Information Structure and Word Order Canonicity in the Comprehension of Spanish Texts: An Eye-Tracking Study

Word order alternation has been described as one of the most productive information structure markers and discourse organizers across languages. Psycholinguistic evidence has shown that word order is a crucial cue for argument interpretation. Previous studies about Spanish sentence comprehension hav...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Gattei, Carolina A., París, Luis A., Shalom, Diego E.
Formato: Artículo publishedVersion
Lenguaje:Inglés
Publicado: Universidad Torcuato Di Tella 2024
Materias:
Information structure
Word order
Eye-tracking
Text comprehension
Prominence
Psych verbs
Acceso en línea:https://repositorio.utdt.edu/handle/20.500.13098/13086
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.629724
Aporte de:
Repositorio Digital Universidad Torcuato Di Tella de Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
id I57-R163-20.500.13098-13086
record_format dspace
spelling I57-R163-20.500.13098-130862025-01-10T15:31:29Z Information Structure and Word Order Canonicity in the Comprehension of Spanish Texts: An Eye-Tracking Study Gattei, Carolina A. París, Luis A. Shalom, Diego E. Information structure Word order Eye-tracking Text comprehension Prominence Psych verbs Word order alternation has been described as one of the most productive information structure markers and discourse organizers across languages. Psycholinguistic evidence has shown that word order is a crucial cue for argument interpretation. Previous studies about Spanish sentence comprehension have shown greater difficulty to parse sentences that present a word order that does not respect the order of participants of the verb's lexico-semantic structure, irrespective to whether the sentences follow the canonical word order of the language or not. This difficulty has been accounted as the cognitive cost related to the miscomputation of prominence status of the argument that precedes the verb. Nonetheless, the authors only analyzed the use of alternative word orders in isolated sentences, leaving aside the pragmatic motivation of word order alternation. By means of an eye-tracking task, the current study provides further evidence about the role of information structure for the comprehension of sentences with alternative word order and verb type, and sheds light on the interaction between syntax, semantics and pragmatics. We analyzed both “early” and “late” eye-movement measures as well as accuracy and response times to comprehension questions. Results showed an overall influence of information structure reflected in a modulation of late eye-movement measures as well as offline measures like total reading time and questions response time. However, effects related to the miscomputation of prominence status did not fade away when sentences were preceded by a context that led to non-canonical word order of constituents, showing that prominence computation is a core mechanism for argument interpretation, even in sentences preceded by context. Este documento se encuentra publicado en Frontiers in Psychology (ISSN: 1664-1078) 12:629724. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.629724 2024-10-03T16:26:53Z 2024-10-03T16:26:53Z 2024-04 info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion https://repositorio.utdt.edu/handle/20.500.13098/13086 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.629724 eng Documento de Trabajo. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Escuela de Gobierno Gattei CA, París LA and Shalom DE (2021) Information Structure and Word Order Canonicity in the Comprehension of Spanish Texts: An Eye-Tracking Study. Front. Psychol. 12:629724. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.629724 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 16 p. application/pdf application/pdf Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Escuela de Gobierno
institution Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
institution_str I-57
repository_str R-163
collection Repositorio Digital Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
language Inglés
orig_language_str_mv eng
topic Information structure
Word order
Eye-tracking
Text comprehension
Prominence
Psych verbs
spellingShingle Information structure
Word order
Eye-tracking
Text comprehension
Prominence
Psych verbs
Gattei, Carolina A.
París, Luis A.
Shalom, Diego E.
Information Structure and Word Order Canonicity in the Comprehension of Spanish Texts: An Eye-Tracking Study
topic_facet Information structure
Word order
Eye-tracking
Text comprehension
Prominence
Psych verbs
description Word order alternation has been described as one of the most productive information structure markers and discourse organizers across languages. Psycholinguistic evidence has shown that word order is a crucial cue for argument interpretation. Previous studies about Spanish sentence comprehension have shown greater difficulty to parse sentences that present a word order that does not respect the order of participants of the verb's lexico-semantic structure, irrespective to whether the sentences follow the canonical word order of the language or not. This difficulty has been accounted as the cognitive cost related to the miscomputation of prominence status of the argument that precedes the verb. Nonetheless, the authors only analyzed the use of alternative word orders in isolated sentences, leaving aside the pragmatic motivation of word order alternation. By means of an eye-tracking task, the current study provides further evidence about the role of information structure for the comprehension of sentences with alternative word order and verb type, and sheds light on the interaction between syntax, semantics and pragmatics. We analyzed both “early” and “late” eye-movement measures as well as accuracy and response times to comprehension questions. Results showed an overall influence of information structure reflected in a modulation of late eye-movement measures as well as offline measures like total reading time and questions response time. However, effects related to the miscomputation of prominence status did not fade away when sentences were preceded by a context that led to non-canonical word order of constituents, showing that prominence computation is a core mechanism for argument interpretation, even in sentences preceded by context.
format Artículo
publishedVersion
author Gattei, Carolina A.
París, Luis A.
Shalom, Diego E.
author_facet Gattei, Carolina A.
París, Luis A.
Shalom, Diego E.
author_sort Gattei, Carolina A.
title Information Structure and Word Order Canonicity in the Comprehension of Spanish Texts: An Eye-Tracking Study
title_short Information Structure and Word Order Canonicity in the Comprehension of Spanish Texts: An Eye-Tracking Study
title_full Information Structure and Word Order Canonicity in the Comprehension of Spanish Texts: An Eye-Tracking Study
title_fullStr Information Structure and Word Order Canonicity in the Comprehension of Spanish Texts: An Eye-Tracking Study
title_full_unstemmed Information Structure and Word Order Canonicity in the Comprehension of Spanish Texts: An Eye-Tracking Study
title_sort information structure and word order canonicity in the comprehension of spanish texts: an eye-tracking study
publisher Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
publishDate 2024
url https://repositorio.utdt.edu/handle/20.500.13098/13086
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.629724
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AT parisluisa informationstructureandwordordercanonicityinthecomprehensionofspanishtextsaneyetrackingstudy
AT shalomdiegoe informationstructureandwordordercanonicityinthecomprehensionofspanishtextsaneyetrackingstudy
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