Do you what I say? People reconstruct the syntax of anomalous utterances

Ivanova, Iva; Branigan, Holly P.; McLean, Janet; Costa, Albert, 1970-; Pickering, Martin

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2016.1236976

Do you what I say? People reconstruct the syntax of anomalous utterances

Citation

Ivanova I, Branigan HP, McLean JF, Costa A, Pickering MJ. Do you what I say? People reconstruct the syntax of anomalous utterances. Lang Cogn Neurosci. 2017;32(2):175-89. DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2016.1236976

Abstract

We frequently experience and successfully process anomalous utterances. Here we examine whether people do this by “correcting” syntactic anomalies to yield well-formed representations. In two structural priming experiments, participants’ syntactic choices in picture description were influenced as strongly by previously comprehended anomalous (missing-verb) prime sentences as by well-formed prime sentences. Our results suggest that comprehenders can reconstruct the constituent structure of anomalous utterances – even when such utterances lack a major structural component such as the verb. These results also imply that structural alignment in dialogue is unaffected if one interlocutor produces anomalous utterances.