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The interaction of grammatically distinct agreement dependencies in predictive processing

Stone, Kate; Veríssimo, João; Schad, Daniel J.; Oltrogge, Elise; Vasishth, Shravan; Lago, Sol

Authors

João Veríssimo

Daniel J. Schad

Elise Oltrogge

Shravan Vasishth

Sol Lago



Abstract

Previous research has found that comprehenders sometimes predict information that is grammatically unlicensed by sentence constraints. An open question is why such grammatically unlicensed predictions occur. We examined the possibility that unlicensed predictions arise in situations of information conflict, for instance when comprehenders try to predict upcoming words while simultaneously building dependencies with previously encountered elements in memory. German possessive pronouns are a good testing ground for this hypothesis because they encode two grammatically distinct agreement dependencies: a retrospective one between the possessive and its previously mentioned referent, and a prospective one between the possessive and its following nominal head. In two visual world eye-tracking experiments, we estimated the onset of predictive effects in participants’ fixations. The results showed that the retrospective dependency affected resolution of the prospective dependency by shifting the onset of predictive effects. We attribute this effect to an interaction between predictive and memory retrieval processes.

Citation

Stone, K., Veríssimo, J., Schad, D. J., Oltrogge, E., Vasishth, S., & Lago, S. (2021). The interaction of grammatically distinct agreement dependencies in predictive processing. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 36(9), 1159-1179. https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2021.1921816

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Apr 19, 2021
Online Publication Date May 13, 2021
Publication Date Jan 1, 2021
Deposit Date Feb 24, 2025
Publicly Available Date Feb 24, 2025
Journal Language, Cognition and Neuroscience
Print ISSN 2327-3798
Electronic ISSN 2327-3801
Publisher Taylor & Francis
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 36
Issue 9
Pages 1159-1179
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2021.1921816
Keywords Sentence processing; Visual world eye-tracking; Prediction; Gender agreement; German
Public URL https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/5044299

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Publisher Licence URL
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.





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