On the Universality of Language Comprehension Strategies: Evidence from Turkish

Autor/inn/en	Demiral, Sukru Baris; Schlesewsky, Matthias; Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Ina
Titel	On the Universality of Language Comprehension Strategies: Evidence from Turkish
Quelle	In: Cognition, 106 (2008) 1, S.484-500 (17 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0010-0277
DOI	10.1016/j.cognition.2007.01.008
Schlagwörter	Stellungnahme; Comprehension; Semantics; Inferences; Turkish; Psycholinguistics + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Verstehen; Verständnis; Semantik; Inference; Inferenz; Türkisch; Psycholinguistik
Abstract	A fundamental question in psycholinguistic research concerns the universality of comprehension strategies. We investigated this issue by examining the so-called "subject preference" in Turkish, a language which allows for a natural (unmarked) object reading of an initial ambiguous argument. Using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we observed increased processing difficulty in the form of a broadly distributed positivity when an initial ambiguous argument was disambiguated towards an object reading. This effect was independent of the animacy (i.e. semantic subject prototypicality) of the ambiguous argument. Our results therefore speak in favour of a universal tendency to interpret the first argument encountered as the "subject" of the clause, even in languages providing no obvious structural motivation for such a strategy. However, we argue that the underlying explanation for this preference must be modified in accordance with cross-linguistic considerations. (Author).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10