An ERP Study of Causative Cleft Construction in Japanese: Evidence for the Preference of Shorter Linear Distance in Sentence Comprehension.
This study examined the processing of two types of Japanese causative cleft constructions (subject-gap vs. object-gap) by conducting an event-related brain potential experiment to clarify the processing mechanism of long-distance dependencies. The results demonstrated that the subject-gap constructions elicited larger P600 effects than the object-gap constructions. Based on these findings, we argue that the linear distance rather than the structural distance between the extracted argument (filler) and its original gap position is a crucial factor for determining processing costs of gap-filler dependency in Japanese causative cleft constructions. This argument indicates that (at least) some types of long-distance dependencies are sensitive to linear distance.
Graduate School of Humanities, Kyushu University, 6-19-1, Hakozaki, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka, Japan. masayano@kyudai.jp.|Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan. masayano@kyudai.jp.
Masataka
M
Yano
Graduate School of Humanities, Kyushu University, 6-19-1, Hakozaki, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka, Japan.
Tsutomu
T
Sakamoto
D000328:Adult; D032882:Comprehension; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D055815:Young Adult
Causative cleft construction; Event-related brain potentials (ERPs); Gap-filler dependency; Japanese; Sentence comprehension