Short article: The processing of subject and object relative clauses in Spanish: An eye-tracking study

Montesinos, Moisés Betancort; Carreiras, Manuel; Sturt, Patrick

doi:10.1080/17470210902866672

Cited by 64 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…This result has been reported for various languages with postnominal RCs, such as English (Ford 1983;King & Just 1991;Gibson et al 1994;Pickering 1994;King & Kutas 1995;Weckerly & Kutas 1999;Caplan & Waters 2001;Gordon et al 2001;Traxler et al 2002), Dutch (Frazier 1987;Mak et al 2002Mak et al , 2006, French (Frauenfelder et al 1980;Holmes & O'Regan 1981;Cohen & Mehler 1996), German (Mecklinger et al 1995;Schriefers et al 1995), and Spanish (Betancort et al 2009). The methodologies used in these experiments include measurements of self-paced reading, eye movements, event-related potentials (ERPs), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), phoneme monitoring, reading times, and online lexical decisions (Hakes et al 1976;Wanner & Maratsos 1978;Holmes & O'Regan 1981;Ford 1983;and King & Just 1991, among others).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 66%

Children's Comprehension of Relative Clauses in an Ergative Language: The Case of Basque

Gutierrez-Mangado

2011

Language Acquisition

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The investigation of the comprehension of L1 relative clauses across different languages has shown that subject relatives (SRs) are acquired earlier and responded to more accurately than object relatives (ORs). Most of this work has been based on SVO nominative-absolutive languages. In this article we present the results obtained in a binary picture-sentence matching task from L1 Basque, a highly inflected, ergative-absolutive, SOV language with prenominal relatives. The results obtained reveal that in Basque, ORs are responded to more accurately than SRs, which indicates that children do not comprehend SRs with more accuracy universally. The results are discussed in the light of different hypotheses put forward in the literature in order to account for the previously observed SR preference.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 66%

Children's Comprehension of Relative Clauses in an Ergative Language: The Case of Basque

Gutierrez-Mangado

2011

Language Acquisition

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“…A possible explanation appeals to transfer effects. Both Ch'ol and Q'anjob'al bilinguals had Spanish as their second language; Spanish itself has strong subject preference (Betancort et al 2009), and due to bilingualism, this preference could be transferred to Ch'ol and Q'anjob'al. However, at least two points argue against such an explanation.…”

Section: Language Experience and Psycholinguistic Work In The Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ergativity and the complexity of extraction: a view from Mayan

Clemens

Coon

Pedro

et al. 2014

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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Researchers using different methods have converged on the result that subject relative clauses are easier to process than object relative clauses. Cross-linguistic evidence for the subject processing advantage (SPA) has come mostly from accusative languages, where the covariance of grammatical function and case prevents researchers from determining which of these two factors underlies the SPA. Languages with morphological ergativity allow for the separation of case and grammatical function, since the subject position is associated with two cases: absolutive (intransitive subjects) and ergative (transitive subjects). Prior experimental results on the processing of ergative languages suggest that grammatical function and surface case may be equally important in relative clause processing. On the one hand, as a syntactic subject, the ergative DP has a processing advantage over the absolutive object. On the other hand, the appearance of an ergative serves as a cue for the projection of the absolutive object, which gives processing preference to that object. This paper further tests these findings by examining the processing of relative clauses in Ch'ol and Q'anjob'al, two languages that mark ergativity via agreement on the predicate (head-marking). We address two main questions: (a) does the SPA hold in ergative languages? and (b) are case and agreement equally able to license grammatical functions, and if so, is this reflected in processing? With regard to (a), our results support the SPA, suggesting that it is present in both ergative and accusative languages. With respect to (b), we do not find evidence for a cueing effect associated with the ergative agreement marker. We conclude that dependent-marking is superior to head-marking in tracking grammatical function; in the absence of case cues, universal structural preferences such as the SPA become more pronounced. We also consider and reject a processing explanation for syntactic ergativity, according to which some languages categorically avoid A-bar movement of the ergative with a gap because it imposes a heavy processing load. Our results show that the processing of ergative gaps is not associated with greater cost than the processing of absolutive object gaps; this suggests that an explanation for syntactic ergativity should be sought outside processing.

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“…The research presented in this section suggests that the acquisition of the Spanish personal preposition a can be challenging for L2 learners Marinis 2007, 2009) and heritage speakers (Montrul and Bowles 2008, 2010, but not for L1 acquisition (Rodríguez-Mondoñedo 2008) (see also Betancort et al 2009;Casado et al 2005;Nieuwland et al 2013 for on-line studies that examined the processing of the DOM in adult native speakers of Spanish). Therefore, since the attrited speakers in the present study acquired the DOM completely before they arrived in the L2 setting and before the onset of attrition, and since it is a syntax-semantics interface structure, they are expected to show no attrition with it and, consequently, to make no or very few errors.…”

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confidence: 99%

Selectivity in L1 Attrition: Differential Object Marking in Spanish Near-Native Speakers of English

Chamorro

Sturt

Sorace

2015

J Psycholinguist Res

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Previous research has shown L1 attrition to be restricted to structures at the interfaces between syntax and pragmatics, but not to occur with syntactic properties that do not involve such interfaces ('Interface Hypothesis', Sorace and Filiaci 2006). The present study tested possible L1 attrition effects on a syntax-semantics interface structure (Differential Object Marking using the Spanish personal preposition) as well as the effects of recent L1 re-exposure on the potential attrition of these structures, using offline and eye-tracking measures. Participants included a group of native Spanish speakers experiencing attrition ('attriters'), a second group of attriters exposed exclusively to Spanish before they were tested, and a control group of Spanish monolinguals. The eyetracking results showed very early sensitivity to DOM violations, which was of an equal magnitude across all groups. The off-line results also showed an equal sensitivity across groups. These results reveal that structures involving 'internal' interfaces like the DOM do not undergo attrition either at the processing or representational level.

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Short article: The processing of subject and object relative clauses in Spanish: An eye-tracking study

Cited by 64 publications

References 21 publications

Children's Comprehension of Relative Clauses in an Ergative Language: The Case of Basque

Children's Comprehension of Relative Clauses in an Ergative Language: The Case of Basque

Ergativity and the complexity of extraction: a view from Mayan

Selectivity in L1 Attrition: Differential Object Marking in Spanish Near-Native Speakers of English

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