One- versus two-step models of language comprehension: Investigations employing negative sentences

心理语言学一直在争论，理解过程最好的特征是一步理解模式还是两步理解模式。根据两步模型，理解者首先根据他们的语言知识计算与语境无关的表达的意义，然后才在第二步考虑他们的一般世界知识以及语境和语用信息。相比之下，单步模型假设同时考虑语言和非语言知识的各种来源。在本项目中，根据我们在第一个资助阶段的发现，我们的目的是通过研究否定句的处理来促进这场关于语义/语用接口的辩论。我们将集中讨论在理解过程中是否在早期就考虑到与否定的语用学相关的方面，这是区分一步和两步理解模式的关键。特别是，我们将在视觉世界的背景下呈现肯定和否定句子，这些句子要么允许或不允许在句子中使用否定。我们还旨在更多地了解否定话语在什么情况下是语用得体的。最后，我们比较了否定的语用效果与理解过程中的其他语用效果，例如反映了等级含义整合的效果。为了深入了解理解过程的时间特征，我们计划测量阅读和听力过程中的事件相关脑电位(ERPs)和眼动。我们期望这一项目将对语义/语用界面的理解过程提供重要的见解。

There is an ongoing debate in psycholinguistics whether comprehension processes are best characterized by one- or by two-step models of comprehension. According to two-step models, comprehenders first compute the context-independent meaning of an expression based on their linguistic knowledge, and only in a second step take into account their general world knowledge as well as contextual and pragmatic information. In contrast, one-step models assume that various sources of linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge are taken into account simultaneously. In the present project, and on the basis of our findings from the first funding phase, we aim at contributing to this debate concerning the semantic/pragmatic interface by studying the processing of negative sentences. We will focus on the question whether aspects related to the pragmatics of negation are taken into account early on during comprehension, which is of central importance to the distinction between one- and two-step models of comprehension. In particular, we will present affirmative and negative sentences in the context of visual worlds that either do or do not license the use of negation in the sentences. We also aim to find out more about the exact conditions under which negative utterances are pragmatically felicitous. Finally, we are interested in comparing effects attributed to the pragmatics of negation with other pragmatic effects during comprehension, such as effects reflecting the integration of scalar implicatures. In order to gain insights into the temporal characteristics of the processes involved in comprehension, we plan to measure event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and eye-movements during reading and listening. We expect that this project will provide important insights into the comprehension processes at the semantic/pragmatic interface.