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Abstract:
In German, case plays a central role in determining the
syntactic function of NP-arguments. If abstract case features
cannot be identified immediately, e.g., on the basis of
morphological information, syntactic function ambiguities arise. If
such an ambiguity leads into a garden-path, not only phrase
structural reanalysis may be required but also reanalysis of
abstract case features: Case features on NP-arguments have to be
deleted and different case features have to be assigned. In this
poster, we report the results of four experiments which show that
reanalysis of case features may be associated with differential
costs depending on which new case feature is to be assigned during
reanalysis.
The first experiment establishes the presence of a garden-path
effect in filler-gap ambiguities like (1). These sentences contain
a
wh-
phrase which is initially analysed as subject (i.e., assigned
nominative) but which turns out to be a dative object with
receiving the sentence final disambiguating NP. The second
experiment contrasts (1) with sentences like (2). These sentences
are identical except for the verb in the embedded clause: In (1),
the verb
(half
"helped") requires a dative object whereas the verb in (2)
(sah
"saw") requires an accusative object. This means that in (1) and
(2), different abstract case features have to be assigned to the
wh-
phrase during reanalysis: dative in (1) but accusative in (2). As
we will show, the garden-path effect in (2) is much weaker than in
(1).
Our interpretation for this difference in garden-path strength
builds on the assumption that in German, dative is subject to
stricter morphological licensing conditions than accusative. We
hypothesize that assigning dative to the
wh-
phrase during reanalysis necessitates lexical reprocessing of the
wh-
phrase in order to check whether it is morphologically compatible
with dative. This interpretation is supported by the results of
Experiments 3 and 4 which show that processing asymmetries between
sentences containing a dative or accusative assigning verb not only
hold with respect to garden-path sentences but also with respect to
the processing of ungrammatical sentences.
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