ИСТИНА

Eye movement parameters in reading syntactically ambiguous sentences with relative clause were studied. In experiments the subjects read locally and globally ambiguous sentences (with one and two interpretations respectively) and sentences without ambiguity (control). In Russian language as well as in other languages the parsing of both globally and locally ambiguous sentences slows down the reading compared with parsing of control sentences. This occurs because of increasing of fixation duration and frequency of regressive saccades executed for rereading the ambiguous phrase. Moreover the subjects read globally ambiguous sentences slower than locally ambiguous sentences. The domination of early/late closure principle in certain language determines fewer efforts for disambiguation of syntactically ambiguous sentence as provided by such domination. This determination closely relates with eye movement parameters during reading ambiguous sentences in languages with domination of late (e.g. English) and early (e.g. Spanish) closure. In Russian language reading time of locally ambiguous sentences with early closure was shorter than reading time of sentences with late closure because of more fixations in latter case. Thus the domination of early closure in Russian language determines eye movement parameters in reading syntactically ambiguous sentences.