This chapter investigates Korean sentence processing, focusing on case markers, scrambling effects, pre-head anticipatory processing, the animacy effect, head-driven processing, topicalization, and insights from eye-tracking research. Case markers are crucial in identifying grammatical functions, thereby facilitating efficient sentence processing. The scrambling effect in Korean shows that canonical word orders are processed more accurately and quickly than scrambled ones, highlighting the increased cognitive load imposed by non-canonical structures. Both pre-head anticipatory processing and head-driven processing play essential roles in sentence comprehension, particularly in complex or scrambled structures. Additionally, the animacy effect significantly influences sentence processing, with the absence of animacy contrast complicating syntactic interpretation. Eye-tracking studies provide further insight by capturing real-time cognitive processes during reading, revealing longer fixations and regressions in scrambled sentences, which signal increased processing difficulty. Contrary to prior expectations regarding topicalization, Tamaoka et al. (2024) found that subject topicalized orders were processed similarly to canonical orders, and no significant difference was observed between object topicalized and scrambled orders. This result may be attributed to overlapping effects of word order in topicalization and scrambling. This chapter highlights the interplay of syntactic and cognitive mechanisms in Korean sentence processing, offering insights into both universal and language-specific aspects of sentence comprehension.

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Cognitive Mechanisms in Korean Sentence Processing

  • Katsuo Tamaoka,
  • Hyunjung Lim

摘要

This chapter investigates Korean sentence processing, focusing on case markers, scrambling effects, pre-head anticipatory processing, the animacy effect, head-driven processing, topicalization, and insights from eye-tracking research. Case markers are crucial in identifying grammatical functions, thereby facilitating efficient sentence processing. The scrambling effect in Korean shows that canonical word orders are processed more accurately and quickly than scrambled ones, highlighting the increased cognitive load imposed by non-canonical structures. Both pre-head anticipatory processing and head-driven processing play essential roles in sentence comprehension, particularly in complex or scrambled structures. Additionally, the animacy effect significantly influences sentence processing, with the absence of animacy contrast complicating syntactic interpretation. Eye-tracking studies provide further insight by capturing real-time cognitive processes during reading, revealing longer fixations and regressions in scrambled sentences, which signal increased processing difficulty. Contrary to prior expectations regarding topicalization, Tamaoka et al. (2024) found that subject topicalized orders were processed similarly to canonical orders, and no significant difference was observed between object topicalized and scrambled orders. This result may be attributed to overlapping effects of word order in topicalization and scrambling. This chapter highlights the interplay of syntactic and cognitive mechanisms in Korean sentence processing, offering insights into both universal and language-specific aspects of sentence comprehension.