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Syntactic ambiguity resolution and the prosodic foot: Cross-language differences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2006

CONRAD PERRY ,
MAN-KIT KAN ,
STEPHEN MATTHEWS  and
RICHARD KWOK-SHING WONG
CONRAD PERRY
Affiliation:
Swinburne University of Technology
MAN-KIT KAN
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
STEPHEN MATTHEWS
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
RICHARD KWOK-SHING WONG
Affiliation:
Hong Kong Institute of Education
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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.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , July 2006 , pp. 301 - 333
Copyright
2006 Cambridge University Press

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