Jakub Dotlačil

The influence of linguistic and cognitive factors on the time course of verb-based implicit causality

In three eye-tracking experiments the influence of the Dutch causal connective “want” (because) and the working memory capacity of readers on the usage of verb-based implicit causality was examined. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that although a causal connective is not required to activate implicit causality information during reading, effects of implicit causality surfaced more rapidly and were more pronounced when a connective was present in the discourse than when it was absent. In addition, Experiment 3 revealed that—in contrast to previous claims—the activation of implicit causality is not a resource-consuming mental operation. Moreover, readers with higher and lower working memory capacities behaved differently in a dual-task situation. Higher span readers were more likely to use implicit causality when they had all their working memory resources at their disposal. Lower span readers showed the opposite pattern as they were more likely to use the implicit causality cue in the case of an additional working memory load. The results emphasize that both linguistic and cognitive factors mediate the impact of implicit causality on text comprehension. The implications of these results are discussed in terms of the ongoing controversies in the literature—that is, the focusing-integration debate and the debates on the source of implicit causality.

Licensing sentence-internal readings in english: an experimental study

Adjectives of comparison (AOCs) like same, different and similar can compare two elements sentence-internally, i.e., without referring to any previously introduced element. This reading is licensed only if a semantically plural NP is present. We argue in this paper that it is incorrect to describe a particular NP as either licensing or not licensing the sentence-internal reading of a specific AOC: licensing is more fine-grained. We use experimental methods to establish which NPs license which AOCs and to what extent and we show how the results can be interpreted against the background of a formal semantic analysis of AOCs. Finally, we argue that using Bayesian methods to analyze this kind of data has an advantage over the more traditional, frequentist approach.

The manner and time course of updating quantifier scope representations in discourse

We present the results of two experiments, an eye-tracking study and a follow-up self-paced reading study, investigating the interpretation of quantifier scope in sentences with three quantifiers: two indefinites in subject and object positions and a universal distributive quantifier in adjunct position. In addition to the fact that such three-way scope interactions have not been experimentally investigated before, they enable us to distinguish between different theories of quantifier scope interpretation in ways that are not possible when only simpler, two-way interactions are considered. The experiments show that contrary to underspecification theories of scope, a totally ordered scope-hierarchy representation is maintained and modified across sentences and this scope representation cannot be reduced to the truth-conditional/mental model representation of sentential meaning. The experiments also show that the processor uses scope-disambiguating information as early as possible to (re)analyze scope representation.