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I am happy to answer any questions live during Poster Session C on Saturday from 12-2 on Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/701525017
I will also be available anytime via the OSF chat (top right-hand corner), email: jim515@alumni.york.ac.uk or Twitter @JoyMillsLing
**Abstract:**
This study used a cross-modal priming paradigm to investigate whether
delexicalised auditory priming will influence relative clause (RC)
disambiguation in silent reading. Two specific predictions of the Implicit
Prosody Hypothesis were investigated: that an early prosodic break between
two noun phrases will lead to increased low attachment, and that longer RCs
are more likely to attach high, known as an “antigravity effect.” Subjects
listened to three different sentences that had been delexicalised into
“fafafa speech.” These were randomly selected from 9 primes that had the
same prosodic break (early, late, control) and that matched the target
sentence in RC length (short, long). The ambiguous visual target sentence
appeared, followed by an attachment question with a two-alternative forced
choice task between N1 or N2. Our initial hypothesis of a priming effect
from delexicalised auditory stimuli on RC ambiguity resolution was
confirmed, suggesting that prosody alone can influence attachment
preference. Participants were significantly more likely to attach low after
hearing primes in the early boundary condition. We found a surprising
interaction: when late boundary primes were combined with short RCs,
subjects were significantly more likely to choose high attachment.
Additional research is required to determine if the presence of either
prosodic break has a similar effect.