The influence of only on syntactic processing of "long" relative clause sentences

We report an eye movement experiment investigating the influence of the focus operator only on syntactic processing of "long" relative clause sentences. Paterson, Liversedge, and Underwood (1999) found that readers were garden pathed by "short" reduced relative clause sentences c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology Human experimental psychology, 2002-02, Vol.55 (1), p.225-240
Main Authors: Liversedge, Simon P., Paterson, Kevin B., Clayes, Emma L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Language
Linguistics
Production and perception of written language
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Random Allocation
Reaction Time
Reading
Speech Perception
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Summary:We report an eye movement experiment investigating the influence of the focus operator only on syntactic processing of "long" relative clause sentences. Paterson, Liversedge, and Underwood (1999) found that readers were garden pathed by "short" reduced relative clause sentences containing the focus operator only. They argued that due to thematic differences between "short" and "long" relative clause sentences, garden path effect might not occur when "long" reduced relative clause sentences are read. Eye-tracking data show that garden path effects found during initial processing of the disambiguating verb of "long" reduced sentences without only were absent or delayed in the case of counterparts with only. We discuss our results in terms of current theories of sentence processing.
ISSN:0272-4987
1464-0740
DOI:10.1080/02724980143000253