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Attachment Preference in Auditory German Sentences: Individual Differences and Pragmatic Strategy
Eleanor E Harding1, Daniela Sammler2, Sonja A Kotz1,3
1Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
Frontiers in Psychology
|July 6, 2019
Summary
German listeners show no consistent preference for relative clause attachment. Individual differences in working memory or rhythm ability did not explain these preferences, though pragmatic content influenced those with lower rhythm skills.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Science
- Linguistics
Background:
- Relative clauses can have ambiguous attachment points, leading to varied preferences across languages like German.
- Existing explanations for attachment preference differences, often citing cognitive strategies or constraints, lack consistent empirical support.
- Understanding relative clause attachment is crucial for psycholinguistics and language processing research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate relative clause attachment preferences in German listeners.
- To determine if working memory or musical rhythm ability influences these preferences.
- To assess the reliability of offline self-reports for online attachment preferences.
Main Methods:
- A sentence completion experiment was conducted with German listeners.
- Post-hoc interviews were used to gather qualitative data on preferences.
- Working memory and musical rhythm abilities were measured using standardized diagnostic tests.
Main Results:
- German listeners exhibited no uniform attachment preference for relative clauses.
- Individual differences in working memory and musical rhythm ability did not correlate with attachment preferences.
- Pragmatic sentence content occasionally superseded syntactic preferences, particularly in participants with lower rhythm ability.
Conclusions:
- Offline self-reports are validated as reliable indicators of online relative clause attachment preferences.
- The study highlights a potential link between pragmatic strategy and rhythm ability in language processing.
- Future research should explore the interplay between pragmatic factors, rhythm, and syntactic ambiguity resolution.
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