The Advantage of First Mention in Korean The Temporal Contributions of Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Factors

Abstract

Using Korean, we investigated how syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors influence the representation of a sentence, in particular, the relative accessibility of different components of a sentence representation. In six experiments, participants performed a probe recognition task after reading each of a series of sentences. We manipulated the rate at which each word of the sentence was presented (250 and 500ms) and the interval between the sentence-final word and the probe-recognition test word (immediate, 500ms delay, and 1000ms delay). We also manipulated the syntactic position (subject versus object), semantic role (agent versus patient), and order of mention (first- versus second-mentioned participant) of the probed item. Pragmatic factors (the order of mention) strongly influenced accessibility immediately and through the longest delay, whereas syntactic and semantic factors had little effect.