Linguistic exhaustivity inference is context dependent

Abstract

The study investigates contextual effects on the processing of pre-verbal (preVf) and postverbal (postVf) focus sentences in an eye-tracking experiment. For comparison, lexically marked focus (only-f) sentences were also included. The test sentences were presented following two types of linguistic context: restrictive or non-restrictive. It was hypothesized that if preVf exhaustivity is purely structurally encoded, gaze will converge on the exhaustive target image at a similar rate in the two contexts, just as it does in the case of only-f. However, if context also has an effect on the emergence of exhaustivity in preVf, gaze should converge more slowly on the exhaustive target in the non-restrictive context than in the restrictive context as predicted in postVf. The results support the latter prediction: fixation patterns diverge in the case of both preVf and postVf sentences, while they do not in the case of the baseline only-f.

Hungarian Structural Focus: Accessibility to Focused Elements and Their Alternatives in Working Memory and Delayed Recognition Memory

“…However, one might raise the objection that exhaustivity is also part of the core semantic meaning of preVf sentences, as opposed to neutral sentences, in which exhaustivity is not assumed to be represented semantically. Such theories, however (see e.g., Kiss, 1998;Kenesei, 2006) have not been supported by experimental data (see e.g., Onea and Beaver, 2009;Kas and Lukács, 2013;Gerocs et al, 2014;Káldi et al, 2016;Káldi and Babarczy, 2018). Furthermore, recent experimental evidence suggest that the use of focus may not only be strictly motivated by linguistic factors, and that these factors should be best seen as pragmatic ones (Stevens and Roberts, 2019;Káldi et al, 2020).…”

Approaches to Hungarian

“…On the one hand the present experiments showed that the availability of a set facilitates preVf use. On the other hand, the results of Káldi and Babarczy (2017) and Káldi and Babarczy (2018) demonstrate that if this set is either explicitly or implicitly given, the likelihood that preVf is interpreted exhaustively increases. To approach the question from a different perspective, note that according to É. , preVf sentences have an exhaustive interpretation: for example if an answer to a narrow-wh-question is to be understood exhaustively, a preVf is used.…”

“…Another, independent observation may account for the dominating proportions of preVf sentences in the conditions containing sets in the present experiments. Káldi and Babarczy (2017) and Káldi and Babarczy (2018), in a series of visual world experiments, presented preVf, neutral and lexically marked focus sentences in contexts containing either explicit or implicit sets, and studied the rate of exhaustive interpretations of the presented sentence types. It was observed that in the case of preVf sentences, the rates of exhaustive interpretation were around 90% (where a chance level was 50%) in all conditions.…”

Online vásárlási folyamat hatékonyságának növelése – két webáruház használhatóságának összehasonlítása szemmozgáskövetéssel

“…Szemmozgás-követéses vizsgálatokat olyan tudományterületeken alkalmaznak, mint a pszichológia, orvosi klinikai, ipari kutatások, informatika. A pszichológiában például a kognitív pszichológiai kutatások, szociálpszichológiai kutatások terén terjedtek el leginkább, a vizsgálatok középpontjában az információfeldolgozás, a figyelem, a vizuális észlelés, az olvasás, tanulás állnak (Schroeder, Hyönä, & Liversedge, 2015;Demeter et al, 2015;Káldi & Babarczy, 2018). Használják az eszközt a csecsemők és gyerekek fejlődésének vizsgálatára (pl.…”