Jakob Horsch: Processing efficiency vs. typology: An experimental study of weight effects on word order in Slovak and English

V pátek 8. 3. 2024 na našem ústavu proběhla odborná přednáška dr. Jakoba Horsche (Jazykovedný ústav L. Štúra a Katolická univerzita Ingolstadt) s názvem Processing efficiency vs. typology: An experimental study of weight effects on word order in Slovak and English (Efektivita zpracování vs. typologie: Experimentální studie vlivu váhy na pořadí slov ve slovenštině a angličtině).

Přednáška proběhla v anglickém jazyce.

Abstrakt přednášky:
The “principle of end-weight” (Quirk et al. 1985) is a cognitive restraint according to which short before long constituents are placed for processing efficiency (Hawkins 1994: 20). Thus, speakers prefer NPs before PPs (1): (1) John VP[sent NP[a letter] PP[to Mary]]. However, when the NP is longer than the PP, speakers will ‘shift’ the PP (1), resulting in Heavy NP Shift (Mains et al. 2015): (2) John VP[sent PP[to Mary] NP[a rather lengthy love letter that he wrote on scented paper]]. Heavy NP Shift/weight effects have been thoroughly researched in English, a highly analytic language with rigid word order. However, they have been largely ignored in research on Slovak, which is at the opposite end of the typological spectrum. Despite being a highly synthetic language with flexible word order, Slovak should nevertheless be susceptible to weight effects: Goldberg’s Tenet #5 predicts that general cognitive restraints will result in cross-linguistic generalizations (2003: 219). To test this, I obtained data from 81 L1 English and Slovak speakers using psycholinguistic experiments. The results show that both languages exhibit weight effects, albeit to differing degrees, owing to their typology: While the Slovak participants consistently followed ‘light-before-heavy’, the English speakers appear to follow an ‘NP-before-PP’.

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