Parsing processes in temporarily ambiguous sentences and interference effects during real-time language comprehension

• Applicant: Hiroki Fujita, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 500540359

The first phase of my DFG-funded project has investigated reanalysis processes in temporarily ambiguous garden path sentences and memory retrieval processes. The results of this first phase showed that clause-boundary garden-path sentences (e.g. "While we telephoned the woman that visited Mary dropped a wine bottle and cut herself on a piece of broken glass.") are reanalyzed during real-time sentence processing. However, when these garden-path sentences contain an object relative clause (e.g. "While we telephoned the woman that Mary visited dropped a wine bottle and cut herself on a piece of broken glass."), reanalysis fails. Regarding memory retrieval, it was found that interference effects occur differently in online and offline language comprehension; whereas interference effects were only observed in ungrammatical sentences during online language comprehension, they were also observed in grammatical sentences during offline language comprehension. These findings raise interesting new questions about the mechanisms underlying language comprehension. In the second phase, these questions will be addressed in seven newly proposed reading experiments.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants