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The Processing of Japanese Control Sentences

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Book cover Processing and Producing Head-final Structures

Part of the book series: Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics ((SITP,volume 38))

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Abstract

This study investigates the processing of empty embedded clause subjects in Japanese Control sentences. In these sentences, the information necessary to specify the antecedent of the empty subject is often not available until after the embedded clause, at the Control verb. Therefore, the present study examines the following questions: (a) Is an antecedent provisionally assigned to the empty embedded clause subject in Japanese Control sentences before Control information becomes available? (b) If so, which noun phrase – the main clause subject or object – is assigned as this antecedent? The experiment consisted of a region-by-region, self-paced, non-cumulative moving-window reading task. Japanese native speakers were tested on four sentence types: (a) Subject Control sentences with empty embedded clause subjects (or SC/empty sentences), (b) Subject Control sentences with overt embedded clause subjects (or SC/overt sentences), (c) Object Control sentences with empty embedded clause subjects (or OC/empty sentences) and (d) Object Control sentences with overt embedded clause subjects (or OC/overt sentences). The reading time (RT) patterns on these sentences were consistent with an Object Control bias in the provisional assignment of an antecedent to the empty embedded clause subject. Specifically, at the Control verb, RTs were significantly longer for SC/empty sentences than for SC/overt sentences; however, there was no difference between the RTs for OC/empty and OC/overt sentences at this verb. These results suggest processing difficulty at the point of Control disambiguation only for SC/empty sentences. We interpret these findings as further support for incrementality in the parsing of Japanese sentences in general and in the processing of Japanese filler-gap structures in particular.

An erratum to this chapter is available at 10.1007/978-90-481-9213-7_18

An erratum to this chapter can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9213-7_18

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The term parser refers to the mechanism that generates structural interpretation, including the association of constituents as well as the assignment of coreference, during online sentence comprehension.

  2. 2.

    The precise nature of this empty element – that is, whether it is pr o, PRO, or a trace-like element – will remain unspecified in this paper (see Sakamoto (1996) and references therein for more on the syntax of Japanese Control).

  3. 3.

    The complete set of experimental sentences is available on the publisher’s website (or will be provided upon request to the first author).

  4. 4.

    One verb in this experiment did not come from those used in Sakamoto’s earlier work – settoku shita ‘persuaded’. Although not used in Sakamoto’s studies, this verb shows up regularly in the syntax literature related to Japanese Control.

  5. 5.

    The data from participants and items were excluded in these ways in order to conform to accepted standards in the self-paced reading literature. It is important to note, however, that the pattern of results for all participants and items was virtually the same as the pattern reported in the Results section for the subset of participants and items that met the inclusion criteria.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by an East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute grant from the National Science Foundation and the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. We would like to thank Yuki Hirose for her help and encouragement throughout this project. We would also like to thank Ken Forster, Merrill Garrett, Janet Nicol, Andy Barss, Mariko Karatsu, Simin Karimi and the participants at the First International Conference on the Processing of Head-Final Structures for their comments and suggestions. All mistakes are our own. Corresponding author: Jeffrey Witzel (jeffrey.witzel@uta.edu).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics and TESOL, College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas, 76019, USA

    Jeffrey D. Witzel

  2. University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas, USA

    Naoko O. Witzel

  3. The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Jeffrey D. Witzel & Naoko O. Witzel

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  1. Jeffrey D. Witzel
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Correspondence to Jeffrey D. Witzel .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Department of Modern Languages & Culture, Rochester Institute of Technology, 92 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, 14623, New York, USA

    Hiroko Yamashita

  2. Department of Language & Information Sci, The University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 153-8902, Japan

    Yuki Hirose

  3. , Department of East Languages & Cultures, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champai, 707 S. Mathews, Urbana, 61801, Illinois, USA

    Jerome L. Packard

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Witzel, J.D., Witzel, N.O. (2010). The Processing of Japanese Control Sentences. In: Yamashita, H., Hirose, Y., Packard, J. (eds) Processing and Producing Head-final Structures. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, vol 38. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9213-7_2

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