Effects of Typological Properties on Sentence Processing in Japanese

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Both experimental and theoretical researches were conducted on the effects of free word order, existence of case-particles, and existence of complex predicates on Japanese sentence processing. First, we investigated into effects of differences in types of case-particles on processing of Japanese garden-path sentences. We measured reading time of Japanese garden-path sentences visually-presented in moving windows. The sentences contained noun phrases that required reanalysis of noun phrases marked by the caseparticle -ga, (nominative) and -ni (dative). The interim result indicated that there was no significant effects of case-particle differences on reading time of garden-path sentences. Second, we investigate into effects of word order in processing of Japanese sentences visually-presented in moving windows. We find that, though word order did not have significant effects on reading time, significant effects was observed on error-rates in lexical decision. The result of this research was accepted for publication in Journal of Psycholinguistic research. Third, theoretical researches on Japanese complex predicate was conducted from the point of view of contrastive study of complex verbs in Japanese and Chinese. The result was presented at the 10^<th> meeting of international association of Chinese Linguistics at University of California, Irvine (part of this research was published as Fukui and Sakai, to appear). Finally, perspectives of joint researches between theoretical linguists and cognitive psychologists that emerged from the experience of this research project was presented at the symposium of the 123^<rd> meeting of Japanese Linguistic Society at Kyushu University.