O processamento psicolinguístico de estruturas de foco pressuposição e tópico comentário com assimetria sujeito objeto e os efeitos de cenários positivos e negativos no português brasileiro

Abstract

This study investigated the processing of different syntactic structures (focus-presupposition, topic-comment, and subject-predicate) involving subject-object asymmetry, and the influence of positive and negative scenarios on linguistic processing. Experiment I was exploratory, presenting sentences in a context-free model using eye-tracking methodology. This experiment measured total reading times and reading times in the critical subject and object areas. The results revealed a main effect of structure type and syntactic function, as well as a significant interaction between these factors. Experiment II had a confirmatory character, employing a unimodal priming methodology with probe recognition times recorded via Psyscope software. The results confirmed the findings of Experiment I, maintaining the main effects and the type × function interaction. After evaluating the processing differences between the focus-presupposition and topic-comment structures, using the subject-predicate structure as a baseline, a new phase of the study was conducted to assess positive and negative scenarios. To better understand the interpretation of positive and negative events, a Likert scale was applied to evaluate the scenarios, taking into account verb semantics to avoid biases in event categorization. In Experiment III, sentences were presented with a two-line context, integrating linguistic interpretation with pragmatic and affective dimensions. The design followed a 3×2 factorial model (type × context) considering only object movement, recording both online measures (fixation durations, first fixation, and regressions on the verb, object, and context) and offline measures (sentence comprehension via polar questions). The results showed that both the type of structure (focus-presupposition, topic-comment, and subject-predicate) and the scenarios (positive and negative) modulate processing. Negative sentences in the subject-predicate structure generated longer reading times and more regressions in the verb region, whereas the focus-presupposition structure redistributed processing costs, mitigating the negativity effect. The findings suggest that the topic (TopP) and focus (FocP) subcategories, located in the left periphery of the sentence, carry distinct syntactic and pragmatic costs and interact with non-strictly linguistic phenomena, such as emotions. These subcategories influence the speaker's commitment to their speech acts and modulate syntactic choices, directly impacting communication.