Syntactic, Semantic and Discourse Effects on the Processing of Scrambled Japanese Sentences

Abstract

In Japanese sentences, the default word order is ‘subject-object-verb’ (SOV). However, Japanese allows scrambling of noun phrases (NPs), for example ‘object-subject-verb’ (OSV) as opposed to the unscrambled default order. Two self-paced reading experiments in the moving window paradigm were conducted to test the effects of syntax, semantics and discourse in native Japanese and native English speakers’ processing of scrambled Japanese sentences. The first experiment examined how the syntactic factor (NP order) and semantic factor (NP animacy) affect processing of Japanese sentences. Results revealed that animacy difference between the subject-NP and object-NP contributes more to native English speakers’ processing than default SOV word order, whereas no such difference was found for native Japanese speakers. The second experiment examined the discourse effect in processing of scrambled OSV sentences. The experiment revealed that the processing of Japanese scrambled sentences is facilitated by the preceding context for both native Japanese and English speakers.