Grammar is background in sentence processing
Boye and Harder (2012) claim that the grammatical–lexical distinction has to do with discourse prominence: lexical elements can convey discursively primary (or foreground) information, whereas grammatical elements cannot (outside corrective contexts). This paper reports two experiments that test thi...
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Veröffentlicht in: | Language and cognition 2021-03, Vol.13 (1), p.128-153 |
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Format: | Artikel |
Sprache: | eng |
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Zusammenfassung: | Boye and Harder (2012) claim that the grammatical–lexical distinction has to do with discourse prominence: lexical elements can convey discursively primary (or foreground) information, whereas grammatical elements cannot (outside corrective contexts). This paper reports two experiments that test this claim. Experiment 1 was a letter detection study, in which readers were instructed to mark specific letters in the text. Experiment 2 was a text-change study, in which participants were asked to register omitted words. Experiment 2 showed a main effect of word category: readers attend more to words in lexical elements (e.g., full verbs) than to those in grammatical elements (e.g., auxiliaries). Experiment 1 showed an interaction: attention to letters in focused constituents increased more for grammatical words than for lexical words. The results suggest that the lexical–grammatical contrast does indeed guide readers’ attention to words. |
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ISSN: | 1866-9808 1866-9859 |
DOI: | 10.1017/langcog.2020.30 |