O efeito da pré-ativação (priming) na compreensão de sintagmas preposicionais ambíguos em sentenças no português brasileiro

Abstract

This work aims to research the psycholinguistic processing of temporary ambiguity in Prepositional Phrases’ (PPs) comprehension in Brazilian Portuguese sentences, within the scope of syntax so that they can be analyzed in two ways: either as an argument of the verb, forming an adverbial adjunct of instrument, linking to the verbal phrase, or as an adnominal adjunct, linking to the nearest noun phrase, forming a complex NP. We seek to investigate the parsing strategies used by speakers of the language to understand sentences containing ambiguous PPs. We assume that pre-activation of extra syntactic information in the comprehension of ambiguous prepositional phrases in Brazilian Portuguese affects the comprehension of PPs. This fact could affect concatenation preferences, influencing the processing off-line and on-line of this type of ambiguity from the early stages. Using the Experimental Psycholinguistics and Priming technique as a theoretical basis, an experiment was conducted using Psychopy with an application of a questionnaire with two experimental steps, times and non-timed. The experiment took place at UERJ/ FFP and twenty-four students participates in the study. The results showed a strong preference for high apposition, apposition of the prepositional phrase to the verbal phrase, in the context + PA / -PA. The participants demonstrated that the syntactic priming effect interferes with their choices when understanding sentences with ambiguous PPs. The syntactic priming effect contributes to the readings of the critical segments to be faster, since they were pre-activated through a figure. Finally, the study demonstrated the existence of the Garden Path effect caused by the principle of Minimum Apposition, foreseen in the Garden Path Theory, as it guides the parser to decide for the apposition with les s syntactic nodes. This was proven in the context + PA / -PA. The parser in the initial phase acts in an encapsulated and reflexive way, being impervious to non-strictly syntactic information.