Poirier Josée, Wolfinger Katie, Spellman Lisa, Shapiro Lewis P
Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences (SLHS), San Diego State University, Bldg #221, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA, 92182-1518, USA.
J Psycholinguist Res. 2010 Oct;39(5):411-27. doi: 10.1007/s10936-010-9148-9.
Ellipsis refers to an element that is absent from the input but whose meaning can nonetheless be recovered from context. In this cross-modal priming study, we examined the online processing of Sluicing, an ellipsis whose antecedent is an entire clause: The handyman threw a book to the programmer but I don't know which book the handyman threw to the programmer(ellipsis.) To understand such an elliptical construction, the listener arguably must 'fill in' the missing material ("the handyman threw___ to the programmer") based on that which occurs in the antecedent clause. We aimed to determine the point in time in which reconstruction of the sluiced sentence is attempted and whether such a complex antecedent is re-accessed by the ellipsis. Out of the two antecedent constituents for which we probed, only the Object (programmer) was found active in the elliptical clause, confirming that an antecedent is attributed to the sluice in real time. Possible reasons for the non-observation of the Subject (handyman) are considered. We also suggest that ellipses are detected earlier in coordinated than subordinated sentences.
省略指的是输入中缺失的一个成分，但其意义仍可从语境中推断出来。在这项跨模态启动研究中，我们考察了“截省”的在线加工过程，截省是一种省略结构，其先行词是整个句子：杂工把一本书扔给了程序员，但我不知道杂工把哪本书扔给了程序员（省略部分）。为了理解这样一种省略结构，听者可以说必须根据先行句子中出现的内容“填补”缺失的部分（“杂工把____扔给了程序员”）。我们旨在确定尝试重建截省句的时间点，以及省略部分是否会重新提取这样一个复杂的先行词。在我们探测的两个先行成分中，只有宾语（程序员）在省略句中被发现是活跃的，这证实了先行词在实时加工中被赋予给了截省部分。我们考虑了未观察到主语（杂工）的可能原因。我们还提出，在并列句中比在主从复合句中能更早地检测到省略结构。
