Academic Paper |
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| Title: | Syntactic ambiguity resolution and the prosodic foot: Cross-language differences |
| Author: | Conrad Perry |
| Institution: | Swinburne University of Technology |
| Author: | Man-Kit Kan |
| Institution: | University of Hong Kong |
| Author: | Stephen Matthews |
| Homepage: | http://www.hku.hk/linguist/staff/sjm.htm |
| Institution: | University of Hong Kong |
| Author: | Richard Kwok-Shing Wong |
| Institution: | Hong Kong Institute of Education |
| Linguistic Field: | Phonology; Psycholinguistics; Syntax |
| Subject Language: |
Chinese, Mandarin
Chinese, Yue |
| Abstract: | In this study we examined syntactic ambiguity resolution in two different Chinese languages, Cantonese and Mandarin, which are relatively similar grammatically but very different phonologically. We did this using four-character sentences that could be read using two, two-syllable sequences (2-2) or a structure where the first syllable could be read by itself. The results showed that when both potential readings were semantically congruent, Mandarin speakers had a strong preference for the 2-2 structure and they preferred that structure much more than Cantonese speakers did. We attribute this to Mandarin having a more dominant bisyllabic prosodic foot than Cantonese. When the 2-2 meaning was semantically incongruent, however, the alternative structure was preferred by both Mandarin and Cantonese speakers. Overall, the results suggest that, in silent reading tasks and semantically neutral conditions, the prosodic foot is generated automatically and can affect syntactic choices when ambiguity arises. |
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This article appears in Applied Psycholinguistics Vol. 27, Issue 3, which you can read on Cambridge's site . |
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