Chinese-style topic and the typological status of BP: an eye tracking study

Abstract

This present study aims to provide evidence that supports the hypothesis of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) as a mixed language, previously proposed by Medeiros (2021), and to analyze the processing of Chinese-style topic structures by native speakers of BP. By employing psycholinguistics methodology, as eye-tracking test during reading, the co-referential preference for the topic and subject elements in the structures was investigated. This experiment adopts a design 4 featuring the factor “Type of referent” with 4 levels generated the following conditions: 

a) Aquelas florestas, os arbustos são grandes, por isso eu gostei delas. (TOP)

b) Aquelas florestas, os arbustos são grandes, por isso eu gostei deles. (SUJ)

c) Aquelas florestas, as árvores são grandes, por isso eu gostei delas. (AMB)

d) Aquelas florestas, os arbustos são grandes, por isso eu gostei __. (NUL) 

Response times to interpretative questions indicated extended processing time in the “null” and “ambiguous” conditions. The outcomes also indicate when there is no explicit relationship between the co-referent element and the pronoun, 65% of choices are made by the topic, and not by the subject, which provides evidence for BP's prominence of topic-comment structure, aligning with Li & Thompson's seminal work (1976). Such data are in line with the findings of Medeiros (2021), who found high acceptability of these structures by native speakers of BP and bring questions to Kenedy & Mota (2012), who evaluated BP as a language of subject prominence, when they investigated the same phenomenon.