2016 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
| Project/Area Number |
15J03336
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| Research Institution | Nagoya University |
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Principal Investigator |
MANSBRIDGE MICHAEL PATRICK 名古屋大学, 国際言語文化研究科, 特別研究員(DC1)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2015-04-24 – 2018-03-31
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| Keywords | Eye-tracking / Ambiguity / Expectation-processing / Memory-constraints / Canonical Order / Mandarin Chinese / Japanese / Korean |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Eye-tracking experiments were done on relative clause processing for L1 and Japanese, L1 Mandarin, and L1 Korean, testing for the effect of initial clause-type ambiguity. The results revealed support for expectation-based processing as ambiguity was attenuated for Mandarin and Japanese RC processing. For L1 Mandarin, ambiguous items revealed influences of memory constraints as well as canonical order effects while unambiguous items were influenced by expectation-based processing. For L1 and L2 Japanese, ambiguous items were influenced by thematic effects while unambiguous items were shown to be also influenced by expectation-based processing. Overall, the similar results found between languages gives support to expectation-based processing for unambiguous relative clauses.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
The current status of my research is going as planned. For the year of H28, I set out to test for the effects of the initial-clause type ambiguity for RC processing in prenominal Japanese, Korean and Mandarin. For each language, as well as L2 Japanese, eye-tracking experiments were conducted on this topic. The initial results seem promising but needs further validation from research planned in H29. One paper needs revision and support from additional experiments, one paper is under review, one paper is currently being written and one was published.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Future work will focus on expectation-based processing in Japanese as well as incorporating models of activation constraints for cue-based retrieval processes into Mandarin, Japanese and Korean RC processing. This will explore the interdependence of locality, similarity-interference, expectation-based processing and other factors such as working memory capacity. Research will be carried out using offline paper-based tests such as naturalness decision tasks and sentence completion tasks. Also, online eye-tracking experiments will be conducted to test for the influence of the above factors on RC processing. The results from these languages taken collectively should help further develop a single model composed of multiple interdependent factors.
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