Examination of Typing Mismatch Effect in processing of Japanese shika-nai construction

摘要

In their study of Japanese wh-question processing, Miyamoto and Takahashi (2002) revealed that there occurs longer reading time when the sentence processor encounters an unexpected item, and they refer to this phenomenon as the Typing Mismatch Effect. In contrast, in Bise and Sakamoto (2010), which tried to replicate the effect in concession sentences, reading facilitation (speed-up TME) instead of inhibition (slow-down TME) was observed. In the present study, we propose that the factor determining which type of TME occurs is the presence or absence of an "implicit pause" omission operation. Furthermore, we report that the slow-down TME was observed during processing of the shika-nai construction, which can be predicted with our proposal.