Processing of Object Ordering in Turkish Ditransitive Constructions

Abstract

This study aims to compare the processing of two object orders in Turkish ditransitive constructions based on several factors. In particular, it investigates how these object orders interact with the effects of givenness, syntactic complexity, and animacy of dative and accusative objects, and how these factors influence processing of ditransitivites. To this end, a self-paced reading experiment was employed. The participants of the study were 156 native Turkish speakers. Their reading times of the ditransitive sentences were measured as they read these sentences presented in a segmented, region-by-region format. Four experiments were conducted to reveal the effects of givenness, syntactic complexity and animacy of the object NPs. The results of the first experiment produced no significant difference in reading times between ACC>DAT and DAT>ACC object orders. Instead, a consistent first-object position advantage was observed, whereby the object appearing in the initial position was processed more easily regardless of its case marking. The second experiment examined the effect of givenness of the object NPs, demonstrating that given objects were processed more easily when they appeared in the first-object position. However, this effect was limited to the object regions and did not extend to overall sentence processing. The third experiment demonstrated that syntactic complexity modulated the first-object position advantage. Structurally longer and therefore more complex objects reduced this advantage when they appeared in the first-object position, and increased structural complexity of the first object made the overall sentence harder to process. In contrast to these factors, animacy of the objects did not show a systematic effect on processing. Overall, the findings suggest that sentence processing in Turkish ditransitive constructions is shaped by the interaction between object order and discourse-related factors such as givenness, as well as syntactic complexity. In contrast, animacy was found to have a more limited influence on processing. These results indicate that processing is influenced by both structural properties and distributional patterns in the language. Givenness and syntactic complexity, which appear to be more strongly represented in the distributional system than animacy, have a more consistent impact on processing. The absence of a clear advantage for a particular object order may be attributed to the flexible word order and rich case marking system of Turkish. In conclusion, sentence processing in Turkish ditransitive constructions can best be explained as the interaction between production-driven distributional patterns and real-time processing mechanisms.