Case markers as clause boundary inducers in Japanese.

Full Abstract

The present paper provides evidence that the processing of verb final clauses proceeds incrementally based on local information that becomes available with each word. The results of three self-paced reading experiments are reported in support of the proposal that NPs in Japanese are associated within clauses before a verb is processed. It is argued that a clause boundary is posited whenever case markers prevent two NPs from being part of the same clause, and slow reading times at the second NP are used as supporting evidence. Moreover, clause boundaries induced by case narking can facilitate processing at later points in the sentence as attested to by faster reading times at relative-clause heads. Contrary to previous findings that argued against a subclass of head-driven parsers, the present results are not easily reconcilable with any type of model that delays parsing decisions until a verb is available in the input sentence.

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Author information

Author/s: Miyamoto, Edson T (ET);

Affiliation: Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Graduate School of Information Science, Ikoma, Japan. miyamoto(-atsign-)alum.mit.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Journal of psycholinguistic research (J Psycholinguist Res), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Jul; vol 31 (issue 4) : pp 307-47

Dates: Created 2002/09/11; Completed 2003/02/12; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12222587, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Cognition
Humans
Language

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