Past Event

How do “non-structural” factors such as prosody and the way in which a discourse is organized influence sentence comprehension, and how do the processing strategies that these factors inspire differ cross-linguistically? In search of answers to these questions, Dr. Yukiko Koizumi (Yamagata University) looks to similarities and differences between English and Spanish for evidence.

In this talk, Dr. Koizumi will demonstrate that English “not-because” exhibits a high attachment proclivity, preferentially modifying elements high in the syntactic tree in online sentence processing (e.g., Jane didn’t purchase the white blouse because it was silk). Based on the results of self-paced reading experiments, Dr. Koizumi will argue that this high attachment preference disappears when “not-because” is embedded under an if-clause (prosody and discourse features). Dr. Koizumi will also discuss on-going studies looking into the roles that similar factors play in ambiguity resolution for the Spanish equivalent of “not-because,” “no-porque” (e.g., Julia no se compró la blusa blanca porque es/fuera de seda). The results obtained so far highlight a potentially important role for prosody in preferencing a high or low attachment, even in a language like Spanish in which the generally preferred attachment site is different from that in English and the attachment preference interacts different factors like mood (indicative vs. subjunctive).

Dr. Yukiko Koizumi obtained her PhD from the City University of New York by working with Professors Dianne Bradley and Janet Dean Fodor. She is currently an associate professor at Yamagata University in Japan.