Processing Prescriptively Incorrect Comparative Particles: Evidence From Sentence-Matching and Eye-Tracking

Hubers, Ferdy; Redl, Theresa; Vos, H. de; Reinarz, Lukas; Hoop, H. de

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00186

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Of the 146 fillers, 18 were stimuli for a different experiment [Experiment 3 in 49 ]. The remaining 128 fillers were designed to resemble the experimental stimuli in terms of complexity, but did not feature iedereen ‘everyone’, zijn ‘his’, hun ‘their’, vrouw/vrouwen ‘woman/women’ or man/mannen ‘man/men’ and were as neutral as possible regarding stereotypes.…”

Section: Experiments 1: Eye-tracking During Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The male bias of a generically-intended masculine pronoun: Evidence from eye-tracking and sentence evaluation

et al. 2021

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Two experiments tested whether the Dutch possessive pronoun zijn ‘his’ gives rise to a gender inference and thus causes a male bias when used generically in sentences such as Everyone was putting on his shoes. Experiment 1 (N = 120, 48 male) was a conceptual replication of a previous eye-tracking study that had not found evidence of a male bias. The results of the current eye-tracking experiment showed the generically-intended masculine pronoun to trigger a gender inference and cause a male bias, but for male participants and in stereotypically neutral stereotype contexts only. No evidence for a male bias was thus found in stereotypically female and male context nor for female participants altogether. Experiment 2 (N = 80, 40 male) used the same stimuli as Experiment 1, but employed the sentence evaluation paradigm. No evidence of a male bias was found in Experiment 2. Taken together, the results suggest that the generically-intended masculine pronoun zijn ‘his’ can cause a male bias for male participants even when the referents are previously introduced by inclusive and grammatically gender-unmarked iedereen ‘everyone’. This male bias surfaces with eye-tracking, which taps directly into early language processing, but not in offline sentence evaluations. Furthermore, the results suggest that the intended generic reading of the masculine possessive pronoun zijn ‘his’ is more readily available for women than for men.

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Section: Experiments 1: Eye-tracking During Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The male bias of a generically-intended masculine pronoun: Evidence from eye-tracking and sentence evaluation

et al. 2021

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“…These results are commensurate with other studies showing that structures, which are traditionally labelled as violations but that occur naturally in production, are dealt with differently from those traditionally labelled as ‘correct’ (cf. Duffield et al, 2002 , 2007 ; Hubers et al, 2016 , 2020 ). Importantly, the processing of word order varies depending on individual word order production.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, they appear to be acceptable with certain fronted adverbials (e.g. Jörgensen, 1976 ; Platzack, 1998 ; Bohnacker, 2006 ; Andréasson, 2007 ; for a discussion of acceptable norm violations in languages, see Hubers et al, 2020 ). The Swedish Academy Grammar of Swedish (SAG) states that declaratives with sentential adverbials, such as kanske , måhända and kanhända ‘maybe, perhaps’ in first position can optionally occur with inverted (V2) or non-inverted (V3) word order (SAG; Teleman et al, 1999 ), as in (1a) and (1b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

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Native Word Order Processing Is Not Uniform: An ERP Study of Verb-Second Word Order

2022

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Studies of native syntactic processing often target phrase structure violations that do not occur in natural production. In contrast, this study examines how variation in basic word order is processed, looking specifically at structures traditionally labelled as violations but that do occur naturally. We examined Swedish verb-second (V2) and verb-third (V3) word order processing in adult native Swedish speakers, manipulating sentence-initial adverbials (temporal idag ‘today’, spatial hemma ‘at home’ and sentential kanske ‘maybe’) in acceptability judgements, in simultaneously recorded event-related potentials (ERP) to visually presented sentences and in a written sentence completion task. An initial corpus study showed that the adverbials differ in frequency in fronted position (idag > kanske > hemma), and although all occur mainly with V2 word order, kanske occurs more frequently with V3 in natural production than both idag and hemma. The experimental results reflected these patterns such that V2 sentences were overall more frequently produced and were deemed more acceptable than V3 sentences. The ERP results consisted of a biphasic N400/P600 response to V3 word order that indicated effects of word retrieval and sentence reanalysis. We also found consistent effects of adverbials. As predicted, V3 was produced more frequently and judged as more acceptable in Kanske sentences than in sentences with the other two adverbials. The ERP analyses showed stronger effects for idag and hemma with V3, especially regarding the P600. The results suggest that the naturally occurring word order ‘violation’, V3 with kanske, is processed differently than V3 with other adverbials where the V2 norm is stronger. Moreover, these patterns are related to individuals’ own production patterns. Overall, the results suggest a more varied native word order processing than previously reported.

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Variation in the processing of grammatical norm violations

Cos¹,

Hubers²

2022

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So far, processing studies on grammatical norm violations (GNVs) in Dutch (i.e., als ‘as’ in comparatives) have mainly focused on general differences between GNVs and their grammatical and ungrammatical counterparts. The present study is the first to also systematically investigate between-participant and between-construction variation in the processing of GNVs, using a self-paced reading task. Age and educational level were investigated as potential sources of between-participant variation, and between-construction variation was assessed by including three GNVs that vary in the amount of prescriptive attention they receive in society. Results indeed showed that the processing of GNVs was influenced by the age and educational level of participants. Moreover, different results were obtained for different norm violations. Based on these results, we conclude that it is very important to take into account differences between participants and constructions when studying the processing of GNVs.

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Processing Prescriptively Incorrect Comparative Particles: Evidence From Sentence-Matching and Eye-Tracking

Cited by 5 publications

References 21 publications

The male bias of a generically-intended masculine pronoun: Evidence from eye-tracking and sentence evaluation

The male bias of a generically-intended masculine pronoun: Evidence from eye-tracking and sentence evaluation

Native Word Order Processing Is Not Uniform: An ERP Study of Verb-Second Word Order

Variation in the processing of grammatical norm violations

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