ABSTRACT

Among existing accounts of passivisation difficulty, some argue it depends on the predicate semantics (i.e. passives are more difficult with subject-experiencer than agent-patient verbs). Inconsistent with the accounts that predict passive difficulty, Paolazzi et al. (2019) found that passives were read faster than actives at the verb and object by-phrase in a series of self-paced reading experiments, with no modulation of verb type. However, self-paced reading provides limited direct measurement of late revision/interpretive processing. We used modified stimuli from Paolazzi et al. (2019) to re-examine this issue in two eye-tracking while reading experiments. We found that in late measures, passives with subject-experiencer verbs had longer fixation durations than actives at the verb and two subsequent regions but no difference was observed across agent-patient verbs. Subject-experiencer verbs provide a state, but the passive structure requires an event. Thus, the required eventive interpretation is coerced with subject-experiencers (if possible) and induces difficulty.

摘要

在现有的关于被动化困难的解释中，一些人认为它取决于谓词语义（即被动词对于主语体验者比代理患者动词更难）。Paolazzi 等人与预测被动难度的说法不一致。（2019 年）在一系列自定进度的阅读实验中发现，在动词和宾语的副词组中，被动语态比主动语态的阅读速度更快，动词类型没有变化。然而，自定进度的阅读提供了对后期修订/解释处理的有限直接测量。我们使用了 Paolazzi 等人的修改刺激。( 2019) 在阅读实验时在两次眼动追踪中重新审视这个问题。我们发现，在后期测量中，带有主体体验者动词的被动语态比动词和两个后续区域的主动语态具有更长的固定持续时间，但在代理-患者动词之间没有观察到差异。主语-体验者动词提供状态，但被动结构需要事件。因此，所需的事件解释是由主题经验者（如果可能的话）强制执行的，并导致困难。