Psycholinguistic investigation of subject incorporation in the processing of Turkish active sentences with transitive verbs

Turkish active sentences with transitive verbs of both animate and inanimate objects showed scrambling effects on sentence processing. Since scrambling effects were established in the active sentences with transitive verbs, ‘subject incorporation’ appearing in active sentences with transitive verbs was further investigated. In the case of subject-incorporated active sentences, accusative NP head position would be much more acceptable than nominative NP head position. However, error rates showed no difference. Moreover, the result of reaction times indicated that subject-incorporated sentences of [NP-accusative [NP-nominative V-past]] were comprehended faster than the same sentences of [NP-nominative [NP-accusative V-past]]. The magnitude of scrambling effects in each sentence pair indicated a bi-directional tendency; sentences with human objects showed negative scrambling effects (-335) while those with non-human objects were positive (+181). Thus, subject incorporation could be understood as rare idiomatic expressions in which subject and verb are strongly tied together.