Facilitatory and inhibitory effects of grammatical agreement: Evidence from readers’ eye fixation patterns

Processing modifier-head agreement in reading: Evidence for a delayed effect of agreement

“…In line with the above reasoning, an eyetracking study of Vainio, Hyönä, and Pajunen (2003) demonstrated mostly a delayed effect for agreement processing. The agreeingmodifier condition elicited the shortest total fixation times and the least regressions, whereas the nonagreeing-modifier condition elicited the shortest gaze duration but the longest total fixation times and the most regressions.…”

“…In contrast, Vainio et al (2003) presented data suggesting that phonological transparency may not influence adjectival and possessive modifier-head agreement processing in Finnish. The pattern of results was similar for a transparent adjectival modifier-head (case marking) and phonologically opaque possessive modifier-head agreement (possessive clitic).…”

“…In order to eliminate any influence of the verb on modifier-head agreement processing, the target nouns appeared prior to the verb to which the target noun phrase was attached (unlike in Vainio et al, 2003). The target nouns appeared either in argument or adjunct phrases.…”

“…To date, effects of modifier-head agreement have been studied earlier in Serbo-Croatian (Gurjanov, Lukatela, Moscovljević, Savić, & Turvey, 1985), Spanish (Barber & Carreiras, 2005), Russian (Akhutina, Kurgansky, Polinsky, & Bates, 1999), and Finnish (Hyönä & Hujanen, 1997;Hyönä & Lindeman, 1994;Vainio et al, 2003). These studies indicated that the processing of the head noun is faster when it is preceded by an agreeing modifier rather than a modifier-head combination containing an agreement violation (Gurjanov et al, 1985;Hyönä & Lindeman, 1994).…”

Processing modifier-head agreement in long Finnish words: Evidence from eye movements

“…In Finnish, modifiers agree with their head nouns both in case and in number and the agreement is expressed by means of suffixes (e.g., vanha/ssa talo/ssa 'old/in house/in' → 'in the old house'). Vainio et al (2003;2008) showed processing benefits for this kind of modifier-head agreement, when the head nouns were relatively short. However, the effect showed up relatively late in the processing stream, such that word n + 1, the word following the target noun talo/ssa, was read faster when it was preceded by an agreeing modifier (vanha/ssa) than when no modifier was present.…”