The processing of quotation marks in German

Evidence from eye tracking

Abstract

In name-mentioning quotations, the name of a concept is mentioned and not used denotationally. Although there is substantial philosophical research on the notion of quotation, empirical evidence is sparse. In the current study, we use eye-tracking data to look into the nature of the processing of quotation marks in name-mentioning constructions. The results indicate that while there are no significant differences for early eye-tracking measures (e.g., first fixation duration), a significant effect was detected for the expression in the target interest area for dwell time (i.e., late measures). Target words enclosed in quotation marks take longer to be processed than target words without quotes. We argue that our findings suggest the involvement of higher cognitive processes in the comprehension of sentences with quotation marks.