The syntactic complexity of Russian relative clauses
Although syntactic complexity has been investigated across dozens of studies, the available data still greatly underdetermine relevant theories of processing difficulty. Memory-based and expectation-based theories make opposite predictions regarding fine-grained time course of processing difficulty...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Elsevier
2016
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/102417 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3823-514X https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5912-883X |
| _version_ | 1826189047168499712 |
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| author | Levy, Roger Fedorenko, Evelina Gibson, Edward A. |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Levy, Roger Fedorenko, Evelina Gibson, Edward A. |
| author_sort | Levy, Roger |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Although syntactic complexity has been investigated across dozens of studies, the available data still greatly underdetermine relevant theories of processing difficulty. Memory-based and expectation-based theories make opposite predictions regarding fine-grained time course of processing difficulty in syntactically constrained contexts, and each class of theory receives support from results on some constructions in some languages. Here we report four self-paced reading experiments on the online comprehension of Russian relative clauses together with related corpus studies, taking advantage of Russian’s flexible word order to disentangle predictions of competing theories. We find support for key predictions of memory-based theories in reading times at RC verbs, and for key predictions of expectation-based theories in processing difficulty at RC-initial accusative noun phrase (NP) objects, which corpus data suggest should be highly unexpected. These results suggest that a complete theory of syntactic complexity must integrate insights from both expectation-based and memory-based theories. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T08:08:42Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/102417 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T08:08:42Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1024172022-09-30T07:53:28Z The syntactic complexity of Russian relative clauses Levy, Roger Fedorenko, Evelina Gibson, Edward A. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Fedorenko, Evelina Gibson, Edward A. Although syntactic complexity has been investigated across dozens of studies, the available data still greatly underdetermine relevant theories of processing difficulty. Memory-based and expectation-based theories make opposite predictions regarding fine-grained time course of processing difficulty in syntactically constrained contexts, and each class of theory receives support from results on some constructions in some languages. Here we report four self-paced reading experiments on the online comprehension of Russian relative clauses together with related corpus studies, taking advantage of Russian’s flexible word order to disentangle predictions of competing theories. We find support for key predictions of memory-based theories in reading times at RC verbs, and for key predictions of expectation-based theories in processing difficulty at RC-initial accusative noun phrase (NP) objects, which corpus data suggest should be highly unexpected. These results suggest that a complete theory of syntactic complexity must integrate insights from both expectation-based and memory-based theories. 2016-05-09T12:31:55Z 2016-05-09T12:31:55Z 2013-06 2012-10 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0749596X 1096-0821 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/102417 Levy, Roger, Evelina Fedorenko, and Edward Gibson. “The Syntactic Complexity of Russian Relative Clauses.” Journal of Memory and Language 69, no. 4 (November 2013): 461–495. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3823-514X https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5912-883X en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2012.10.005 Journal of Memory and Language Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ application/pdf Elsevier Elsevier |
| spellingShingle | Levy, Roger Fedorenko, Evelina Gibson, Edward A. The syntactic complexity of Russian relative clauses |
| title | The syntactic complexity of Russian relative clauses |
| title_full | The syntactic complexity of Russian relative clauses |
| title_fullStr | The syntactic complexity of Russian relative clauses |
| title_full_unstemmed | The syntactic complexity of Russian relative clauses |
| title_short | The syntactic complexity of Russian relative clauses |
| title_sort | syntactic complexity of russian relative clauses |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/102417 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3823-514X https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5912-883X |
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