Word order effects in German sentences and German pseudo-word sentences

Abstract

Summary: German belongs to those languages that allow a free permutation of subject, direct object and indirect object in verb final sentences. Five linear precedence (LP) principles have been postulated to describe preference patterns for the different word orders ( Uszkoreit, 1986 ). The present study tested if these rules are valid for meaningful German sentences only or also hold for pseudo-word sentences, i.e., if they are independent of semantic language aspects. Twelve students saw sentences in six different but legal word orders and in one illegal word order, either with normal German words or pronounceable pseudo-words. They had to answer a question focussing on the thematic role of one or more complements. In addition, they rated the acceptability of a subset of sentences in all experimental conditions. The canonical word order was processed fastest and processing times increased the more LP-principles were violated, both for normal and pseudo-word sentences. Moreover, acceptability ratings decreased monotonously with an increasing deviation of the sentences from its canonical word order, again irrespective of the stimulus material. The ungrammatical permutation received the lowest acceptability ruting. These results imply that the LP-principles describe syntactical preferences independent of meaning, at least in isolated sentences.