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Syntactic Prediction Across Distance in English and Chinese Reading
Poster Session D, Thursday, October 1, 4:30 - 6:30 pm, Wangari Maathai
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.
Weilin Liu1, Sarah J. White1, Kevin B. Paterson1; 1University of Leicester
Syntactic prediction allows readers to anticipate not only upcoming words but also syntactic structures to enable efficient processing. When readers encounter the word "either" in a sentence, they might anticipate a following or-construction, and a facilitation effect can be observed on the or-construction when it eventually appears (Staub & Clifton, 2006). However, it remains unclear whether the syntactic prediction is maintained or weakened with the distance between the predictive cue and the predicted element increases. To address this question, two eye-tracking studies were conducted across different language systems – English and Chinese. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the presence of the word "either" (present vs absent) and the distance between either-or constructions (long vs short) during English sentence reading. For instance, “She used to take (either) the subway with comfy seats or the bus to the office” versus “She used to take (either) the subway or the bus to the office”. Experiment 2 examined the parallel Chinese constructions不仅-而且 (“not only…but also…”) using the same design. 40 native English speakers took part in the eye-tracking study in Experiment 1. The analysis was undertaken using general linear mixed-effects models in R, focusing on gaze duration (GD) and regression path duration (RPD) at the critical regions of or-construction and the distance. For Experiment 1, we observed the presence of the predictive cue “either” facilitated the processing of the or-construction, reflecting on gaze duration (Est = 46.84, SE = 6.53, t = 7.17, p < .001) and regression path duration (Est = 64.04, SE = 10.91, t = 5.87, p < .001) , with a similar facilitation effect observed across both short- and long-distance conditions. The findings suggest that the syntactic prediction can be maintained across increased distance during English sentence reading. Ongoing analyses from the Chinese experiment will determine whether a comparable facilitation effect emerges across the two language systems, providing insight into the cross-linguistic robustness of predictive syntactic processing.
Topic Areas: Reading, Syntax and Combinatorial Semantics