 PB - Sage Publ. CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Arslan, Seçkin A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Looking at the evidence in visual world: eye-movements reveal how bilingual and monolingual Turkish speakers process grammatical evidentiality JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - This study presents pioneering data on how adult early bilinguals (heritage speakers) and late bilingual speakers of Turkish and German process grammatical evidentiality in a visual world setting in comparison to monolingual speakers of Turkish. Turkish marks evidentiality, the linguistic reference to information source, through inflectional affixes signaling either direct (-DI) or indirect (-mls) evidentiality. We conducted an eyetracking-during-listening experiment where participants were given access to visual 'evidence' supporting the use of either a direct or indirect evidential form. The behavioral results indicate that the monolingual Turkish speakers comprehended direct and indirect evidential scenarios equally well. In contrast, both late and early bilinguals were less accurate and slower to respond to direct than to indirect evidentials. The behavioral results were also reflected in the proportions of looks data. That is, both late and early bilinguals fixated less frequently on the target picture in the direct than in the indirect evidential condition while the monolinguals showed no difference between these conditions. Taken together, our results indicate reduced sensitivity to the semantic and pragmatic function of direct evidential forms in both late and early bilingual speakers, suggesting a simplification of the Turkish evidentiality system in Turkish heritage grammars. We discuss our findings with regard to theories of incomplete acquisition and first language attrition. KW - evidentiality KW - information source KW - inference KW - witnessing KW - visual world paradigm KW - eye-movements KW - Turkish-German bilingualism Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01387 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 6 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - van de Koot, Hans A1 - Silva, Renita A1 - Felser, Claudia A1 - Sato, Mikako T1 - Does Dutch a-scrambling involve movement? Evidence from antecedent priming JF - The linguistic review N2 - The present study focuses on A-scrambling in Dutch, a local word-order alternation that typically signals the discourse-anaphoric status of the scrambled constituent. We use cross-modal priming to investigate whether an A-scrambled direct object gives rise to antecedent reactivation effects in the position where a movement theory would postulate a trace. Our results indicate that this is not the case, thereby providing support for a base-generation analysis of A-scrambling in Dutch. KW - scrambling KW - movement KW - cross-modal priming Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/tlr-2015-0010 SN - 0167-6318 SN - 1613-3676 VL - 32 IS - 4 SP - 739 EP - 776 PB - De Gruyter Mouton CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Felser, Claudia A1 - Patterson, Clare A1 - Cunnings, Ian 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 IS - 840 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER -