Processing and representation of unaccusative, unergative and transitive predicates: using eye-tracking and the visual world paradigm

Abstract

Aim: This Master Thesis presents a Spanish replica of a study conducted in Dutch by Koring, Mak and Reuland (2012) using eye-tracking and the visual world paradigm. My research investigates the different processing patterns in the reactivation of the sentential subject in unaccusative, unergative and transitive sentences in Spanish. The aim of this work is to provide an answer to this question: Is the reactivation of the subject different in (i) unaccusative and unergative sentences, and (ii) unergative and transitive sentences? Method and participants: Forty-four native speakers of Spanish participated in my study. Participants were asked to listen to recorded sentences while they saw static visual displays, showing four black-and-white line drawings positioned on each corner of a screen. In critical trials, the sentential subject was semantically related to one of the drawings in the visual display. Results: Gaze data classified as “fixations” (stops in the eye movements) were collected, processed and analyzed. Fixations to the semantically-related drawing were interpreted as subject reactivation during the postverbal region (i.e., after verb offset). Results show a significant difference in the probability of fixations on the visual target between unergative and unaccusative sentences, and transitive and unaccusative sentences. No significant difference in subject reactivation was found between transitive and unergative sentences. Conclusion: These results are consistent with the Unaccusative Hypothesis, which claims that there are two classes of intransitive predicates: unaccusatives and unergatives. Results are also consistent with the Agent-Initial Preference Hypothesis (Bever, 1970; inter alia), which claims that agent-initial sentences (like unergatives or transitives) are preferred over theme-initial ones.