Reconsideration on Linking Eye-movement Data with Argument Realization

Previous studies have found a processing difference between unaccusative sentences and unergative sentences. They argued that the difference is derived from a syntactic difference, i.e. an unaccusative sentence involves movement whereas an unergative sentence does not. In this study, we are going to show that those studies are uninterpretable due to uncontrolled stimuli and confounds in the materials. After examining their data anlysis, we argue that the effects they found does seem to be stable. This reopens the question whether there is a syntactic difference between unaccusative and unergative verbs.