This study investigated the processing of direct Italian "who"-questions, containing a temporary ambiguity of the syntactic role (subject/object) of the initial pronoun. To this aim we measured event-related potentials (ERPs) evoked by the disambiguating verbal agreement word and by the following ones. Results showed two positive deflections, corresponding to a P300 and to a P600, only at the target verb of the object-first extraction, the condition which has been demonstrated to be less preferred by speakers. The functional meaning of this positive complex, similar to patterns already reported for German subject/object ambiguous relative clauses, was discussed with reference both to results obtained in other languages using similar sentences and to psycholinguistic parsing models.
Titolo: | Processing of temporary syntactic ambiguity in Italian "who"- questions: A study with event-related potentials | |
Autori: | ||
Data di pubblicazione: | 2005 | |
Rivista: | ||
Abstract: | This study investigated the processing of direct Italian "who"-questions, containing a temporary ambiguity of the syntactic role (subject/object) of the initial pronoun. To this aim we measured event-related potentials (ERPs) evoked by the disambiguating verbal agreement word and by the following ones. Results showed two positive deflections, corresponding to a P300 and to a P600, only at the target verb of the object-first extraction, the condition which has been demonstrated to be less preferred by speakers. The functional meaning of this positive complex, similar to patterns already reported for German subject/object ambiguous relative clauses, was discussed with reference both to results obtained in other languages using similar sentences and to psycholinguistic parsing models. | |
Handle: | http://hdl.handle.net/11368/2845807 | |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI): | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2004.11.074 | |
Appare nelle tipologie: | 1.1 Articolo in Rivista |