Referent Cueing, Position, and Animacy as Accessibility Factors in Visually Situated Sentence Production.

ABSTRACT: Speakers' readiness to describe event scenes using active or passive constructions has previously been attributed-among other factors-to the accessibility of referents. While most research has highlighted the accessibility of agents, the present study examines whether patients' accessibility can be modulated by means of visual preview of the patient character (derived accessibility), as well as by manipulating the animacy status of patients (inherent accessibility). Crucially, we also examined whether effects of accessibility were amenable to the visuospatial position of the patient by presenting the patient character either to the left or to the right of the agent. German native speakers were asked to describe drawings depicting event scenes while their gaze and speech were recorded. Our

SUBMITTER: Esaulova Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7493676 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature