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Updated: May 27, 2026

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects
Published on: November 30, 2018
Effects of verbal event structure on online thematic role assignment
Evie Malaia1, Ronnie B Wilbur, Christine Weber-Fox
1Southwest Center for Mind, Brain, and Education, University of Texas at Arlington, Planetarium Place, Hammond Hall #417, Box 19545, Arlington, TX 76019, USA. malaia@uta.edu
Abstract:
Event structure describes the relationships between general semantics (Aktionsart) of the verb and its syntactic properties, separating verbs into two classes: telic verbs, which denote change of state events with an inherent end-point or boundary (catch, rescue), and atelic, which refer to homogenous activities (tease, host). As telic verbs describe events, in which the internal argument (Patient) is affected, we hypothesized that processing of telic verb template would activate syntactic position of the Patient during sentence comprehension. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 20 English speakers, who read sentences with reduced Object relative clauses, in which the verb was either telic or atelic. ERPs in relative clauses diverged on the definite article preceding the Agent: the atelic condition was characterized by larger amplitude negativity at the N100. Such processing differences are explained by activation of the syntactic position for the Patient by the event structure template of telic verbs.
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