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Edward Gibson, Timothy Desmet, Daniel Grodner, Duane Watson, Kara Ko
Reading relative clauses in English
Two self-paced reading experiments investigated several factors that in?uence 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-?ow 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 objectmodifying positions. The results of the experiment were as predicted by the information-?ow account: Only restrictive RCs were read more slowly when modifying objects. It is concluded that both resource and information-?ow factors need to be considered in explaining RC complexity effects.
Cognitive Linguistics, Walter de Gruyter
Print ISSN: 0936-5907
Volume: 16, 07/2005
Pages: 313 - 353