Auxiliary influences on argument­-verb integration in Dutch

Abstract

Passive sentences are structurally different from active sentences. In Dutch, passives are expressed with the auxiliaries 'zijn' (to be) and 'worden' (to be[come]), whereas transitive active sentences most often use 'hebben' (to have) in the perfect. In this thesis, I seek to find out what the influence is of these auxiliaries on sentence processing, and more specifically, argument-verb integration. The subject of transitive active sentences is an external argument, whereas the subject of passives is an internal argument. How does this influence the integration of the subject with the verb? Audio test sentences were created for a visual world paradigm experiment in which only the auxiliary altered. For every argument, four visual objects were collected of which one (the target) was semantically related to the sentence argument, and three others (the distracters) were not related. These four visual objects were all shown in one display. In a visual world experiment participants were presented with spoken sentences while they sat in front of a desktop that showed the display with four visual objects. I tracked participant’s eyes to measure eye movements to the target image. I analyzed the data using growth curve analyses on the difference in looks to the target between test and control conditions. The results show that in all conditions there is simultaneous reactivation of the argument right after the verb. However, for 'worden', there is a late second reactivation of the argument 1300 ms after verb offset. I attribute this second reactivation to the eventivity of 'worden', which reflects an agent position in the semantic structure that is not present in the stative passive 'was'.