The relationship between working memory capacity, bilingualism, and ambiguous relative clause attachment

Cotter, Beverly T.; Ferreira, Fernanda

doi:10.3758/s13421-024-01561-4

Mem Cogn

2024

DOI: 10.3758/s13421-024-01561-4

|View full text |Cite

The relationship between working memory capacity, bilingualism, and ambiguous relative clause attachment

Beverly T. Cotter,

Fernanda Ferreira

Help me understand this report

Search citation statements

Order By: Relevance

Paper Sections

Select...

Citation Types

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Year Published

2024

Publication Types

Select...

Article1

Relationship

Self Cite0

Independent1

Authors

Journals

Cited by 1 publication

References 59 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

Relative clause attachment in Mandarin Chinese: insights from classifier-noun agreement

Liu,

Lin

2024

Front. Lang. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

IntroductionPrevious studies have shown that relative clause (RC) attachment preferences vary across languages, often influenced by factors like morphosyntactic agreement (e.g., number and gender). Mandarin Chinese, with its limited inflectional morphemes compared to Indo-European languages, provides a distinct context for examining this. This study explores relative clause attachment ambiguity in Mandarin by manipulating classifier-noun agreement.MethodThis study conducted two self-paced reading experiments to investigate the influence of an initial classifier on comprehenders' anticipation of its associated noun and the impact of this prediction on RC attachment preferences in Mandarin Chinese.ResultsExperiment 1 revealed a significant effect of classifier-noun agreement in offline comprehension: there was an increase in selecting the high-attachment noun (NPhigh) as the RC attachment site when the classifier agreed with NPhigh, whereas there was a decrease in selecting NPhigh when the classifier agreed with the low-attachment noun (NPlow). Online processing results supported this effect, showing that classifiers guide comprehenders' expectations by pre-activating semantic features of the upcoming noun, thus modulating RC attachment preferences. Experiment 2 introduced semantic compatibility between the RC and potential attachment nouns as an additional disambiguating cue, revealing a reliable prediction effect for the upcoming noun. Although the classifier's prediction effect was diminished, it remained influential in this condition.DiscussionThis study highlights the complexity of relative clause attachment in Mandarin, demonstrating the significant predictive roles of classifier-noun agreement and semantic compatibility.

show abstract

Relative clause attachment in Mandarin Chinese: insights from classifier-noun agreement

Liu,

Lin

2024

Front. Lang. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.

Contact Info

customersupport@researchsolutions.com

10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614

Henderson, NV 89052, USA

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Blog Terms and Conditions API Terms Privacy Policy Contact Cookie Preferences Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

Made with 💙 for researchers

Part of the Research Solutions Family.

The relationship between working memory capacity, bilingualism, and ambiguous relative clause attachment

Cited by 1 publication

References 59 publications

Relative clause attachment in Mandarin Chinese: insights from classifier-noun agreement

Relative clause attachment in Mandarin Chinese: insights from classifier-noun agreement

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About