(How) Do Register and Morphosyntactic Congruence Effects Interact during Sentence Reading? Two Eye-Tracking Pilot Studies Abstract uri icon

abstract

  • In two eye-tracking pilots during reading, we investigated real-time processing of formality-register congruence and subject-verb morphosyntactic congruence, and their relation. Participants read, in German, two context sentences conveying a formal or informal situation, followed by a target sentence containing a high- or low-register verb (e.g., Engl. transl. ”The policeman detained the activist” vs. ”The policeman grabbed the activist”) which matched or mismatched context formality. The second pilot additionally manipulated subject-verb morphosyntactic congruence (e.g., Engl. transl. ”*The policeman detain the activist”; ”*The policeman grabbed the activist”). We observed main effects of formality-register and morphosyntactic congruence on verb reading times, as well as an interaction effect at the postverbal object noun. Higher degrees of context and target sentence formality resulted in longer reading times. Ongoing investigation will further clarify our pilot findings, which suggest some interference between formality-register and morphosyntactic congruence processing.

publication date

  • 2022

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