title: Interaction Between Syntactic Structure and Information Structure in the Processing of a Head-Final Language.
abstract: The effects of syntactic and information structures on sentence processing load were investigated using two reading comprehension experiments in Japanese, a head-final SOV language. In the first experiment, we discovered the main effects of syntactic and information structures, as well as their interaction, showing that interaction of these two factors is not restricted to head-initial languages. The second experiment revealed that the interaction between syntactic structure and information structure occurs at the second NP (O of SOV and S of OSV), which, crucially, is a pre-head position, suggesting the incremental nature of the processing of both syntactic structure and information structure in head-final languages.
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, Graduate School of Arts and Letters, Tohoku University, 27-1 Kawauchi Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980-8576, Japan. masatoshi.koizumi.a4@tohoku.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Masatoshi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Koizumi
authors.affiliation: Research Centre for Japanese Language and Linguistics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
authors.forename: Satoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Imamura
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D011578:Psycholinguistics / Q000379:methods*; D011932:Reading; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Discourse context; Incremental processing; Japanese; Processing load; Syntax