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- Title
Reading relative clauses in English.
- Authors
Gibson, Edward; Desmet, Timothy; Grodner, Daniel; Watson, Duane; Ko, Kara
- Abstract
Two self-paced reading experiments investigated several factors that influence the comprehension complexity of singly-embedded relative clauses (RCs) in English. Three factors were manipulated in Experiment 1, resulting in three main effects. First, object-extracted RCs were read more slowly than subject-extracted RCs, replicating previous work. Second, RCs that were embedded within the sentential complement of a noun were read more slowly than comparable RCs that were not embedded in this way. Third, and most interestingly, object-modifying RCs were read more slowly than subject-modifying relative clauses. This result contradicts one of the central tenets of complexity research: that nested sentences are harder to understand than their right-branching equivalents (e.g., Miller and Chomsky 1963). It is hypothesized that this result followed from a combination of two information-flow factors: (1) background information is usually presented early in a sentence; and (2) restrictive RCs—the form of the RCs in Experiment 1—usually convey background information. Experiment 2 tested this hypothesis by comparing restrictive and non-restrictive RCs— which generally provide new information—in both subject- and object-modifying positions. The results of the experiment were as predicted by the information-flow account: Only restrictive RCs were read more slowly when modifying objects. It is concluded that both resource and information-flow factors need to be considered in explaining RC complexity effects.
- Subjects
PSYCHOLOGY of reading; ENGLISH relative clauses; ENGLISH language sentences; SYNTAX in the English language; ENGLISH grammar; VERBAL learning; VERBAL behavior; LINGUISTICS
- Publication
Cognitive Linguistics, 2005, Vol 16, Issue 2, p313
- ISSN
0936-5907
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1515/cogl.2005.16.2.313