Effects of syntactic information on semantic access of ambiguous verbs in spoken language comprehension: Evidence from a cross-modal priming experiment

The aim of this study was to examine how syntactic information affects the semantic processing of ambiguous verbs in spoken Japanese. The effect of a postpositional particle on semantic access of an ambiguous verb at the end of the sentence was demonstrated in two kinds of sentences, S-ga-V sentences (subject, subjective postpositional particle, and ambiguous verb) and O-wo-V sentences object, objective postpositional particle, and ambiguous verb). A cross-modal priming method was used in which a target noun was presented visually in Kanji (Chinese) characters either one syllable before the end or immediately after the end of the ambiguous verb. Weak multiple priming occurred in the one-syllable-before condition, followed by selective access in the immediately after condition, but this multiple access was partially constrained by the preceding postpositional particle, A brief occurrence of multiple access and rapid transition to selective access were detected. Furthermore, objective particles were found to have stronger constraints on multiple access than on subjective particles. A connectionist model using a constraint-based lexical approach was consistent with the experimental results.