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Constituent length affects prosody and processing for a dative NP ambiguity in Korean
Hyekyung Hwang1, Amy J Schafer
1Department of Linguistics and Centre for Research on Language, Mind and Brain, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada.
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
|December 11, 2008
Summary
Phrase length impacts sentence processing and interpretation in Korean, influencing both spoken and silent reading through prosody. This research supports the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis in a new linguistic context.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution
- Prosody
Background:
- The Implicit Prosody Hypothesis suggests prosody influences silent reading.
- Previous research primarily focused on English, leaving its applicability in other languages and constructions unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the role of phrase length and prosody in resolving dative NP ambiguity in Korean.
- To test the extension of the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis to Korean sentence processing.
Main Methods:
- Two sentence processing experiments using overt (read-aloud) and implicit (silent reading) prosody measures.
- Controlled for non-prosodic factors by manipulating the length of proper names preceding ambiguous syntactic material.
Main Results:
- Longer phrases led to different prosodic phrasing and altered preferred interpretations of ambiguous sentences.
- Prosodic patterns from read-aloud tasks predicted silent reading patterns.
- Speakers could modulate prosody to reflect different interpretations when aware of ambiguity.
Conclusions:
- Phrase length significantly affects prosody and interpretation in Korean sentence processing.
- The findings extend the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis to Korean and new syntactic constructions.
- Syntactic biases can rapidly influence implicit prosody formation.
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