Emotional nouns affect attachment decisions in sentence completion tasks

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Syntactic ambiguity resolution is a key area in psycholinguistics.
• Spanish exhibits a preference for high attachment of relative clauses (RCs) in complex noun phrases (NPs).
• The influence of lexical semantics, particularly emotional content, on syntactic processing is an active area of research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether the emotional valence and arousal of nouns in a complex NP affect the established high-attachment preference for RCs in Spanish.
• To determine if emotionally charged words can override or alter typical syntactic biases during sentence production.

Main Methods:

• Three sentence completion experiments were conducted.
• The emotional dimension (valence and arousal) of nouns within complex NPs was manipulated.
• Participants completed sentences containing ambiguous structures, such as 'Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony.'

Main Results:

• The presence of emotionally charged words (pleasant or unpleasant) induced changes in the typical NP1 preference for RC attachment.
• High-arousal words demonstrated a significant effect, attracting RC attachment to the NP containing them, regardless of its position (NP1 or NP2).
• These emotionally intense words were sufficient to alter, and in some cases reverse, the established syntactic bias in sentence production.

Conclusions:

• Lexical emotional content plays a crucial role in resolving syntactic ambiguity.
• High-arousal words can override strong syntactic preferences, demonstrating the dynamic interplay between semantics and syntax.
• Findings contribute to theories of syntactic ambiguity resolution by highlighting the impact of emotional salience.