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Effect on Comprehension of Preposed versus Postposed Adverbial Phrases

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Abstract

A challenge for psycholinguistics is to describe how linguistic cues influence the construction of the mental representation resulting from the comprehension of a text. In this paper, we will focus on one of these linguistic devices: the sentence-initial positioning of spatial adverbials such as In the park.... Three self-paced reading experiments were conducted to test the ‘Discourse Framing Hypothesis’ according to which preposed adverbials can be seen as frame builders announcing that incoming contents satisfy the same informational criterion specified by the adverbial. Our results indicate that spatial adverbials do not play the same role when they are in sentence-initial and in sentence-final position. These results are discussed in the framework of Zwaan’s Event Indexing Model.

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Notes

  1. According to Halliday (2004), text is a three-level semiotic system “where the semantic unit, the text, unified through cohesive patterns, is the locus of choice in ideational, textual and interpersonal meaning” (p. 327). Ideational meaning concerns the message content, textual meaning concerns message structuring and interpersonal meaning concerns the adaptation of the message to a specific receiver.

  2. On associative or “inferable” definite NPs in French, cf. Charolles and Kleiber (1999) and Kleiber (2001).

  3. Or of a covert spatial stage topic (Erteschik-Shir 1997, 1999; Lahousse 2003, 2007)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UMR7023 Structures Formelles du Langage, University of Paris 8, 59-61 rue Pouchet, 75849 , Paris Cedex 17, France

    Saveria Colonna

  2. UMR 8094 LATTICE CNRS-ENS, University of Paris 3, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 1 rue Maurice Arnoux, 92120 , Montrouge, France

    Michel Charolles

  3. CNRS, UMR 8094 LATTICE CNRS-ENS & Université Paris 3, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 1 rue Maurice Arnoux, 92120 , Montrouge, France

    Laure Sarda

  4. CNRS, Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neuropsychologie Cognitives et Université Paris Descartes, Paris, France

    Joël Pynte

  5. Institut de Psychologie, 71 Avenue Edouard Vaillant, 92774 , Boulogne-Billancourt Cedex, France

    Joël Pynte

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  1. Saveria Colonna
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  2. Michel Charolles
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Correspondence to Saveria Colonna.

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Colonna, S., Charolles, M., Sarda, L. et al. Effect on Comprehension of Preposed versus Postposed Adverbial Phrases. J Psycholinguist Res 43, 771–790 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-013-9279-x

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