Cognitive and Eye-Movement Techniques in Indirect Nominal Groups Entrenchment

Abstract

The study reveals the reading and construal techniques employed in the process of textual entrenchment of indirect nominal groups. Entrenchment is characterized by the conventionalization of the nominal group form and the repeated referent construal scheme. The research discloses whether any repeated indirect nominal group use contributes to its entrenchment which is assessed in the oculographic experiment. It traces the eye-movement techniques and the reference identification index variations signifying the changes in the cognitive load distribution. To define the construal differences occurring in the first and repeated indirect nominal group use, we apply the system of parameters of focusing and process the parametric analysis of the text fragments. We initially hypothesized that the repeated indirect nominal group use will employ defocusing and repeated focusing schemes, however it also employed new focusing schemes. The changing roles of focusing and defocusing were evaluated oculographically and revealed the techniques of both cognitive load decrease and increase, with fixation duration decrease and stable reading regimes correlating with defocusing / repeated focusing, and identification index decrease and longer fixation duration correlating with new focusing. The results give evidence that textual entrenchment is in most cases accompanied by novel construal, and is constrained not solely by the number of repeated indirect nominal group uses but by its new roles in the text and referent construal.

Metaphoric construal and its effect on gaze behavior of the readers with better and worse working memory

“…The results demonstrate that creative language use in its novel and entrenched variants still has several common effects onto its gaze perception which appear to be steady with the participants with worse memory. Therefore, the findings extend the eye-tracking experimental results obtained in (Cardillo et al, 2012;Goldstein et al, 2012;Kiose & Kharlamova, 2021) which state the differences only for novel and entrenched metaphors gaze costs. Even though the novel indirect name is used repeatedly, the participants face multiple challenges in the event construal in AoIs which affect their reading strategy.…”

“…This can be explained if we consider that in context novel metaphors may become entrenched through their repeated use and consequently lower gaze costs will be observed (Cardillo et al, 2012;Goldstein et al, 2012). In the previous study (Kiose & Kharlamova, 2021) we reported the results on the construal differences observed in novel and entrenched metaphors separately, however these results allowed to predict that there might be significant construal and gaze cost contingencies irrespective of metaphor novelty / entrenchment but dependent on other metaphor construal factors like agentivity or degree of abstractness.…”

“…ВОПРОСЫ ТЕОРЕТЙЧЕСКОЙ Й ПРЙКЛАДНОЙ ЛЙНГВЙСТЙКЙ RESEARCH RESULT. THEORETICAL AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS studies of metaphor processing, with event construal specifics (Coulson & van Petten, 2002;Coulson, 2008;Thibodeau & Boroditsky, 2013), linguistic (especially syntactic) construal effects (Gibbs & Matlock, 2008), salience in metaphorical models (Giora, 2003) or pragmatic models (Giora et al, 2018), verbal and nonverbal categories distribution (Glucksberg, 2003), modulating construal in novel and entrenched metaphors (Kiose & Kharlamova, 2021).…”