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Attachment Preference in Auditory German Sentences: Individual Differences and Pragmatic Strategy

Relative clauses modify a preceding element, but as this element can be flexibly located, the point of attachment is sometimes ambiguous. Preference for this attachment can vary within languages such as German, yet explanations for differences in attachment preference related to cognitive strategies...

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Autores principales: Harding, Eleanor E., Sammler, Daniela, Kotz, Sonja A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6592159/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31275197
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01357
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author Harding, Eleanor E.
Sammler, Daniela
Kotz, Sonja A.
author_facet Harding, Eleanor E.
Sammler, Daniela
Kotz, Sonja A.
author_sort Harding, Eleanor E.
collection PubMed
description Relative clauses modify a preceding element, but as this element can be flexibly located, the point of attachment is sometimes ambiguous. Preference for this attachment can vary within languages such as German, yet explanations for differences in attachment preference related to cognitive strategies or constraints have been conflicting in the current literature. The present study aimed to assess the preference for relative clause attachment among German listeners and whether these preferences could be explained by strategy or individual differences in working memory or musical rhythm ability. We performed a sentence completion experiment, conducted post hoc interviews, and measured working memory and rhythm abilities with diagnostic tests. German listeners had no homogeneous attachment preference, although participants consistently completed individual sentences across trials according to the general preference that they reported offline. Differences in attachment preference were moreover not linked to individual differences in either working memory or musical rhythm ability. However, the pragmatic content of individual sentences sometimes overrode the general syntactic preference in participants with lower rhythm ability. Our study makes an important contribution to the field of psycholinguistics by validating offline self-reports as a reliable diagnostic for an individual’s online relative clause attachment preference. The link between pragmatic strategy and rhythm ability is an interesting direction for future research.
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spelling pubmed-65921592019-07-02 Attachment Preference in Auditory German Sentences: Individual Differences and Pragmatic Strategy Harding, Eleanor E. Sammler, Daniela Kotz, Sonja A. Front Psychol Psychology Relative clauses modify a preceding element, but as this element can be flexibly located, the point of attachment is sometimes ambiguous. Preference for this attachment can vary within languages such as German, yet explanations for differences in attachment preference related to cognitive strategies or constraints have been conflicting in the current literature. The present study aimed to assess the preference for relative clause attachment among German listeners and whether these preferences could be explained by strategy or individual differences in working memory or musical rhythm ability. We performed a sentence completion experiment, conducted post hoc interviews, and measured working memory and rhythm abilities with diagnostic tests. German listeners had no homogeneous attachment preference, although participants consistently completed individual sentences across trials according to the general preference that they reported offline. Differences in attachment preference were moreover not linked to individual differences in either working memory or musical rhythm ability. However, the pragmatic content of individual sentences sometimes overrode the general syntactic preference in participants with lower rhythm ability. Our study makes an important contribution to the field of psycholinguistics by validating offline self-reports as a reliable diagnostic for an individual’s online relative clause attachment preference. The link between pragmatic strategy and rhythm ability is an interesting direction for future research. Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-06-18 /pmc/articles/PMC6592159/ /pubmed/31275197 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01357 Text en Copyright © 2019 Harding, Sammler and Kotz. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Harding, Eleanor E.
Sammler, Daniela
Kotz, Sonja A.
Attachment Preference in Auditory German Sentences: Individual Differences and Pragmatic Strategy
title Attachment Preference in Auditory German Sentences: Individual Differences and Pragmatic Strategy
title_full Attachment Preference in Auditory German Sentences: Individual Differences and Pragmatic Strategy
title_fullStr Attachment Preference in Auditory German Sentences: Individual Differences and Pragmatic Strategy
title_full_unstemmed Attachment Preference in Auditory German Sentences: Individual Differences and Pragmatic Strategy
title_short Attachment Preference in Auditory German Sentences: Individual Differences and Pragmatic Strategy
title_sort attachment preference in auditory german sentences: individual differences and pragmatic strategy
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6592159/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31275197
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01357
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