Takahashi, K. 1 , Maionchi-Pino, N. 1, 2 , Magnan, A. 3 & Kawashima, R. 1, 4
1 Dept. of Functional Brain Imaging, Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer (IDAC), Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan
2 Japan Society for the Promotion of Science(JSPS), Tokyo, Japan
3 Laboratoire d'Etude des Mécanismes Cognitifs, Université Lumière Lyon2, Bron Cedex, France
4 Smart Aging International Research Center (SAIRC), Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer(IDAC), Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan
The aim of current study is to investigate the effect caused by the distance of head and its complement. Previous studies revealed that the distance between head and complement affects the acceptability of sentences in English and Japanese. Especially, a neuroimaging study has reported the existence of that effect in Japanese. However, it was still weak to say that this effect is universal because this effect was observed only in one head-initial language (English) and one head-final language (Japanese). Therefore, we have conducted behavioral experiment in French language. Participants were asked to read 60 ungrammatical sentences and 60 grammatical filler sentences in self-paced reading and judged to what extent the sentence was natural in seven degrees. The conditions were that head and its complement was far each other (Long), and closer than Long condition (Short). The result showed that, as same as previous studies, Long condition was statistically more acceptable than Short condition. This result strongly implies that the gap between head and complement is, in addition to grammar, one of the factors that determine the acceptabilities in human sentence comprehension universally.