A psycholinguistic analysis of NP-movement in English

SUMMARY The middle construction and the unaccusative construction in English are both said to involve a change in argument structure, but differ in how this change arises. Theoretical accounts of unaccusatives agree that NP-movement underlies the alternation in unaccusatives (Baltin, 2000). Conflicting analyses of the English middle construction exist, with some theorists proposing that the English middle is formed through NPmovement, while others positing a more lexical approach (Stroik 1992; Ackema & Schoorlemmer, 1995). The present study employed eye-tracking to test these conflicting theoretical accounts by comparing the processing effort associated with syntactic constructions that are or are not predicted to involve NPmovement (i.e. middle constructions, unaccusatives, inchoatives, unergatives and unergative instrumentals). The critical areas examined were the noun, verb and adverb regions. The data was analyzed using multiple linear regression models for continuous eye movement variables (e.g. total fixation time) and linear logistic regression models for categorical eye movement variables (e.g. regression rate) on the critical region as dependent variables, verb type as the critical independent variable and multiple controls. The analysis of total fixation time and regression rate into the critical verb and adverb region indicates that unaccusatives were fixated on the longest and had the highest rate of regressions. The unergative and unergative instrumentals, which showed no significant difference each other, were fixated on and displayed a rate of regression less than that of the unaccusatives but higher than that of the middles and inchoatives. The middles and the inchoatives, which showed no significant difference between each other, exhibited the lowest rate of regressions and were fixated on the least. We interpret this pattern as behavioural evidence contra the NP-movement hypothesis for English middle constructions and evidence for NP-movement in unaccusatives.