Open AccessForgrunding af ledsætninger – et psykolingvistisk forsøg
Author(s) -
Marie Herget Christensen,
Tanya Karoli Christensen,
Torben Juel Jensen
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
ny forskning i grammatik
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2446-1709
pISSN - 1902-1291
DOI - 10.7146/nfg.v24i23.24641
Subject(s) - word order , linguistics , danish , dependent clause , computer science , utterance , order (exchange) , word (group theory) , non finite clause , point (geometry) , matrix (chemical analysis) , mathematics , philosophy , business , geometry , materials science , finance , sentence , composite material
It is a common phenomenon in spoken language that the main point of an utterance is found in a syntactically subordinated clause instead of in its matrix clause. This is the case in constructions where the matrix clause is semantically secondary as well as in subclauses with V>Adv word order in Danish. We argue that such subclauses are foregrounded, and that a foregrounded subclause will attract more attention than a non-foregrounded. To test this, we have conducted an experiment under the Text Change paradigm. Results show that readers pay significantly more attention to the subclause in constructions with semantically secondary matrix clauses than in constructions with semifactive matrix clauses, and, in the latter constructions, more attention to subclauses with V>Adv word order than with Adv>V word order.