Abstract
According to one of the major theories of sentence parsing, initial syntactic choices are made on the basis of processing strategies that apply universally to all languages of the world. In a study using a particular sentence structure in Dutch, Flores d’Arcais (1990) has claimed to provide cross-linguistic support for one such strategy (late closure), a conclusion subsequently endorsed by Frazier (1993). However, prior evidence with equivalent structures in English has shown that they are subject to lexical influences, with the implication that the crucial observations may not generalize to different classes of verbs. The present study demonstrates that comparable lexical effects occur in Dutch - effectively undermining the claim that parsing biases in material of this kind can be used to support the hypothesis that late closure is a universal strategy.