Canonical word order and interference-based integration costs during sentence comprehension: The case of Spanish subject- and object-relative clauses

摘要

Object-relative clauses are generally harder to process than subject-relative clauses. Increased processing costs for object-relatives have been attributed either to working memory demands for the establishment of long-distance dependencies or to difficulties processing unexpected, noncanonical structures. The current study uses self-paced reading to contrast the impact of both kinds of factors in Spanish object-relative clauses, manipulating the interposition of the subject of the relative clause between object and verb. In addition, object-relatives were unambiguously marked at their onset with the Spanish preposition “a”. Reading times increased at the onset and final regions of object-relative clauses, regardless of interference-based working memory costs, although interference costs may affect the processing of post-relative-clause regions. These results suggest that, beyond interference-related working memory costs, end-of-clause integration processes may be affected by a preference for canonical structures, thus increasing processing difficulties when confronted with a noncanonical form.View full textDownload full textKeywordsCanonicity, Self-paced reading, Syntactic processing, Thematic roles, Working memoryRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2012.674951