Is the Prosodic Structure of Texts Reflected in Silent Reading? An Eye-Tracking Corpus Analysis

TL;DR

This study explores whether the rhythm of text influences silent reading by analyzing eye movements in Croatian and English readers.

Contribution

The study provides empirical evidence supporting the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis using a bilingual eye-tracking corpus.

Findings

Readers' eyes lingered more on stressed syllables in both Croatian and English.

The effect was stronger in English, where stress differences are more pronounced.

Results support the idea that silent reading is guided by an inner voice with prosodic features.

Abstract

The aim of this study was to test the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis using a reading corpus, i.e., a text without experimental manipulation labelled with eye-tracking parameters. For this purpose, a bilingual Croatian–English reading corpus was analysed. In prosodic terms, Croatian and English are at the opposite ends of the spectrum: English is considered a time-framed language, while Croatian is a syllable-framed language. This difference served as a kind of experimental control in this study on natural reading. The results show that readers’ eyes lingered more on stressed syllables than on the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables for both languages. This is especially pronounced for English, a language with greater differences in the duration of stressed and unstressed syllables. This study provides indirect evidence in favour of the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis, i.e., the idea that readers are guided by their inner voice with its suprasegmental features when reading silently. The differences between the languages can be traced back to the typological differences in stress in English and Croatian.

Figures