The effect of animacy on the agent preference: Self-paced reading evidence from Basque

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Linguistic theory
• Cognitive science

Background:

• Language processing often favors agent roles for ambiguous initial noun phrases (NPs).
• This agent preference persists even in ergative languages where agents are typically marked differently.
• The influence of animacy on this preference in ergative, agent-dropping languages remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether animacy modulates the agent preference in Basque, an ergative language with agent-dropping.
• To examine how animate versus inanimate initial NPs influence sentence processing when their grammatical role is ambiguous.

Main Methods:

• A self-paced reading study was conducted using Basque sentences with case-marking syncretism.
• Hierarchical Bayesian regression modeled reading times for initial NPs disambiguated by verbs or subsequent NPs.
• The study compared processing of animate (human) versus inanimate NPs in agent and patient roles.

Main Results:

• No significant reanalysis effect was observed when sentence role was disambiguated solely by the verb.
• A processing slowdown occurred after human patients compared to human agents when disambiguated by a second NP.
• This slowdown was absent for inanimate patients, indicating attenuated agent preference.

Conclusions:

• The agent preference in language comprehension can be modulated by the animacy of the initial noun phrase.
• Inanimate initial NPs may reduce the tendency to interpret them as agents, particularly when disambiguated later in the sentence.
• Findings contribute to understanding the interplay of grammatical role, animacy, and processing biases in psycholinguistics.