[Reading times of sentences with inclusive language in Spanish: a psycholinguistic study].

Introduction: Inclusive morphemes in Spanish, -e y -x, have begun to be used in place of generic masculine forms. In this study, we look at the processing of sentences with inclusive language from the perspective of experimental cognitive psychology and with the methodological tools of psycholinguistics.

Methods: A sentence-by-sentence self-paced reading experiment examined the difference in reading times between sentences containing the traditional, masculine, generic form and sentences with gender inclusive language.

[Anaphoric processing deficits in Alzheimer's disease: the role of working memory].

Empirical studies have shown that Alzheimer's patients have language-processing difficulties. In particular, they frequently fail to identify the referent of pronouns and other anaphoric expressions. In healthy individuals, the explicit repetition of proper names elicits a processing delay known as the repeated name penalty.

Exploring the Repeated Name Penalty and the Overt Pronoun Penalty in Spanish.

Anaphoric expressions such as repeated names, overt pronouns, and null pronouns serve a major role in the creation and maintenance of discourse coherence. The felicitous use of an anaphoric expression is highly dependent on the discourse salience of the entity introduced by the antecedent. Gordon et al.

Co-referential Processing of Pronouns and Repeated Names in Italian.

In this study, we investigate whether co-referential processing across sentence boundaries is driven by universal properties of the general architecture of memory systems and whether cross-linguistic differences concerning the number of anaphoric forms available in a language's referential inventory can impact the process of inter-sentential co-reference resolution. As a window into these questions, we test whether the repeated-name penalty (RNP) and the overt-pronoun penalty (OPP)-comprehension delays associated with repeated names and overt pronouns, respectively, in comparison to more reduced anaphoric forms in reference to salient antecedents-occur in Italian, examining the extent to which Italian resembles other null-subject languages, with focus on Spanish. Our self-paced reading experiment with factors Antecedent (Subject, Object) and Anaphor (Null Pronoun, Overt Pronoun, Repeated Name) found that Italian exhibits both an OPP and a (weaker) RNP, extending previous research that showed these effects in Spanish and strengthening the claim that co-reference resolution might be subject to universal principles.

The Overt Pronoun Constraint Across Three Dialects of Spanish.

The overt pronoun constraint (OPC) states that, in null subject languages, overt pronoun subjects of embedded clauses cannot be bound by wh- or quantifier antecedents. Through the administration of two written questionnaires, we examined the OPC in 246 monolingual native speakers of three dialects of Spanish, spoken in Barranquilla (Colombia), Santiago (Chile), and Buenos Aires (Argentina). We tested separately the predictions that overt pronouns cannot be bound by wh- antecedents (Experiment 1) and that they cannot be bound by quantifier antecedents (Experiment 2).

Singular and plural pronominal reference in Spanish.

In two self-paced, sentence-by-sentence reading experiments, we examined the difference in the processing of Spanish discourses containing overt and null pronouns. In both experiments, antecedents appeared in a single phrase (John met Mary) or in a conjoined phrase (John and Mary met). In Experiment 1, we compared reading times of sentences containing singular overt and null pronouns referring to the first or to the second mentioned antecedent.

Action-verb processing in Parkinson's disease: new pathways for motor-language coupling.

Recent studies suggest that action-verb processing is particularly affected in early stage Parkinson's disease (PD), highlighting the potential role of subcortical areas in language processing and in the semantic integration of actions. However, this disorder-related language impairment is frequently unrecognized by clinicians and often remains untreated. Early detection of action-language processing deficits could be critical for diagnosing and developing treatment strategies for PD.

Repeated Names, Overt Pronouns, and Null Pronouns in Spanish.

In two self-paced, sentence-by-sentence reading experiments we examined the difference in the processing of Spanish discourses with repeated names, overt pronouns, and null pronouns in emphatic and non-emphatic contexts. In Experiment 1, repeated names and overt pronouns caused a processing delay when they referred to salient antecedents in non-emphatic contexts. In Experiment 2, both processing delays were eliminated when an emphatic cleft-structure was used.