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On the universality of language comprehension strategies: Evidence from Turkish
- Source :
- Cognition. 106:484-500
- Publication Year :
- 2008
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2008.
-
Abstract
- A fundamental question in psycholinguistic research concerns the universality of comprehension strategies. We investigated this issue by examining the so-called "subject preference" in Turkish, a language which allows for a natural (unmarked) object reading of an initial ambiguous argument. Using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we observed increased processing difficulty in the form of a broadly distributed positivity when an initial ambiguous argument was disambiguated towards an object reading. This effect was independent of the animacy (i.e. semantic subject prototypicality) of the ambiguous argument. Our results therefore speak in favour of a universal tendency to interpret the first argument encountered as the "subject" of the clause, even in languages providing no obvious structural motivation for such a strategy. However, we argue that the underlying explanation for this preference must be modified in accordance with cross-linguistic considerations.
- Subjects :
- Adult
Cross-Cultural Comparison
Male
Linguistics and Language
Turkish
Cognitive Neuroscience
media_common.quotation_subject
Decision Making
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Language and Linguistics
Psycholinguistics
Developmental and Educational Psychology
Humans
Verbal comprehension
Evoked Potentials
Language
media_common
Cerebral Cortex
Universality (philosophy)
Electroencephalography
Cognition
Ambiguity
Linguistics
language.human_language
Semantics
Comprehension
Reading
language
Female
Animacy
Psychology
Cognitive psychology
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 00100277
- Volume :
- 106
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Cognition
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....70101809bf25c596ae79b2beb79e04ab