Butler Lindsay K
Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States.
Front Psychol. 2023 Aug 23;14:1135474. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1135474. eCollection 2023.
Psycholinguistic research often focuses on Indo-European and other commonly studied major languages, while typologically diverse languages remain understudied. In this paper, we examine the morphological and conceptual influences on the real-time comprehension of optional plural-marked sentences in Yucatec Maya, an indigenous language of Mexico with a less commonly studied optional plural marking system.
Fifty-one speakers of Yucatec Maya participated in a picture-sentence matching experiment carried out in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. Pictures of one, two, or seven humans or animals depicting an intransitive action (conceptual number) were paired with auditorily presented sentences that had no plural marking, one plural, or two plurals (morphological number). Participants indicated by key press whether the picture and the sentence were an acceptable match, and decision time was recorded.
In the analysis of decision (yes versus no) and accuracy, morphological and conceptual factors interacted. In the analysis of decision time, however, morphological plural marking, but not conceptual number, led to faster decisions.
In light of previous work on the role of conceptual factors in the computation of number agreement, the interaction between conceptual and morphological factors suggests that a language with optional plural marking (or low "morphological richness") is associated with high conceptual influence on sentence comprehension. Importantly, the results of this study expand the empirical base of language types that have been investigated using psycholinguistic methods.
心理语言学研究通常聚焦于印欧语系及其他常见的主要语言，而类型学上差异较大的语言仍未得到充分研究。在本文中，我们考察了形态学和概念因素对尤卡坦玛雅语中可选复数标记句子实时理解的影响。尤卡坦玛雅语是墨西哥的一种本土语言，其可选复数标记系统较少被研究。
51名尤卡坦玛雅语使用者参与了在墨西哥尤卡坦半岛进行的一项图片-句子匹配实验。描绘不及物动作（概念数）的一张、两张或七张人物或动物图片与听觉呈现的无复数标记、一个复数或两个复数（形态数）的句子配对。参与者通过按键指出图片和句子是否匹配，并记录决策时间。
在决策（是与否）和准确性分析中，形态学和概念因素相互作用。然而，在决策时间分析中，形态学复数标记而非概念数导致决策更快。
鉴于先前关于概念因素在数一致性计算中作用的研究，概念因素和形态学因素之间的相互作用表明，具有可选复数标记（或低“形态丰富度”）的语言在句子理解中受到较高的概念影响。重要的是，本研究结果扩展了使用心理语言学方法研究的语言类型的实证基础。
