Verb argument information used in a prodrop language: An experimental study in Japanese

Abstract

Japanese is an SOV, head-final language with phonologically null arguments. Due to these characteristics, any (or all) of the arguments classified by a verb may be null. Consequently, verb argument information which Japanese readers/listeners receive overtly is sometimes incomplete. Furthermore, the arguments in a string may or may not belong to the same clause, and the disambiguating verb argument information does not become available until the end of a clause. These characteristics pose a question of whether or not verb argument information is a useful source of information for on-line syntactic processing in Japanese. An experiment using three types of complex NPs was designed specifically to examine whether Japanese readers use the argument structure information, or alternatively, they simply use “minimal attachment” in on-line processing of syntactically ambiguous structures. The reading times of three types of complex NPs suggest that native speakers of Japanese indeed utilize verb argument information, and they do so immediately. This finding supports the hypothesis that the Japanese language is processed in the similar way to English in that verb argument information functions as an important source of information in on-line processing. The difference between processing English and processing Japanese is that the former has a mechanism which keeps track of null arguments as well as overt ones.