Dit leest lekker!(?) Een self-paced reading experiment naar verwerking van soepele argumentstructuur in middles in het Nederlands, Duits en Engels

Renzel, A.; De Vogelaer, G.; Bölte, J.

Research article (journal) | Peer reviewed

Abstract

This study investigates the processing of middle constructions (middles) in Dutch, German and English. Middles combine a non-agentive subject with an action verb in the active form, fitting into the loose vs. tight fit typology established by Hawkins (1986) to capture the main contrasts between German and English. In English, they lead to greater ambiguity and vagueness in forms (loose fit), as in middles, while in German they result in more one-to-one mappings of form and meaning (tight fit). Middles, as instances of flexible argument structure, contribute to a loose fit as they add to the semantic diversity of grammatical relations (cf. Hawkins 1986; Müller-Gotama 1994; Levshina 2020). a. This book reads easily. b. Dit boek leest gemakkelijk. c. Dieses Buch liest *(sich) leicht. Building on a fruitful research line that positions Dutch linguistically between English and German (Van Haeringen 1956), our study investigated native speakers of Dutch, German and English by means of a self-paced reading task, in order to demonstrate processing differences in non-agentive subject-verb combinations in various types of middles, and determine the position of Dutch in the loose vs. tight fit-typology. Our results reveal that German speakers experience greater difficulty processing middles, as evidenced by slower reading times compared to English speakers. Reading times for Dutch speakers fall between those of English and German speakers but exhibit greater similarity to English, suggesting that Dutch aligns more closely with the loose fit languages. The experiment indicates that both documented and undocumented (extended) middles are read faster in Dutch and English than in German. These findings suggest fundamental differences in processing strategies for semantically diverse subject-verb combinations. Our results enable us to discuss hypotheses based on psycholinguistically informed comparisons of German and English (most notably by Hawkins 1995; 2012; 2014) and address the question of diachronic-causal relations in language change from a language processing perspective, in line with the view that grammars are deeply shaped by processing (Christiansen & Chater 2008; Sinnemäki 2014).

Details about the publication

JournalNederlandse Taalkunde
Volume30
Issue1
Page range106-133
StatusPublished
Release year2025
Language in which the publication is writtenDutch; Flemish
DOI10.5117/NEDTAA2025.1.006.RENZ
Keywordsmiddle construction; language processing; contrastive linguistics; self-paced reading; Germanic Sandwich; word order; look ahead vs. look back parsing

Authors from the University of Münster

Bölte, Jens
Institute of Psychology
De Vogelaer, Gunther
Professur für Niederländische Sprachwissenschaft (Prof. De Vogelaer)
Renzel, Anne
Professur für Niederländische Sprachwissenschaft (Prof. De Vogelaer)