IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0198620.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Processing of ellipsis with garden-path antecedents in French and German: Evidence from eye tracking

Author

Listed:
  • Dario Paape
  • Barbara Hemforth
  • Shravan Vasishth

Abstract

In a self-paced reading study on German sluicing, Paape (Paape, 2016) found that reading times were shorter at the ellipsis site when the antecedent was a temporarily ambiguous garden-path structure. As a post-hoc explanation of this finding, Paape assumed that the antecedent’s memory representation was reactivated during syntactic reanalysis, making it easier to retrieve. In two eye tracking experiments, we subjected the reactivation hypothesis to further empirical scrutiny. Experiment 1, carried out in French, showed no evidence in favor in the reactivation hypothesis. Instead, results for one out of the three types of garden-path sentences that were tested suggest that subjects sometimes failed to resolve the temporary ambiguity in the antecedent clause, and subsequently failed to resolve the ellipsis. The results of Experiment 2, a conceptual replication of Paape’s (Paape, 2016) original study carried out in German, are compatible with the reactivation hypothesis, but leave open the possibility that the observed speedup for ambiguous antecedents may be due to occasional retrievals of an incorrect structure.

Suggested Citation

  • Dario Paape & Barbara Hemforth & Shravan Vasishth, 2018. "Processing of ellipsis with garden-path antecedents in French and German: Evidence from eye tracking," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(6), pages 1-46, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0198620
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0198620
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0198620
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0198620&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0198620?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0198620. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.