Dependency-dependent interference: NPI interference, agreement attraction, and global pragmatic inferences.
Ming Xiang1, Julian Grove, Anastasia Giannakidou
1Linguistics Department, University of Chicago Chicago, IL, USA.
This study reveals that negative polarity item (NPI) interference in sentence processing is partly driven by pragmatic skills, unlike agreement attraction. Individuals with more autistic traits showed less NPI interference.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Science
- Linguistics
Background:
- Sentence processing can lead to grammatical errors when dependencies are long.
- Two types of errors, negative polarity item (NPI) interference and agreement attraction, appear similar but may have different origins.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the distinct sources of NPI interference and agreement attraction.
- To determine if pragmatic skills influence NPI interference.
Main Methods:
- A self-paced reading study with an acceptability judgment task.
- Quantified pragmatic communicative skills using the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ).
Main Results:
- NPI interference was modulated by pragmatic skills, particularly in offline tasks.
- Participants with higher AQ scores (more autistic traits) exhibited less NPI interference.
- Agreement attraction was not influenced by individual pragmatic skill differences.
Conclusions:
- NPI interference arises from distinct sources, including pragmatic inferences, unlike agreement attraction.
- Individual differences in pragmatic abilities impact NPI licensing, suggesting a dual mechanism of memory-retrieval and pragmatic triggering for NPI interference.
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