What eye and hand movements tell us about expectations towards argument order: An eye- and mouse-tracking study in German

Abstract

In the present study, we manipulated the order of arguments in German transitive and ditransitive sentences in an eye-tracking and a mouse-tracking experiment. The initial argument in a transitive construction was either the subject/agent or object/patient, and the object immediately following the ditransitive verb was either the indirect object/recipient or direct object/theme. All arguments were animate. For object-initial transitive sentences, listeners fixated on the target scene only towards the onset of the subject/agent. Although an acceptability judgment task showed a preference for indirect object > direct object, there was limited evidence for this in processing. Irrespective of argument order, listeners preferentially fixated on the target (vs. competitor) scene prior to the second object only when the first object corresponded to a feminine noun, where the distinction between dative and accusative is perceptually salient. Analyses of mouse trajectories indicated an initial attraction towards the competitor scene for object-initial transitive sentences.