During comprehension, listeners can draw upon different sources of non-linguistic information for reference resolution and structural disambiguation (e.g., Tanenhaus et al., 1995). While non-linguistic information plays an active role in extant accounts of sentence processing, social-context effects (e.g., of situation-formality on register processing) have received little attention (but see van Berkum, et al., 2008). Using the Visual World eye-tracking paradigm (Fig.1) we investigate whether (i) formality conveyed by a linguistic context can rapidly affect the visual interrogation of objects and associated comprehension processes; (ii) we see rapid effects of verb-argument congruence; (iii) congruence in context formality and register interacts with verb-argument congruence (testing to what extent we can assume a single conceptual store and closely-linked mental representation that encompasses register information).

Method and Design: In two eye-tracking pilot studies (32 critical items), we examine native German speakers' comprehension of register variants (Latschencolloquial vs. Schuhestandard transl:.‘shoes’) in a German target sentence when this target sentence (mis)matches the formality of a preceding context sentence, given the object argument either matches or mismatches verb meaning constraints (e.g. Ich binde gleich meine Schuhe/Latschen/ #Kleidung/#Klamotten, transt.: ‘I’m about to tie my shoesstandard/ shoescoll/#clothesstandard/ #clothescoll’). Pilot 2 (n=8) uses the same stimuli as Pilot 1 (n=9). Pilot 1 adopts a blocked-presentation of situation-formality (where one block is formal and the other one informal). Pilot 2, on the other hand, alternates between each formality condition in a mixed-presentation order. The comparison between the formality-blocked vs mixed design serves to evaluate whether comprehenders can swiftly adjust to situation-formality shifts (Pilot 2) or whether they benefit from the habituation to situation-formality facilitated by the blocked design (Pilot 1).

Hypotheses: If participants are sensitive to formality-register and verb-argument congruence we expect this to manifest in eye gaze: more looks to formality-register and verb-argument matching than mismatching objects, time-locked to an object argument conveying semantic information about register and permitting the computation of verb-argument congruence. The inclusion of these two factors permits us to assess not only questions (i), (ii) but also (iii), via the presence or absence of a factorial interaction. In addition, if formality-register and verb-argument congruence interact during the post-verbal object noun region, how verb-argument congruence is processed may depend on formality-register congruence. Furthermore, if presentation mode (blocked vs mixed) interacts with formality-register congruence, we anticipate more fixations on register-matching objects after previously encountering a collective set of sentences with the same formality level, as opposed to when they appear in a mixed design.

Results: LME Pilot 1 and 2 results show a main effect of verb-argument congruence and formality-register anticipation based on the context sentence and the object features at the verb region (from the verb onset to the object-argument onset) and a main effect of verb-argument congruence at the post-verbal object noun region (from the onset to offset of the object-argument) in the mixed design (Fig.3). Contrary to our hypothesis, the formality-register anticipation effect observed at the verb region was more pronounced in the mixed than in the formality-blocked design. Our analysis also revealed an interaction of formality-register anticipation and verb-argument congruency in the verb-region in both pilot studies (Fig.2). These findings taken together imply that (a) situation-formality might modulate the processing of verb-argument congruence indicating that standard language processing mechanisms are in close interaction with register representations, and (b) this effect appears to be modulated by the presentation mode. The main experiments with 64 participants are underway (Experiment 1 n=32; Experiment 2 n=32).