title: Processing Load Imposed by Line Breaks in English Temporal Wh-Questions.
abstract: Prosody plays an important role in online sentence processing both explicitly and implicitly. It has been shown that prosodically packaging together parts of a sentence that are interpreted together facilitates processing of the sentence. This applies not only to explicit prosody but also implicit prosody. The present work hypothesizes that a line break in a written text induces an implicit prosodic break, which, in turn, should result in a processing bias for interpreting English wh-questions. Two experiments-one self-paced reading study and one questionnaire study-are reported. Both supported the "line break" hypothesis mentioned above. The results of the self-paced reading experiment showed that unambiguous wh-questions were read faster when the location of line breaks (or frame breaks) matched the scope of a wh-phrase (main or embedded clause) than when they did not. The questionnaire tested sentences with an ambiguous wh-phrase, one that could attach either to the main or the embedded clause. These sentences were interpreted as attaching to the main clause more often than to the embedded clause when a line break appeared after the main verb, but not when it appeared after the embedded verb.
authors: Language and Brain Laboratory, School of Linguistics and Language Studies and Institute of Cognitive Science, Carleton UniversityOttawa, ON, Canada; Department of System Neuroscience, National Institute for Physiological SciencesOkazaki, Japan; Department of Linguistics, The University of North Carolina at Chapel HillChapel Hill, NC, USA.
authors: Masako
authors: M
authors: Hirotani
authors: Department of Linguistics, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
authors: J Michael
authors: JM
authors: Terry
authors: Department of System Neuroscience, National Institute for Physiological Sciences Okazaki, Japan.
authors: Norihiro
authors: N
authors: Sadato
keywords: implicit prosody; inner voice; line breaks; sentence comprehension; sentence processing; silent reading; wh-questions; written text