Using eye-tracking to study anaphoric relations processing in European Portuguese
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Data
2011
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Editora
Edições Universitárias Lusófonas
Resumo
In this study we evaluate processing costs of different types of anaphoric expressions
during reading. We consider three types of anaphoric expressions in Subject sentential
position: a null pronoun (pro), and two gaps produced by syntactic movement: a WHvariable
and a NP copy. Given that coreferential pro exhibits more referential weight
than wh- and NP-gaps, and grounded on theories of referential processing based on
relations of hierarchy and accessibility of the antecedent, we raise the hypothesis that the
more dependent on its antecedent the anaphoric null constituent is, and the more minimal
is the distance in terms of hierarchical structure between the anaphoric null element and
its antecedent, the lower are the cognitive costs in processing. To test our hypothesis, we
registered the eye movements with R6-HS ASL system of 20 Portuguese adult native
speakers. Text regions including the selected anaphoric expressions were delimited and
tagged. We analyzed the reading time of each region taking into account the number and
duration of eye fixations per region; we used the reading time by character in
milliseconds in order to compare values between regions of different length. We found a
significant advantage in the reading time of the gaps arising from movement over the
reading time of pro.
Descrição
Journal of Eye Tracking, Visual Cognition and Emotion
Palavras-chave
EYE TRACKING, LÍNGUA PORTUGUESA, GRAMÁTICA PORTUGUESA, PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE, PORTUGUESE GRAMMAR, EYE TRACKING, EDUCAÇÃO, EDUCATION