The Effects of Word-Order and Case Marking Information on the Processing of Japanese

Many studies in processing English report that verb information plays a significant role in processing the rest of the sentence (e.g., Boland & Tanenhaus, 1991). Japanese is subject-object-verb (SOV), head-final language with the phenomena of scrambling and phonologically null pronouns. The fact that verb information does not become available until the end of a clause leads one to ask whether other types of information may be utilized in the on-line processing of Japanese. The current study investigated whether word order and case markers play a role. Overall, no effect of word order was observed, even though the frequency of the scrambled sentences was low. Experiment 1 found no extra processing load in processing scrambled sentences. In Experiment 2, no effect of word order was found in the parser's decision making in computing a syntactic structure prior to the verb. On the other hand. Experiment 3 found that the parser was sensitive to the variety of case-marked arguments. The results of the three experiments are more congruent with the nonconfigurational structure than with the configurational structure at the stage of preverbal syntactic processing in Japanese.

[1]  Margaret Speas,et al.  On Configurationality Parameters , 1990 .

[2]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  Lectures on Government and Binding , 1981 .

[3]  Koichi Tateishi.  The Syntax of Subjects , 1991 .

[4]  Susan M. Garnsey,et al.  Semantic Influences On Parsing: Use of Thematic Role Information in Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution , 1994 .

[5]  Atsu Inoue.  A comparative study of parsing in English and Japanese , 1991 .

[6]  A. Inoue,et al.  Information-paced parsing of Japanese , 1995 .

[7]  S. I. Harada,et al.  "Counter Equi-NP deletion" , 1986 .

[8]  S. Kuroda.  Case Marking, Canonical Sentence Patterns, and Counter Equi in Japanese (A Preliminary Survey) , 1992 .

[9]  K. Sakuma.  The structure of the Japanese language , 1951 .

[10]  Mark S. Seidenberg,et al.  Pre- and postlexical loci of contextual effects on word recognition , 1984, Memory & cognition.

[11]  Shigeru Miyagawa,et al.  Structure and case marking in Japanese , 1989 .

[12]  Julie E. Boland,et al.  Chapter 13 The Role of Lexical Representations in Sentence Processing , 1991 .

[13]  M J Pickering,et al.  Case marking in the Parsing of Complement Sentences: Evidence from Eye Movements , 1996, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology.

[14]  Reiko Mazuka,et al.  Processing of empty categories in Japanese , 1991 .

[15]  Masatoshi Koizumi,et al.  On the nature of the “dative” particle ni in Japanese , 1995 .

[16]  Ann Kathleen Farmer,et al.  On the interaction of morphology and syntax , 1980 .

[17]  N. A. Mccawley,et al.  The structure of the Japanese language , 1973 .

[18]  James L. McClelland,et al.  The role of syntactic context in word recognition , 1981, Memory & cognition.

[19]  Reiko Mazuka,et al.  On Parameter Setting and Parsing: Predictions for Cross-Linguistic Differences in Adult and Child Processing , 1990 .

[20]  Bradley L. Pritchett.  Head position and parsing ambiguity , 1991 .

[21]  Hiroko Yamashita Butler.  Processing of Japanese and Korean , 1994 .

[22]  Paul Griffith Gorrell,et al.  STUDIES OF HUMAN SYNTACTIC PROCESSING: RANKED-PARALLEL VERSUS SERIAL MODELS , 1987 .

[23]  Paul Gorrell,et al.  Establishing the loci of serial and parallel effects in syntactic processing , 1989 .