Direct object resumption in Hebrew: How modality of presentation and relative clause position affect acceptability

Meltzer‐Asscher, Aya; Fadlon, Julie; Goldstein, Kayla; Holan, Ariel

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2015.08.011

Cited by 11 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…In two experiments, Farby et al (2010) examined whether Hebrew resumption was preferred to gapping in structures with and without islands and demonstrated that resumption was actually dispreferred in non-island contexts but marginally preferred in island-violating filler-gap dependencies. This dovetails with results from Meltzer-Asscher et al (2015), who also showed that resumption is disfavored by Hebrew speakers in written presentation, even in non-island contexts.…”

Section: Resumption and Island Ameliorationsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…However, there is clearly a core validity to the claim that resumption is somehow special in Arabic, as our results in Experiment 2 from whether and adjunct structures confirm. There, even in the absence of an island, resumption is preferred to gapping, a result which can be seen as dovetailing with theoretical claims that gapping is generally marked in MSA, but in contrast to the results for Hebrew reported by Meltzer-Asscher et al (2015). Our results suggest that a long dependency with a gap in a non-island context reduces acceptability more or less to the mean acceptability for a speaker.…”

Section: The Grammaticality Of Resumption and Gappingsupporting

confidence: 86%

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Resumption ameliorates different islands differentially

Tucker

Idrissi

Sprouse³

et al. 2019

Studies in Arabic Linguistics

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Two acceptability experiments are presented which assess whether resumptive pronouns freely alternate with gaps and/or ameliorate island violation effects in wh-questions in Modern Standard Arabic. Both experiments test Complex Noun Phrase Constraint violations, adjunct island violations, and whether island violations. The results indicate that resumption is largely only acceptable with structurally complex DP fillers (which-NP) and is generally preferred to gapped structures in long-distance dependencies. Resumption is also shown to ameliorate the grammatical component of some island violations (adjunct and whether islands), but in different quantitative amounts across different islands. The overall picture which emerges is one in which resumption is quantitatively, but perhaps not qualitatively, helpful in repairing grammatical constraint violations in Modern Standard Arabic. 0 Thanks to Souad Al Helou for assistance with stimuli creation and experimental procedure. Thanks to Salam Khalifa and Anas Shahrour for help with stimuli preparation. Thanks to the members of the United Arab Emirates University, Tommi Leung, and arabic-L email list for assistance with participant recruitment. Thanks to Jim McCloskey, Dustin Alfonso Chacón, two anonymous reviewers, and audiences at the 30 th Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics and University of Minnesota for comments on previous versions of this work. All remaining faults are ours alone.

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Section: Resumption and Island Ameliorationsupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: The Grammaticality Of Resumption and Gappingsupporting

confidence: 86%

Resumption ameliorates different islands differentially

Tucker

Idrissi

Sprouse³

et al. 2019

Studies in Arabic Linguistics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In contrast, Hebrew is a 'grammaticized resumption' language, in which resumption is a grammatical technique for creating dependencies in relative clauses, optional with direct object relative clauses and obligatory with indirect object ones (Borer, 1984;McCloskey, 2006;Meltzer-Asscher, Fadlon, Goldstein, & Holan, 2015;Sells, 1984;Shlonsky, 1992). This is supported by evidence from large scale acceptability experiments demonstrating that even in the absence of an island violation, the difference in naturalness ratings provided for gapped and resumptive direct-object relative clauses is very small, namely about half a point on a five point Likert scale (Farby, Danon, Walters, & Ben-Shachar, 2010) or a seven point Likert scale (Meltzer-Asscher et al, 2015).…”

Section: Experiments 2: Restrictiveness and Resumption In Hebrewmentioning

confidence: 99%

It depends: Optionality in the production of filler-gap dependencies

Fadlon

Morgan

Meltzer‐Asscher

et al. 2019

Journal of Memory and Language

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This study investigates the language production mechanisms underlying the creation of filler-gap dependencies (e.g., relative clauses: This is the boy that the girl from Norway saw_ yesterday), which require speakers to establish an argument-predicate relationship between a phrase, the 'filler', (the boy) and a further embedded predicate (saw). We show that filler-gap dependency production involves the retention of a representation of the filler until the relevant embedded position. We then report three elicitation experiments examining how English and Hebrew speakers manage and moderate filler retention demands via production choices. In Experiments 1 (English) and 2 (Hebrew), speakers produced restrictive relative clauses and non-restrictive relative clauses with the latter predicted to impede filler retention. In Experiment 3 (Hebrew), speakers produced relative clauses with and without intervening material creating interference for filler retention. We found that English speakers use passivization to moderate filler-retention demands via the creation of shorter dependencies. In Hebrew, impeded filler retention resulted in increased rate of grammatical resumption. We conclude that the production of filler-gap dependencies invokes cognitive strategies that manage the memory burdens that they impose

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“…In ORs with two lexical NPs, by contrast, a resumptive pronoun at the end of the sentence is optional, resulting in a grammatically correct sentence either way (Doron, 1982;Shlonsky, 1992). Nevertheless, ORs with two lexical NPs containing a resumptive pronoun are less frequent in natural speech (Ariel, 1999), and they are harder to process than comparable ORs without a resumptive pronoun, even for adults (Meltzer-Asscher, Fadlon, Goldstein, & Holan, 2015). Similarly, in the Hebrew study with the definitions task (Friedmann et al, 2011), children produced ORs with a resumptive pronoun to a lesser extent than without it.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Testing the effect of an arbitrary subject pronoun on relative clause comprehension: a study with Hebrew-speaking children

Haendler

Adani

2018

J. Child Lang.

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Previous studies have found that Hebrew-speaking children accurately comprehend object relatives (OR) with an embedded non-referential arbitrary subject pronoun (ASP). The facilitation of ORs with embedded pronouns is expected both from a discourse-pragmatics perspective and within a syntax-based locality approach. However, the specific effect of ASP might also be driven by a mismatch in grammatical features between the head noun and the pronoun, or by its relatively undemanding referential properties. We tested these possibilities by comparing ORs whose embedded subject is either ASP, a referential pronoun, or a lexical noun phrase. In all conditions, grammatical features were controlled. In a referent-identification task, the matching features made ORs with embedded pronouns difficult for five-year-olds. Accuracy was particularly low when the embedded pronoun was referential. These results indicate that embedded pronouns do not facilitate ORs across the board, and that the referential properties of pronouns affect OR processing.

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Direct object resumption in Hebrew: How modality of presentation and relative clause position affect acceptability

Cited by 11 publications

References 20 publications

Resumption ameliorates different islands differentially

Resumption ameliorates different islands differentially

It depends: Optionality in the production of filler-gap dependencies

Testing the effect of an arbitrary subject pronoun on relative clause comprehension: a study with Hebrew-speaking children

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