Psycholinguistic research on the interaction of the processing of two types of dependencies in Japanese

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26870219
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Cognitive science; Linguistics
• Research Institution: Kanazawa University
• Principal Investigator: Yasunaga Daichi 金沢大学, 歴史言語文化学系, 准教授 (00707979)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 文理解 / 依存関係 / 読文時間計測実験

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This research focused on the establishment process of linguistic dependencies. First, we examined the interaction in the processing of two types of dependency, the wh-Q dependency and the filler-gap dependency. The experimental results showed that the wh-Q dependency was processed preferentially to the filler-gap dependency. Second, we considered whether the structural distance between two elements is a crucial factor in the processing difficulty of Japanese relative clauses. Our experiment showed that, under certain condition, the structural distance is not a determinant of the processing difficulty. Instead, the predictability of the structure would affect the processing difficulty of the relative clause of Japanese.

Free Research Field

心理言語学