Connectionist Modeling of Experience-based Effects in Sentence ...

Chapter 2 Issues in Relative Clause Processing
at NP3 and storage and retrieval interference at VP3. When the NP2 is not forgotten,
interference effects should also be seen at the rest of the sentence in the high-interference
condition. However, assuming that the representation of the second NP has decayed
latest at the middle verb, no further interference effect should occur. Consequently,
the NP-forgetting Hypothesis predicts that differences between the high interference
condition (18a) and the low interference condition (18b) should disappear after the first
verb.
(18) a. The carpenter who the craftsman that the peasant carried hurt supervised
the apprentice. (high-interference)
b. The carpenter who the pillar that the peasant carried hurt supervised the
apprentice. (low-interference)
The results of English SPR and eyetracking showed an existing but hardly significant
support for the NP-forgetting Hypothesis. Although being non-significant, there was a
clear numerical reading time effect of similarity-based interference, which disappeared at
V2, pointing to a forgetting of NP2, which reduced the interference. The VP-forgetting
Hypothesis was fully confirmed, as can be seen in figure 2.6. The drop-V2 condition was
significantly faster at the main verb and the following region, suggesting a forgetting of
the VP2 prediction and possibly additional difficulty at the main verb in the grammatical
condition. In eyetracking there was also a surprising drop-V2 facilitation effect on the
first verb (V3) not supported by the forgetting hypothesis. This, however, is explained
by Vasishth and colleagues as an artifact of complexity-induced re-reading behavior in
the grammatical condition.
German
Identical experiments as laid out above were also carried out by Vasishth et al. (2008)
in German. An example stimuli pair for the grammaticality manipulation is shown in
example (19). The resulting structure of German ORC double-embedding is identical to
the one in English except for the commas. The comma issue will be addressed after the
study results for German have been presented. The investigation of the NP-forgetting
Hypothesis yielded analogical results to the English study. Surprisingly however, the
VP-forgetting-Hypothesis was not confirmed. On the contrary it was the grammatical
condition that showed faster reading time at V1 and post-V1 in both SPR and eyetracking.
The eyetracking results for the German grammaticality manipulation are shown in
figure 2.7.
(19) a. Der Anwalt, den der Zeuge, den der Spion betrachtete, schnitt, überzeugte
den Richter. (grammatical)
b. Der Anwalt, den der Zeuge, den der Spion betrachtete, überzeugte den
Richter. (drop-V2)
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