New evidence on the Pseudorelative-First Hypothesis: Spanish attachment preferences revisited

Borja Alonso-Pascua

doi:10.2478/topling-2020-0002

Abstract

This paper is aimed at testing the Pseudo Relative-First Hypothesis in Spanish, a proposal that may settle the long-standing question of cross-linguistic variation in attachment preferences. This hypothesis predicts that whenever a Pseudo Relative (PR) is obtainable, it will be preferred for parsing over a genuine relative clause (RC). Assuming that PRs only allow for high attachment (HA), it follows that HA will be obtained when a PR is possible. To test this hypothesis, two experiments previously conducted in Italian will be replicated in Spanish with sentences containing PR-ambiguous and unambiguous RCs. In experiment 1 PR-availability is manipulated by modifying structural conditions, while in experiment 2 the PRs are only manipulated through semantic conditions. The results obtained show that PR-possible contexts do not yield the predicted HA. It will be argued that this finding, together with the data provided by the Italian experiments, only partially support the PR-First Hypothesis.

References

Aldama García, N., 2016. Pseudo-relatives complement of perception predicates. Master’s Thesis. Universidad del País Vasco /Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, Spain.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Angelopoulos, N., 2015. Explorations of (Greek) pseudo-relatives. Master’s Thesis. University of California, USA.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Augurzky, P., 2005. Attaching relative clauses in German: The role of implicit and explicit prosody in sentence processing. PhD Dissertation. Universität Leipzig, Germany.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B. and Walker, S., 2018. lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using S4 classes. R package version 1.1-17. [Accessed 13 May 2018]. Available at: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/lme4/index.html.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Brito, A. M., 1995. Sobre algumas construções pseudorelativas em português. Revista da Faculdade de Letras: Línguas e Literaturas, no. 12, pp. 25-54.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Brysbaert, M. and D. C. Mitchell., 1996. Modifier attachment in sentence parsing: Evidence from Dutch. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, no. 49A, pp. 664-695.10.1080/027249896392540
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Carreiras, M. and C. Clifton., 1993. Relative clause interpretation preferences in Spanish and English. Language and Speech, no. 36, pp. 353-372.10.1177/002383099303600401
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Carreiras, M. and C. Clifton., 1999. Another word on parsing relative clauses: Eye-tracking evidence from Spanish and English. Memory and Cognition, no. 27, pp. 826-833.10.3758/BF03198535
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Carreiras, M., Duñabeitia, J. A., Vergara, M., de la Cruz Pavía, I. and Laka, I., 2010. Subject relative Clauses are not universally easier to process: Evidence from Basque. Cognition, no. 115, pp. 79-92.10.1016/j.cognition.2009.11.012
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Cinque, G., 1992. The pseudo-relative and ACC-ing constructions after verbs of perception. In: G. Cinque, ed. Italian syntax and Universal Grammar. Cambridge: CUP, pp. 244-275.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Cuetos, F. and D. C. Mitchell., 1988. Cross-linguistic differences in parsing. Cognition, no. 30, pp. 73-105.10.1016/0010-0277(88)90004-2
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
De Vincenzi, M. and Job, R., 1993. Some observations on the universality of the late closure strategy. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, no. 22, pp. 189-206.10.1007/BF01067830
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Ehrlich, K., Fernández, E., Fodor, J. D., StenshoeL, E. and Vinereanu, M., 1999. Low attachment of relative clauses: New data from Swedish, Norwegian and Romanian. Poster presented at the 12th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing. The City University of New York, USA, 18-20 March.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Fodor, J. D., 2002. Prosodic disambiguation in silent Reading. In: M. Hirotani, ed. Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society 32. Amherst, MA: GLSA, pp. 113-132.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Fraga, I., García-orza, J. and Acuña Fariña, J. C., 2005. La desambiguación de oraciones de relativo en gallego: Nueva evidencia de adjunción alta en lenguas romances. Psicológica, no. 26, pp. 243-260.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Frazier, L., 1978. On comprehending sentences: Syntactic parsing strategies. PhD Dissertation. University of Connecticut, USA.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Frazier, L. and C. Clifton., 1996. Construal. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Gibson, E., 1998. Linguistic complexity: Locality of syntactic dependencies. Cognition, no. 68, pp. 1-6.10.1016/S0010-0277(98)00034-1
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Gibson, E, Pearlmutter, N., Canseco-González, E. and Hickok, G., 1996. Recency preference in the human sentence processing mechanism. Cognition, no. 59, pp. 23-59.10.1016/0010-0277(95)00687-7
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Gibson, E., Pearlmutter, N., and Torrens, V., 1999. Recency and lexical preferences in Spanish. Memory & Cognition, no. 27, pp. 603-611.10.3758/BF03211554
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Gibson, E., Desmet, T., Grodner, D., Watson, D. and Ko, K., 2005. Reading relative clauses in English. Cognitive Linguistics, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 313-353.10.1515/cogl.2005.16.2.313
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Gordon, P. C., Hendrick, R. and Johnson, M., 2001. Memory interference during language processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, no. 27, pp. 1411-1423.10.1037/0278-7393.27.6.1411
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Gordon, P. C., Hendrick, R. and Johnson, M., 2004. Effects of noun phrase type on sentence complexity. Journal of Memory and Language, no. 51, pp. 97-114.10.1016/j.jml.2004.02.003
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Grillo, N. and Costa, J., 2014. A novel argument for the Universality of Parsing principles. Cognition, no. 133, pp. 156-187.10.1016/j.cognition.2014.05.019
