| Abstract | This chapter discussed the effects of thematic role (semantic role) on word processing. One of the two languages studied was Serbian, in which thematic role is tied to a word’s case-inflection morphology. The other language was English, which depends on other mechanisms (such as word order and prepositions) to express thematic role. The data in both languages showed that a target word’s recognition was slowed by ambiguity in the word’s thematic role. This ambiguity effect can account for the fact that, in case-inflected languages like Serbian, there is faster recognition of a word in its nominative case form than in one of its oblique case forms; the nominative case has far fewer thematic role interpretations than other cases and is, therefore, the least ambiguous. The effect of role ambiguity was contrasted with the effect of ambiguity in lexical semantics (polysemy). In contrast to the effect of thematic role ambiguity, polysemy does not slow word recognition and, in fact, tends to speed it. This suggests different processing loci for thematic and semantic ambiguity and is consistent with a modular view of syntactic processing. |
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