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Lexical encoding of event participant information
1Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive Science, State University of New York at Buffalo, 14260-4110, USA.
Brain and Language
|August 6, 1999
Summary
Implicit agents in passive sentences are understood through verb meanings, not general reasoning. This research shows verb argument structure is accessed immediately upon word recognition.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Science
- Linguistics
Background:
- Passive sentences like "The ship was sunk" typically imply an unexpressed agent.
- Understanding the source of this implicit agent information is crucial for language comprehension models.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine if implicit agents in passive sentences originate from lexical information or conceptual inferences.
- To investigate the timing of verb argument structure access during language processing.
Main Methods:
- Employed self-paced reading studies to measure reading times.
- Utilized eye-monitoring to track participants' gaze patterns during sentence processing.
Main Results:
- Demonstrated that implicit agents are derived from the lexical representations of verbs.
- Confirmed that verb argument structure information is accessed immediately upon verb recognition.
- Provided evidence against conceptual inference as the primary source for implicit agents.
Conclusions:
- Implicit agent information in passive constructions is lexically driven.
- Verb argument structure plays a rapid and integral role in real-time language comprehension.