Expectation and gap preference in the comprehension of Japanese relative clauses

摘要

The comprehension of relative clauses in Japanese can be affected by at least two types of ambiguities. First, nominative markers do not always mark subjects. Second, there are no overt markers that distinguish relative clauses from other types of clauses such as matrix clauses. We report two fragment-completion questionnaires investigating such ambiguities and three self-paced reading experiments replicating previous reports for a subject preference. Inconsistent with the predictions of expectation-based models, the subject preference held even though the completion data indicate that readers were more likely to expect an object relative clause. A particular version of accessibility is proposed to explain the results.