Subject preference and ergativity

Polinsky, Maria; Gallo, Carlos Gómez; Graff, Peter; Kravtchenko, Ekaterina

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2011.11.004

Cited by 28 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Since both transitive and intransitive subjects trigger nominative morphology in these languages, grammatical function and surface marking necessarily co-vary. Recently, the processing of relative clauses has been investigated in two head-final ergative languages: Basque (Carreiras et al 2010;Gutierrez-Mangado 2011;Laka et al 2012) and Avar (Polinsky et al 2012). 4 Both languages have prenominal relative clauses and express ergativity overtly through case marking.…”

Section: Studies Of Relative Clause Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this section, we review previous processing studies of relative clauses in the ergative languages Avar (Polinsky et al 2012) and Basque (Carreiras et al 2010;Laka et al 2012). Avar and Basque are both head-final languages with prenominal relative clauses.…”

Section: Processing Of Relative Clauses In Ergative Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It exhibits morphological ergativity in agreement as well as in case marking:the verb agrees in number and noun class with the absolutive argument. The ergative argument has distinct subject properties: it binds the absolutive argument, it can appear as the implicit subject of the control complement, it can undergo raising, and it appears as the null pronominal of imperatives (see Anderson 1984, Polinsky et al 2012, and further references therein). Relative clauses are prenominal and all core arguments relativize by leaving a gap at the extraction site:…”

Section: Avarmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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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Section: Studies Of Relative Clause Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Processing Of Relative Clauses In Ergative Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Avarmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ergativity and the complexity of extraction: a view from Mayan

Clemens

Coon

Pedro

et al. 2014

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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“…The reason for including a two-word spillover region is that in self-paced reading, it is common for effects-especially stronger ones-to be delayed by a word or to spread over onto later regions (Ueno and Garnsey, 2008: 665, Xiang et al 2011, Polinsky et al 2012. Such a delay is particularly relevant for highly literate readers who go through words very quickly in self-paced reading paradigm, so that effects are often delayed one or two words (Mitchell 1984(Mitchell , 2004.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Left edge topics in Russian and the processing of anaphoric dependencies

Polinsky

Potsdam

2014

J. Ling.

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This paper investigates the cost of processing syntactic vs. extra-syntactic dependencies. The results support the hypothesis that syntactic dependencies require less processing effort than discourse-derived dependencies do (Koornneef 2008, Reuland 2001, 2011. The point is made through the analysis of a novel paradigm in Russian in which a preposed nominal stranding a numeral can show number connectivity (PAUCAL) with a gap following the numeral or can appear in a non-agreeing (PLURAL) form:(1) cathedral-PAUCAL/PLURAL, there were three.PAUCAL__ Numerous syntactic diagnostics confirm that when there is number connectivity, the nominal has been fronted via A'-movement, creating a syntactic A'-chain dependency. In the absence of connectivity, the construction involves a hanging topic related via discourse mechanisms to a base-generated null pronoun. The constructions constitute a minimal pair and Reuland's proposals correctly predict that the A'-movement construction will require less processing effort compared to the hanging topic construction. A self-paced reading study for contrasting pairs as in (1) showed a statistically significant slow down after the gap with the hanging topic as opposed to the moved nominal. We take this to support the claim that a syntactic A'-chain is more easily processed than an anaphoric dependency 3 involving a null pronoun, which must be resolved by discourse-based mechanisms. 4 INTRODUCTIONNatural languages encode anaphoric dependencies in a number of ways. Safir (2004, 2008) introduces the term COCONSTRUAL as a theory-neutral label for any identity relation between two elements, pronounced or not. Coconstruals include antecedent-anaphor relations, filler-gap dependencies, control relations, variable binding, and independent coreference, among others, as illustrated in (1).(1) (a) Mike hurt himself. (c) The construction of syntactic coconstruals requires less effort than the construction of discourse coconstruals.One challenge in testing these claims is to find coconstruals of the different types that nonetheless represent minimal pairs. The goal is to avoid differences in the constructions that might influence the time course of processing, independent of the coconstrual type of interest, so that any processing differences can be that constructions involving movement will be easier to process than similar constructions with no movement. We introduce two syntactic constructions in Russian that will bear on this issue; they appear minimally different on the surface but involve distinct structures.The contrast is illustrated in (9). A nominal is fronted, stranding a modifying numeral. The nominal can appear in a form that agrees in number with the numeral, (9a), or it can appear in a non-agreeing plural form, (9b). We will show that the construction in (9a) involves A'-movement of the fronted element, and thus instantiates a syntactic coconstrual between the nominal and the empty category indicated as a struck-through copy. In contrast, (9b) involves coreference between the f...

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“…This serves as an example of hypothesis generation that arguably was facilitated by the language-specific properties of Basque, in contrast to previously studied languages. Polinsky et al (2012) suggest a different way in which morphological case patterns could affect processing difficulty in ergative languages. They explored the effects of ergative case marking on relative clause processing in Avar, which, like Basque, is a verb-final language with pre-nominal relative clauses.…”

Section: Syntactic Complexity and Comprehension Difficultymentioning

confidence: 97%

Cross-linguistic psycholinguistics and its critical role in theory development: early beginnings and recent advances

Norcliffe

Harris

Jaeger

2015

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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Recent years have seen a small but growing body of psycholinguistic research focused on typologically diverse languages. This represents an important development for the field, where theorising is still largely guided by the often implicit assumption of universality. This paper introduces a special issue of Language, Cognition and Neuroscience devoted to the topic of cross-linguistic and field-based approaches to the study of psycholinguistics. The papers in this issue draw on data from a variety of genetically and areally divergent languages, to address questions in the production and comprehension of phonology, morphology, words, and sentences. To contextualise these studies, we provide an overview of the field of cross-linguistic psycholinguistics, from its early beginnings to the present day, highlighting instances where cross-linguistic data have significantly contributed to psycholinguistic theorising

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Subject preference and ergativity

Cited by 28 publications

References 31 publications

Ergativity and the complexity of extraction: a view from Mayan

Ergativity and the complexity of extraction: a view from Mayan

Left edge topics in Russian and the processing of anaphoric dependencies

Cross-linguistic psycholinguistics and its critical role in theory development: early beginnings and recent advances

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