An Assimilation Effect in Judging the Grammaticality of Sentences Violating the Subjacency Condition

Abstract

Two experiments explored the anchoring effect, particularly an assimilation effect, in judging the grammaticality of sentences violating the subjacency condition. Subjects judged two types of sentences similar on the surface but differing in judged acceptability. One sentence type included an embedded clause expressing the subjective experience of a matrix noun phrase (Subjective sentence) while the other sentence type did not include such a clause (Nonsubjective sentence). Exp. 1 showed the assimilation effect only for Subjective target sentences paired with Nonsubjective anchor sentences. Exp. 2, in which speakers' field-dependence was manipulated, showed a clear assimilation effect for field-dependent speakers. Thus, regardless of the type of target sentences judged, the judgments for field-dependent speakers approximated those made on the anchors, while such was not the case for field-independent speakers. Findings indicate that even the pattern of judgments between the two types of sentences was affected by an extragrammatical factor such as field-dependence.