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« Ora Matushansky, 2006 Syntax Guru | Main | Distinguished Teaching Award to Monica Sieh»
Psycholinguistics Talk
Ina Bornkessel and
Matthias Schlesewsky
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, and University of Marburg
Minimality, transitivity and the subject preference: A neurotypological perspective
Monday, April 24, 4:00-5:30 pm, Tobin 307
Abstract
One of the most robust strategies of real time language comprehension is the tendency to interpret the first argument encountered as the subject of the clause. This so-called "subject preference" has been observed in Dutch, English, German and Italian and has recently even been claimed to exist in Chinese, thus suggesting that it may constitute a universal strategy for ambiguity resolution. By contrast, typological research has shown that a cross-linguistically viable notion of the "subject" function is very difficult --- if not impossible --- to formulate, thus raising the question of whether the "subject preference" should not rather be viewed as an epiphenomenon of more basic underlying processing mechanisms. In this talk, we will argue that the subject preference results from a universal tendency to "minimise everything" during the comprehension process (Minimality). Furthermore, we will provide evidence that, once Minimality can no longer be upheld, the processing system assumes unmarked transitivity, i.e., it endeavours to construct a reading in which the arguments are maximally distinct from one another as defined with reference to cross-linguistic prominence scales (e.g., animacy, definiteness). These claims will be based on neurophysiological and neuroanatomical evidence from German, Turkish, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese.