Register and morphosyntactic congruence during sentence processing in German: An eye-tracking study

In the present study, we used eye-tracking to investigate formality-register and morphosyntactic congruence during sentence reading. While research frequently covers participants' processing of lexical, (morpho-)syntactic, or semantic knowledge (e.g., operationalized by means of violations to which we can measure responses relative to felicitous stimuli), less attention has been devoted to the full breadth of pragmatic and context-related aspects. One such aspect is sensitivity to formality-register congruence, i.e., the match or mismatch between the register of a target word and the formality conveyed by the (linguistic) context. In particular, we investigated how congruence of linguistic register with context formality, as well as its interplay with morphosyntactic knowledge, may unfold during reading and be reflected in eye movements. In our study, 40 native German speakers read context sentences conveying a formal or informal situation, and a target sentence containing a high- or low-register verb (e.g., Engl. transl. The policeman detained the activist vs. The policeman nabbed the activist) which matched or mismatched the formality of the preceding context sentences. We additionally manipulated subject-verb agreement, with either a match (see examples above) or a mismatch thereof (e.g., Engl. transl. *The policeman detain the activist; *The policeman nab the activist). We predicted that a violation of formality-register congruence would be reflected in longer reading times at the verb and post-verbal object region, as this would be in line with previous research on context violations (e.g., Lüdtke & Kaup, 2006; Reali et al., 2015; Traxler & Pickering, 1996). We found effects of morphosyntactic congruence on late processing stages at the verb and on earlier processing stages at the post-verbal object region. As far as formality-register congruence is concerned, only late (in total reading time analysis, in the post-verbal object region) and subtle effects emerged. The results suggest that, compared to morphosyntactic violations, formality-register congruence effects emerge quite subtly and slowly during reading.