The Dutch word `er' and processing times

Heinhuis, Manon, M (2020) The Dutch word `er' and processing times. Bachelor's Thesis, Artificial Intelligence.

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Abstract

Although the Dutch word er is very short, it is linguistically rather complex. Studies have theorized that er can have four distinct functions in a sentence: pronominal, existential, locative, and quantitative. This study focused on the pronominal er. The pronominal er sets up a long-distance dependency between the object (er) and its preposition. An English phenomenon researched more intensely is Wh-phrases, phrases with a question operator function. Wh-phrases also set up a long-distance dependency. This study found that long-distance dependencies can be identified by a very small slow-down of reading speed when the preposition is reached. There can be unlimited words between the object and preposition. This study investigates whether er’s long-distance dependency shows a slow-down compared to sentences without er. This was done using a self-paced reading experiment with 37 native Dutch speakers. The results from this experiment showed no significant effect of the presence of er on reading time in sentences. It also showed that there is no significant effect of the size of the distance between the object and the preposition. The lack of effect could be due to the experiment data being unrepresentative of usual self-paced reading experiments, or because the effect we tried to find would be very small.

Item Type:	Thesis (Bachelor's Thesis)
Supervisor name:	Jones, S.M.
Degree programme:	Artificial Intelligence
Thesis type:	Bachelor's Thesis
Language:	English
Date Deposited:	21 Jul 2020 11:42
Last Modified:	21 Jul 2020 11:42
URI:	https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/22812

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