@conference {4722, title = {How to turn Brazilians into Europeans: Global and local exposure effects on co-reference in European (EP) and Brazilian (BP) Portuguese}, year = {2016}, month = {09/2016}, abstract = {

Co-reference is affected by the availability of pronominal forms in the language, but the interaction of language-based (global) exposure and (local) exposure, e.g., during experiments, is still unclear. We addressed this issue in questionnaires with Overt and Null pronouns in Portuguese sentences like The photographer greeted the journalist when he/\Ø finished?, where he/\Ø referred to either ?photographer? (Subject) or ?journalist? (Object).\ 
While EP keeps a symmetrical distribution of Null and Overt forms, BP seems to be losing the Null forms. This would explain why EP shows the traditional ?division of labour? (Null retrieving Subject/ Overt retrieving Object) whereas BP shows no preference for Overt forms. If the processor is sensitive to pronouns? availability, skewing local exposure towards Null forms should elicit in BP the EP pattern. We created two Exposure conditions (50\%/50\%, 75\%/25\%) varying the relative amount of Null and Overt Pronouns. A significant interaction Pronoun:Exposure for BP confirmed our prediction: while Subject and Object were equally selected as the antecedent of the Overt pronoun in the 50/50 condition, choices for Subject and Object in the 75/25 condition were 30\% and 70\%, approaching the EP pattern. Our results indicate adaptation to the local statistical environment.

}, author = {Eunice Fernandes and Paula Luegi and Eduardo Correa Soares and Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4723, title = {Relative Clause-attachment in European (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP): Effects of verb type, tense and variety}, year = {2016}, month = {09/2016}, abstract = {

Pseudo-relative (PR) clauses have been argued to underlie high attachment (HA) preferences in RC-attachment ambiguities. PRs are possible with perception verbs which create the anticipation of a perceivable event. They demand the relative clause and the matrix clause being in the same time frame. Availability of PRs varies across languages but also across speakers of a language or language varieties. For BP as well as for EP evidence for basic attachment preferences is mixed as is evidence for the availability of PRs. Our questionnaire studies in BP and EP asked for attachment preferences in sentences like ?Maria saw/sees the daughter of the teacher who ran the marathon.?\ 

We varied verb-type (perception vs. stative verbs like lived-with) and tense-match between the RC-verb and the matrix verb. If the PR-reading is driving high attachment preferences, only perception verb sentences with matching tenses should boost HA. We found significant effects of variety (more HA for EP), verb-type (more HA for perception verbs across tense-match conditions), and a marginal (.08) interaction verb-type*tense. Across varieties, most HA were found for perception verbs with matching tense compatible with the PR-hypothesis. However, even for mismatching tense, perception verbs attracted more HA, suggesting a semantic effect beyond PR-availability.

}, author = {Eunice Fernandes and Paula Luegi and Eduardo Correa Soares and Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth} }