The Canonical Position of Instrumental and Locative Adverbs in the Cognitive Processing of Japanese Sentences and Noun Phrases

The present study investigated the canonical position of instrumental and locative adverbs using a sentence correctness decision task measuring reaction times (msec) and error rates (%). The results indicated that sentences of the SAdvOV phrase order were found to be the most quickly processed in both the case of instrumental adverbs in Experiment 1A and locative adverbs in Experiment 1B. The canonical position for these adverbs is identified as the position outside the verb phrase and after the subject phrase. In addition, noun phrases of the adverb-initial position (Adv-no O-no N) were processed more quickly and more accurately than adverb-secondary position (O-no Adv-no N) in both instrumental adverbs in Experiment 2A and locative adverbs in Experiment 2B. The canonical position of SAdvOV for instrumental and locative adverbs in sentences remains the same in the case of noun phrases. Therefore, instrumental and locative adverbs have a common canonical position in both sentences and noun phrases. This result further suggests that the basic hierarchical structure of an NP is [Adv-no [O-no N]], just as in the case of a sentence ([S [Adv [O-V]]]).