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Grillo, N., Costa, J., Fernandes, B. and Santi, A., 2015. Highs and Lows in English Attachment. Cognition, no. 144, pp. 116-122.10.1016/j.cognition.2015.07.018
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Grillo, N. and Moulton, K., 2016. Event Kinds and the Pseudo Relative. In: B. Prickett and C. Hammerly, eds. Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistics Society 2. Amherst, MA: GLSA, pp. 11-20.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Guasti, M. T., 1988. La pseudorelative et les phénomènes d’accord. Rivista Di Grammatica Generativa, no. 13, pp. 35-57.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Gutiérrez-Ziardegi, E., Carreiras, M. and Laka, I., 2004. Who was on the balcony? Bilingual sentence processing: Relative clause attachment in Basque and Spanish. Poster presented at the 17th CUNY Annual Conference on Language Processing. University of Maryland, USA, 25-27 March.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Hemfort, B., Konieczny, L. and Scheepers, C., 1996. Syntactic and anaphoric processes in modifier attachment. Poster presented at the 9th CUNY Annual Conference on Language Processing. The City University of New York, USA, 21-23 March.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Just, M. A., Carpenter, P. A. and Wooley, J. D., 1982. Paradigms and processes in reading comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, vol. 111, no. 2, pp. 228-238.10.1037/0096-3445.111.2.228
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Kayne, R., 1975. French syntax: the transformational cycle. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
King, J. and Just, M., 1991. Individual differences in syntactic processing: the role of working memory. Journal of Memory and Language, no. 30, pp. 580-602.10.1016/0749-596X(91)90027-H
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Lewis, S. and Phillips, C., 2015. Aligning Grammatical Theories and Language Processing Models. Journal of Psycholinguistics Research, no. 44, pp. 27-46.10.1007/s10936-014-9329-z
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Lovrić, N., 2003. Implicit prosody in silent reading: Relative clause attachment in Croatian. PhD Dissertation. The City University of New York, USA.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Mitchell, D. C., Cuetos, F. and Zagar, D., 1990. Reading in different languages: Is there a universal mechanism for parsing sentences?. In: G. Flores d’Arcais and D. Balota, eds. Comprehension processes in reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 285-302.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Mitchell, D. C. and Cuetos, F., 1991. The origin of parsing strategies. In: C. Smith, ed. Current issues in natural language processing. Austin, TX: University of Texas, pp. 1-12.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Mitchell, D. C., Brysbaert, M., Grondelaers, S. and Swanepoel, P., 2000. Modifier attachment in Dutch: Testing aspects of construal theory. In: A. Kennedy, R. Radach, D. Heller and J. Pynte, eds. Reading as a perceptual process. Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 493-516.10.1016/B978-008043642-5/50023-1
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Moulton, K. and Grillo, N., 2015. Pseudo Relative: Big and Direct. In: T. Bui and D. Özyıldız, eds. Proceedings of the 45th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society 2. Amherst, MA: GLSA, pp. 193-202.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Moulton, K. and Grillo, N., under review. Sorting out Pseudo-Relatives: Clausal Determiners and Mediated Agree. [Accessed 29 April 2018]. Available at: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/002738/current.pdf.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Papadopoulou, D. and Clahsen, H., 2003. Parsing strategies in L1 and L2 sentence processing: A study of relative clause attachment in Greek. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, no. 25, pp. 501-528.10.1017/S0272263103000214
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Pozniak, C., Hemforth, B., Haendler, Y., Santi, A. and Grillo, N., 2019. Seeing events vs. entities: The processing advantage of Pseudo Relatives over Relative Clauses. Journal of Memory and Language, no. 107, pp. 128-151.10.1016/j.jml.2019.04.001
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Rafel, J., 1999. La construcción pseudo-relativa en romance. Verba. Anuario Galego de Filoloxía, no. 26, pp. 165-192.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Rizzi, L., 2000. Direct perception, government and thematic sharing. In: L. Rizzi, ed. Comparative Syntax and Language Acquisition. London: Routledge, pp. 189-210.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Santi, A., Grillo, N., Grodzinsky, Y. and Wagner, M., 2011. Planned production and self-paced reading of relative clause attachment. Paper presented at the 24th CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing. Stanford University, USA, 24-26 March.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Sekerina, I., 2002. The late closure principle vs. the balance principle: Evidence from on-line processing of ambiguous Russian sentences. In: P. Kosta and J. Frasek, eds. Current approaches to formal Slavic linguistics. Contributions of the 2nd European Conference on Formal Description of Slavic Languages. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, pp. 205-217.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Sekerina, I., PetrovA, K. and Fernández. E., 2003. Relative clause attachment in Bulgarian. Paper presented at the 12th Annual Meeting on Formal Description of Slavic Languages. University of Ottawa, Canada.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Shen, X., 2006. Late assignment of syntax theory: Evidence from Chinese and English. PhD Dissertation. University of Exeter, United Kingdom.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Schmitt, C., 2000. Some Consequences of the Complement Analysis for Relative Clauses, Demonstratives and the Wrong Adjectives. In: A. Alexiadou, P. Law, A. Meinunger and C. Wilder, eds. The Syntax of Relative Clauses. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 309-348.10.1075/la.32.09sch
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Soares, A. P., Fraga, I., Comesaña, M. and Piñeiro, A., 2010. El papel de la animacidad en la resolución de ambigüedades sintácticas en portugués europeo: Evidencia en tareas de producción y comprensión. Psicothema, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 691-696.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article