Research article summary:

The influence of referential discourse context on modifier attachment in Dutch.

Abstract Extract:
In an eye-tracking experiment we investigated the influence of referential context on the attachment of a relative clause to two possible hosts (as in 'Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony'). The attachment of the relative ... (Full abstract text below)

Published 2002Jan in Journal: Mem Cognit (Language : eng)

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1. Mem Cognit. 2002 Jan;30(1):150-7

The influence of referential discourse context on modifier attachment in Dutch.

Desmet T, De BC, Brysbaert M

Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium. timothy.desmet@rug.ac.be

In an eye-tracking experiment we investigated the influence of referential context on the attachment of a relative clause to two possible hosts (as in "Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony"). The attachment of the relative clause was disambiguated grammatically at the first word after the onset of the ambiguity in order to investigate immediate effects of discourse. The contexts had been verified in a sentence completion study to make sure that they induced a strong bias toward early or late closure. The results of the reading experiment, however, revealed no significant interaction of referential context with the attachment preference of the relative clause. The only robust and consistent effect we found was a preference for early closure, independent of the preceding context. These data favor accounts positing that referential context does not influence the initial attachment decision, but does play a role in later phases of sentence processing.

PMID : 11958348 [PubMed - Indexed for MEDLINE]

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Full Author Information

First Name	LastName	Initials
Timothy	Desmet	T
Baecke Constantijn	De	BC
Marc	Brysbaert	M

Affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium. timothy.desmet@rug.ac.be

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