Grammaticality Judgment of Garden Path Sentences in Persian

Abstract

Garden path sentences have been shown to predict difficulty in language processing, but no study has been conducted on Persian language. This study tested the prediction for Persian ambiguous sentences having two DPs in which the second DP functions as either the modifier of the first DP or the subject/object of the next clause. No significant effects were obtained for grammaticality judgment times but results of the analysis of accuracy of judgments for garden path sentences from 41 Persian native speakers by the use of RSVP technique revealed that there is a garden path effect in such sentences in Persian, and the distance of the critical word from the verb as the disambiguating word affects the comprehension of Persian garden path sentences. Moreover, the results showed that the location of the disambiguating word has an influential impact on processing garden path sentences. The results are discussed in the framework of the late closure principle.