Does headedness affect processing? A new look at the VO–OV contrast

Abstract

<ABSTRACT>This paper examines the relationship between headedness and language processing and considers two strategies that potentially ease language comprehension and production. Both strategies allow a language to minimize the number of arguments in a given clause, either by reducing the number of overtly expressed arguments or by reducing the number of structurally required arguments. The first strategy consists of minimizing the number of OVERTLY EXPRESSED ARGUMENTS by using more pro-drop for two-place predicates (Pro-drop bias). According to the second strategy, a language gives preference to one-place predicates over two-place predicates, thus minimizing the number of STRUCTURAL ARGUMENTS (Intransitive bias). In order to investigate these strategies, we conducted a series of comparative corpus studies of SVO and SOV languages. Study 1 examined written texts of various genres and children's utterances in English and Japanese, while Study 2 examined narrative stories in English, Spanish, Japanese, and Turkish. The results for these studies showed that pro-drop was uniformly commoner with two-place predicates than with one-place predicates, regardless of the OV/VO distinction. Thus 2 the Pro-drop bias emerges as a universal economy principle for making utterances shorter. On the other hand, SOV languages showed a much stronger Intransitive bias than SVO languages.This finding suggests that SOV word order with all the constituents explicitly expressed is potentially harder to process; the dominance of one-place predicates is therefore a compensatory strategy in order to reduce the number of preverbal arguments. The overall pattern of results suggests that human languages utilize both general (Pro-drop bias) and headedness-orderspecific (Intransitive bias) strategies to facilitate processing. The results on headedness-orderspecific strategies are consistent with other researchers' findings on differential processing in head-final and non-head-final languages, for example, Yamashita & Chang's (2001) 'longbefore-short' parameterization. <A>1. INTRODUCTIONThis paper examines the relationship between headedness (as expressed in word order differences) and language processing. It is well-known that languages vary in their word order, and although linguists have different opinions over what criteria should be used to establish the 'basic word order' of a specific language, languages do differ in basic word order no matter how it is defined (cf. Haspelmath et al. 2008). Given this variation, one may wonder what kind of interaction there is between word order and language processing. In particular, do languages of different basic word orders show different processing strategies in terms of comprehension and production, and if so, how?There have been several suggestions that word order does influence processing. For instance, Yngve (1960) used the notion of the interaction between phrase structure weight and processing load to account for the strong preference in English to place long and complex elements later in the s...

Order in NP conjuncts in spoken English and Japanese

“…In fact, the argument that OV languages are potentially harder to process can be found in the literature, even if for other reasons. Ueno and Polinsky (2009) argue that, depending on the complexity and number of verbal arguments, it may be a processing disadvantage of OV languages to hold these arguments in working memory until the verb is encountered. However, more research on the differences in processing between OV and VO languages is needed to conclusively answer whether and how these affect processing ease.…”

“…While this trend seems to have changed recently (see e.g. Christianson and Ferreira, 2005;Ueno and Polinsky, 2009;Gennari et al, 2012), many questions regarding possible language(-type)-specific effects in language production remain unanswered.…”

On the cross-linguistic validity of electrophysiological correlates of morphosyntactic processing: A study of case and agreement violations in Basque

“…Recent processing studies suggest that basic word order (SVO versus SOV) may have a deep impact on language processing. Langus and Nespor (2010) for instance, argue that SVO and SOV languages employ different neurocognitive substrata and involve distinct cognitive subsystems, and there is ample evidence from syntactic processing studies pointing toward distinct processing strategies as a function of the basic word order (Hawkins, 1994;Hawkins, 1999;Yamashita & Chang, 2001;Hawkins et al, 2002;Hawkins, 2004;Ueno & Polinsky, 2009). It has been argued that the origin of these processing differences may stem from the role played by the verb in sentence comprehension; indeed, interpretation and integration of displaced syntactic elements has been argued to take place at verb position (Pickering & Barry, 1991;Gibson & Hickok, 1993;Pickering, 1993); it has been claimed that the number and type of arguments of the sentence (NP or sentential, for example) is evaluated at verb position (Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Kello, 1993;Garnseya, Pearlmutterb, Myersa, & Lotocky, 1997), and that syntactic attachment happens when the verb is processed (Pritchett, 1992).…”

Self-embedding and complexity in oral registers

“…Miller & Chomsky 1963;Miller & Isard 1964;Gibson & Thomas 1996;Gibson 1998;Demberg & Keller 2008;Nakatani & Gibson 2010). Left embedding also appears to be more difficult than right embedding, presumably since the head must be anticipated in the latter case (Ueno & Polinsky 2009). …”