TY - JOUR
T1 - The difficult mountain
T2 - Enriched composition in adjective-noun phrases
AU - Frisson, Steven
AU - Pickering, Martin J.
AU - McElree, Brian
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by a National Institutes of Health grant (R01-HD056200) awarded to Brian McElree. We thank Thomas Farmer for his help in collecting the noun- and verb-like scores for the nouns used in the experiment.
PY - 2011/12
Y1 - 2011/12
N2 - When readers need to go beyond the straightforward compositional meaning of a sentence (i. e., when enriched composition is required), costly additional processing is the norm. However, this conclusion is based entirely on research that has looked at enriched composition between two phrases or within the verb phrase (e. g., the verb and its complement in . . . started the book . . .) where there is a discrepancy between the semantic expectations of the verb and the semantics of the noun. We carried out an eye-tracking experiment investigating enriched composition within a single noun phrase, as in the difficult mountain. As compared with adjective-noun phrases that allow a straightforward compositional interpretation (the difficult exercise), the coerced phrases were more difficult to process. These results indicate that coercion effects can be found in the absence of a typing violation and within a single noun phrase.
AB - When readers need to go beyond the straightforward compositional meaning of a sentence (i. e., when enriched composition is required), costly additional processing is the norm. However, this conclusion is based entirely on research that has looked at enriched composition between two phrases or within the verb phrase (e. g., the verb and its complement in . . . started the book . . .) where there is a discrepancy between the semantic expectations of the verb and the semantics of the noun. We carried out an eye-tracking experiment investigating enriched composition within a single noun phrase, as in the difficult mountain. As compared with adjective-noun phrases that allow a straightforward compositional interpretation (the difficult exercise), the coerced phrases were more difficult to process. These results indicate that coercion effects can be found in the absence of a typing violation and within a single noun phrase.
KW - Eye movements - reading
KW - Language comprehension
KW - Psycholinguistics
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U2 - 10.3758/s13423-011-0142-5
DO - 10.3758/s13423-011-0142-5
M3 - Article
C2 - 21826403
AN - SCOPUS:81355139706
SN - 1069-9384
VL - 18
SP - 1172
EP - 1179
JO - Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
JF - Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
IS - 6
ER -