Prosodic Focus and Clefting in ellipsis sentences processing in Brazilian Portuguese

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-4301.2023.1.44425

Keywords:

Sentence Processing, Ellipsis, Prosodic Focus, Clefting.

Abstract

 This research investigates the influence of prosodic focus and sy­tanctic clefting in the processing of ambiguous replacive ellipsis sentences in Brazilian Portuguese, such as “In orchestral rehearsal, (it was) the violinist (who) impressed the maestro during the first song, not the soloist”. Our research was inspired by Carlson (2015) who investigated similar ellipsis sentences in English. We conducted two auditory experiments, manipulating prosody and clefting in 7 conditions. After listening to the audio, participants (N=66) read a question (“What happened in...?”) and they chose an answer: a subject interpretation response (“The soloist impressed nobody”), or an object interpretation response (“Nobody impressed the soloist”). The results indicate that both strategies of focalization (i.e., clefting and prosody) increased subject interpretation choices. When the focus cues were conflicting, the clefting structure played a decisive role in the final interpretation. Our results are aligned with Carlson (2015), which point that prosodic focus plays an important role in the ambiguity resolution (see Schafer et. al, 1996). However, as it was observed by Kiss (1998), the clefting structure conveys an exhaustive contrastive focus on the sentence, being more effective in the disambiguation process than other cues.

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Author Biographies

Aline Alves Fonseca, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Faculdade de Letras, MG, Brasil.

Adjunct professor at the Department of Humanities and the Postgraduate Program in Linguistics at the Faculty of Humanities at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF). PhD in Linguistic Studies from UFMG (2012). Carried out multicenter postdoctoral research at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Morehead State University, USA (2018/2019). She is a researcher and member of the Center for Studies in Language Acquisition and Psycholinguistics (NEALP/UFJF) and collaborator at the Experimental Psycholinguistics Laboratory (LAPEx/UFRJ).

Andressa Christine Oliveira da Silva, Universidade do Estado de Minas Gerais, Departamento de Educação, Linguística e Letras, MG, Brasil.

Doctor en Lingüística por la Universidad Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF). Es profesora de inglés en el Departamento de Educación, Lingüística y Literatura de la Universidad Estadual de Minas Gerais (UEMG). Coautor del capítulo “Estudios sobre la interfaz sintaxis-prosodia en Psicolingüística”, publicado en el libro Psicolingüística: diversidades, interfaces y aplicaciones, publicado por Contexto.

Júlia Greco Carvalho, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, MG, BR.

Graduated in Literature/Portuguese and Italian from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF) and a master's student in Linguistics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), in the line of research “Language, mind and brain”. In 2021, he published together with Aline Fonseca and Samara Zanella the article “Experimental activities in times of pandemic”, in the magazine Texto livre, from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).

Marcella Campos e Souza, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Faculdade de Letras, MG, Brasil.

Graduated in Letters/Portuguese and respective literatures from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), in 2023. Currently, she is a master's student in the Postgraduate Program in Linguistics at UFJF, where she is a scholarship holder from the Minas Gerais Research Support Foundation General (FAPEMIG). He is interested in the area of ​​Linguistics, with emphasis on Psycholinguistics and Prosody.

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Published

2023-11-21

How to Cite

Alves Fonseca, A., Oliveira da Silva, A. C., Greco Carvalho, J., & Campos e Souza, M. (2023). Prosodic Focus and Clefting in ellipsis sentences processing in Brazilian Portuguese. Letrônica, 16(1), e44425. https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-4301.2023.1.44425

Issue

Vol. 16 No. 1 (2023): Single Volume

Section

PSICOLINGUÍSTICA E NEUROLINGUÍSTICA EM INTERFACES

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