COGNITIVE AND EYE-MOVEMENT TECHNIQUES IN INDIRECT NOMINAL GROUPS ENTRENCHMENT

Abstract

The study reveals the reading and construal techniques employed in the process of textual entrenchment of indirect nominal groups. Entrenchment is characterized by the conventionalization of the nominal group form and the repeated referent construal scheme. The research discloses whether any repeated indirect nominal group use contributes to its entrenchment which is assessed in the oculographic experiment. It traces the eye-movement techniques and the reference identification index variations signifying the changes in the cognitive load distribution. To define the construal differences occurring in the first and repeated indirect nominal group use, we apply the system of parameters of focusing and process the parametric analysis of the text fragments. We initially hypothesized that the repeated indirect nominal group use will employ defocusing and repeated focusing schemes, however it also employed new focusing schemes. The changing roles of focusing and defocusing were evaluated oculographically and revealed the techniques of both cognitive load decrease and increase, with fixation duration decrease and stable reading regimes correlating with defocusing / repeated focusing, and identification index decrease and longer fixation duration correlating with new focusing. The results give evidence that textual entrenchment is in most cases accompanied by novel construal, and is constrained not solely by the number of repeated indirect nominal group uses but by its new roles in the text and referent construal.