Abstract
In languages with flexible constituent order (so-called free word order languages), available orders are used to encode given/new distinctions; they therefore differ not only syntactically, but also in their context requirements. In Experiment 1, using a self-paced reading task, we compared Russian S V IO DO (canonical), DO S V IO and DO IO V S constructions in appropriate vs. inappropriate contexts (those that violated their context requirements). The context factor was significant, while the syntax factor was not. The less pronounced context effect evidenced in previous studies (e.g., Kaiser and Trueswell in Cognitioin 94:113–147, 2004) might be due to the use of shorter target sentences and less extensive contexts. We also demonstrated that the slow-down starts at the first contextually inappropriate constituent, which shows that the information about context requirements is taken into account immediately, but that it develops faster on preverbal subjects and postverbal indirect objects (occupying their canonical positions) than on preverbal indirect objects (occupying a noncanonical position, or scrambled). In Experiment 2, these findings were replicated for IO S V DO and IO DO V S orders. S V IO DO orders with a continuation were used to show that there is no additional effect of inappropriate context at the end of the sentence.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by the Rubicon grant 446-07-019 from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). I have benefited from the comments and help of many linguists while working on this paper, and I am particularly grateful to Frank Wijnen.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Slioussar, N. Processing of a Free Word Order Language: The Role of Syntax and Context. J Psycholinguist Res 40, 291–306 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-011-9171-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-011-9171-5