Spring, 2013 Colloquium 10
※ 國立清華大學語言所101學年度第二學期專題演講十 ※
演講者：Masatoshi Koizumi (日本 東北大學)
演講題目：On the (non-)universality of the subject-before-object order preference in sentence processing
時間：2013 年 7 月 10 日(星期三) 中午 12 時 30 分
地點：清大人社院 B305 室
講題摘要：
It is known that in many flexible word order languages, including
Basque, Finnish, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Sinhalese,
sentences in which the subject (S) precedes the object (O) (SO word
order = SOV, SVO, VSO) induce a lower processing load in comprehension
than those in which the opposite occurs (OS word order = OSV, OVS,
VOS), and thus, they are preferred by speakers (Sekerina 1997, Bader
and Meng 1999, Mazuka, Itoh, and Kondo 2002, Kaiser and Trueswell
2004, Tamaoka et al. 2005, among many others). However, previous
studies on sentence processing have all targeted languages, such as
Finnish, in which the subject precedes the object in the syntactically
basic word order (= SO languages). Hence, it remains unclear whether
the preference for SO is a reflection of word order in individual
languages or human cognitive features that are more universal. What we
refer to as individual grammar theory in this paper posits that a
language’s syntactically determined basic word order has a low
processing load in comparison to other possible word orders, whereas
what may be referred to as universal cognition theory hypothesizes
that SO word order has a low processing load regardless of the basic
word order of any individual language. To verify which of these two
theories is correct, it is necessary to examine languages in which the
object precedes the subject in the syntactically basic word order (=
OS languages), for which the two theories develop different
predictions. Therefore, as described below, we conducted a sentence
processing experiment in Kaqchikel, a Mayan language spoken in
Guatemala. The syntactically determined basic word order of Kaqchikel
is VOS, although in general, word order is relatively flexible (García
Matzar and Rodríguez Guaján 1997: 333). The results of the experiment
revealed that for Kaqchikel speakers, the processing load of VOS is
lower than that of the two other commonly used word orders, i.e. VSO
and SVO. This suggests that the preference for SO in sentence
comprehension is not universal; rather, syntactic features of
individual languages significantly influence sentence processing load.
演講者：Masatoshi Koizumi (日本 東北大學)
演講題目：On the (non-)universality of the subject-before-object order preference in sentence processing
時間：2013 年 7 月 10 日(星期三) 中午 12 時 30 分
地點：清大人社院 B305 室
講題摘要：
It is known that in many flexible word order languages, including
Basque, Finnish, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Sinhalese,
sentences in which the subject (S) precedes the object (O) (SO word
order = SOV, SVO, VSO) induce a lower processing load in comprehension
than those in which the opposite occurs (OS word order = OSV, OVS,
VOS), and thus, they are preferred by speakers (Sekerina 1997, Bader
and Meng 1999, Mazuka, Itoh, and Kondo 2002, Kaiser and Trueswell
2004, Tamaoka et al. 2005, among many others). However, previous
studies on sentence processing have all targeted languages, such as
Finnish, in which the subject precedes the object in the syntactically
basic word order (= SO languages). Hence, it remains unclear whether
the preference for SO is a reflection of word order in individual
languages or human cognitive features that are more universal. What we
refer to as individual grammar theory in this paper posits that a
language’s syntactically determined basic word order has a low
processing load in comparison to other possible word orders, whereas
what may be referred to as universal cognition theory hypothesizes
that SO word order has a low processing load regardless of the basic
word order of any individual language. To verify which of these two
theories is correct, it is necessary to examine languages in which the
object precedes the subject in the syntactically basic word order (=
OS languages), for which the two theories develop different
predictions. Therefore, as described below, we conducted a sentence
processing experiment in Kaqchikel, a Mayan language spoken in
Guatemala. The syntactically determined basic word order of Kaqchikel
is VOS, although in general, word order is relatively flexible (García
Matzar and Rodríguez Guaján 1997: 333). The results of the experiment
revealed that for Kaqchikel speakers, the processing load of VOS is
lower than that of the two other commonly used word orders, i.e. VSO
and SVO. This suggests that the preference for SO in sentence
comprehension is not universal; rather, syntactic features of
individual languages significantly influence sentence processing load.